My Summer of Permaculture Farming

Although I've forgotten many, here are the miracles I remember:

- Finding out, from someone who had lived there for a year, about Our Permaculture Farm (www.growpermaculture.com) on the very evening (June 2nd) after I found out I needed to move to a new place by the end of the month.

- Two classes that were scheduled the next two Saturdays, giving me a good introduction to the farm and its owners and fellow workers. (There were no other available classes until after I left!)

- The fact that they needed my help throughout the summer and let me work from 8:00 to 10:00 every morning, which is exactly what I had wished for because it was cooler in the mornings and then I could work noon to evening at my full-time research/writing job.

-The timing of moving in on Summer Solstice (June 20), and moving out 3 months later just before a full-time permanent worker came to take my place, which was just before the Autumn Equinox.

-Having use of a large yurt tent left with me by a friend, that I slept in every night, allowing me to hear the owls, crickets, frogs, and cicadas all night and the blackbirds and songbirds every morning.

-A comfy classroom with WiFi and air conditioner for other times, and a big kitchen in the big house to cook in.

- Attending the make-up final PDC (Permaculture Design Course) class and having one of the students tell me he was a dermatologist and could he look at the spot on my face? I said sure and he offered to remove a small unhealable wound I'd had on my face for over 11 years and stitch it up for free if I came down to his office in Ft. Myers, which I did, and he did!

(Cuban Green Anole lizard. Not my photo.)

- Having a bright green lizard flag me to a stop on my path and call my attention to a smaller green lizard who had gotten itself trapped inside a clear plastic sheet. When I bent down to unfold the plastic sheet, the larger lizard jumped on the rolled up plastic next to my hand to add its weight to help me unfold it and help its friend escape. Then it ran further down my path to thank me. 

-Trying to meditate with a spider I let block one side of the entrance to my tent, and with other spiders around the property, and every time having a grasshopper appear to remind me that I am part of the mantid family of beings, not arachnid!

-Knowing my precious Pee and Poo was not going to waste down a drain but was making plants thrive in sandy soil.

-Picking a variety of fresh greens (and reds!) to eat with my organic vegan canned soup every evening.

(Row of cranberry hibiscus I transplanted when they were tiny. They really took off!)

 (Only ate those pretty coleus leaves a couple times, as I found out they were planted for decoration only and are not considered to be for eating.)

-Going barefoot often and using the semi-outdoor shower and outdoor sink. Finding my way to my tent by moonlight or starlight every night.

-Movies with my fellow farmhands most Saturday nights, or banging on a metal drum with Jen while she played a flute, ukelele or Jews-harp, or having interesting conversations and joking around while we worked.

-Getting hands-on experience at mixing potting soil; planting seeds; propagating stems; installing mushroom plugs into logs; watering plants the right amount; composting with food scraps, chopped up vegetation, manure and wood chips; turning, hydrating, and covering the compost mix to speed up the process; making compost tea; “chop and drop” fertilizing with a machete; using pee and bio-char to fertilize; making compost tea; digging swales along contour lines; caring for hens; and many other useful farming insights I can’t remember at the moment but will when the right time comes!

Ascension of a House Fly

Today (May 14, 2019) I’ve been reading Kinship With All Life, by J. Allen Boone, an amazing, delightful, classic book that introduced animal communication to the Western world in 1954. Most of the book is about the spiritual education of the author under the telepathic tutelage of Strongheart, the canine superstar of American cinema in the 1920’s. However, the last few chapters are about the author’s extraordinary relationship with an “ordinary” house fly he named Freddie. In the final three paragraphs of the book, he describes this scene after being up half the night educating a famous actor about the equality of flies with humans.

“Freddie and I lingered on in the morning sunshine. Thinking back over our friendship I could not recall a single instance in which the little fly had done even one of the antisocial things for which his kind are so ruthlessly hunted down and slaughtered. His character and behavior patterns would have been commendable in a human. For the fine example he was setting me as a fellow being and as a special mark of my great admiration, respect and affection, I mentally pinned a Medal of Merit on him.

“Just as I was concluding my heart speech about this, Freddie suddenly took off and began flying slow circles just above my head, each circle a little higher than the one before. The sun's rays pouring in through the windows turned him into pure gold, a scintillating part of the rays themselves. Then across the centuries again I could inwardly hear the words of Meister Eckhart; 'When I preached in Paris I said then -- and I regard it well said -- that not a man in Paris can conceive with all his learning that God is in the very meanest creatures -- even in a fly.'

“Freddie's slow circles grew higher and higher. I wondered what he had on his mind and where he was going. Round and round he went in his golden circling. Then he became so fused with the sun's rays, so much a part of the glory of the morning itself, that it was impossible to distinguish him as a separate object. It was all one presence, one substance, one action. And somewhere in it all my little friend and teacher was being his part in the divinely motivated grandeur. I never saw Freddie the Fly again. It was a perfect exit, by a perfect performer, after a perfect performance.”

Not realizing I had reached the book’s end, I was so moved I could read no more. I sat for awhile overcome with tears of joy and fulfillment from the author’s relationship with this supposedly tiny creature, so large in spirit.

To find the only experience I could imagine that would not disturb my ecstatic state, I turned to do the final 10-minute contemplation of my lesson for the day in A Course In Miracles -- Workbook Lesson 128 -- and read this paragraph, “Pause and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.” W-pI.128.6.

Reading this, Freddie’s golden circling disappearance became the perfect symbol of my mind joining with my Creator’s mind in a holy instant. Yet another amazing synchronicity in my course-in-miracles adventure! More waves of bliss engulfed me.

[References (free links): https://epdf.tips/kinship-with-all-life.html, https://acim.org/ ]

It's all in the ... (long pause) ... TIMING!

 A Course In Miracles, Miracle Principle #25: "Miracles depend on timing."

For a couple of weeks I've been looking for the right time to talk to the young couple that lives in the house where I am currently renting a room. Their relationship seems to be based mostly on their bodies, and I wanted to find a way to share with them that we are not our bodies, and how realizing that can help them appreciate each other better for more than the sex each other's bodies can offer, and so reduce their frequent yelling matches.

In the evening I sit in my room with my door open to make sure my housemates feel comfortable talking to me. Tonight the wife came and asked me "Do you hear that?" I went to the living room where I heard a sort of humming or chanting sound coming from their end of the house. She said her husband thought she was crazy for hearing it. The sound always stops when she opens their bedroom door. Sure enough, I opened the door and the humming stopped.

She was shook up about it and told me a sick old man had died in the room next door awhile back. While talking in the kitchen to the couple and our other housemate about human consciousness and how we do not actually die, we just leave our bodies, I heard sounds from their room like it was coming from a TV. I heard a woman's voice saying Honey? Honey! ...but it stopped when I opened their bedroom door, and their TV was not on.

The wife was too freaked out by the noises and the strange concept that disembodied spirits exist, to listen to me anymore, so she went out front for a smoke. I was talking to the husband about what death really is, and how reading, watching or listening to near-death experience stories can help one understand better. Also told him about interspecies communication and past life studies so I could explain about the squirrel who enjoyed playing a game with cars and had been run over 3 times saying it was no big deal, and the boy who remembered being shot down by a Japanese pilot in WW II when he was an Air Force pilot in a previous life.

(The animal communicator scolded the squirrel and convinced it that playing this game was very unsettling for the driver's who ran over it. The little boy visited the Japanese pilot who shot him down and forgave him because he hadn't really died after all!)

As we finally went out front where the wife had settled down, I was telling the husband about reading Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander III a few years ago. At that instant I realized that the day I was reading that book and became convinced there really is something we can call "God" was on October 15, 2013, exactly 7 years ago to the day!

As I was in the midst of writing the above, I glanced at the time, which was 12:34 AM (on the 16th), a number series. This afternoon I looked at my phone when I hung up from talking to someone and the time was 2:22 PM, another number series. These number things happen to me just about every day, often several times a day. Life is but a dream!

Reminds me of this photo I took of my Bahraini friend's son, Cedric, running through the water at St. Pete Beach, Florida at sunset on a summer day in 2016, with a pelican floating behind him. I knew that someday I would find the perfect Course in Miracles quote to go with it. A few months later as I was studying the course, I found it. As I was overlaying the quote on the photo, I realized that I had taken the photo exactly one year before!

DOLPHIN for President! Get out the vote!

Yesterday I went wading on the nearest Gulf coast beach, wandering off to the far end in the rocky, marshy area. The little waves were no larger than a large lake on a calm day, and the water is shallow for a long way out from shore. I was the first to see a big hungry shark cruising slowly and seriously along in knee deep water, intently focused on lunch, huge fin always visible, no up and down motion, no blow hole, occasional boiling water when it found something and twisted around to snap at it.

As it glided around to where others could see its tall straight fin, I saw people wading out to get a closer look at the "dolphin". I called out, "That's a shark!" Someone nearby said no, that's a dolphin. As it cruised further down the beach, more and more people were wading out to ogle, until the water was crowded with many families of holiday beachgoers. I waded along, following the shark but staying behind all the gawkers.

Along the way, I called out to a father whose small child had gotten about ten or twenty feet from the shark as it was swirling around to attack a fish: "You know that's a shark." He said, "No, I don't think so. It's a dolphin."

I have been around dolphins. They cannot help themselves in their joy to be near humans. They always want to put on a show. They whistle and chirp and jump around in joy. And they don't like shallow water. Clearly this was no dolphin.

At the other end of the beach I stopped to talk to another father. His little boy happily called out to the world, "I got to see a dolphin on my birthday!" I corrected him, "You got to see a shark on your birthday." He heard me but the concept didn't register. He had no idea who I was or whether he should trust what I said when everyone around him said differently. A few seconds later he was still excited: "I saw a dolphin on my birthday!"

His father and I talked for a while about how to tell the difference between a shark and a dolphin. We saw another shark tail out further in the water. He agreed that they had no up and down motion so they were probably sharks. I also observed that there were signs saying not to wade out beyond a certain distance, and the shark had cruised by just past the signs. I wondered out loud if the park managers decided not to put shark warning signs out so that people would not be too frightened.

But then one of the father's family members who had waded way out to look closer said they saw the shark blow air, so he immediately switched and said then it must be a dolphin. I had watched both sharks the whole time and never once did I see either one blow air out the top of it's head, nor did they come up for air. If they HAD raised their heads, the people would have SEEN that they were sharks!

I walked away wondering if it was really possible for a dolphin to look and act just like a shark. When I got home, I looked it up and realized that all those people were in deep denial. They wanted to have a good day at the beach, and so for them it was a dolphin.

Reminds me of my role as a conspiracy "theorist". No one wants to think that there are individuals with money and power who could really care less about the people and are only looking out for themselves. They snack on children like so many slices of pizza, and are only too happy to make everyone think they are your benefactors while they bite huge chunks out of your every paycheck. And they expect huge profits from the mandatory vaccination program they are planning.

They also tell you every night on the news that the dolphins are the real sharks.

Make no mistake: These people are not your friends. They are sharks indeed!