The Voice Of La Madre

Ecstatic Embodiment through Meditative Movement, Breathe and Vocal Exploration

2009-08-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this generous offer to self-heal by integrating your body and mind

Book Signing and Workshop

Guided by Ruth Gould-Goodman M.A. L.Ac.,

Energy Healer and Pioneer Explorer of the Somatic Wisdom of the Body.

Author of

The Sacred Book of U: Unveiling the Lost Teachings of the Deep Feminine

Deepen your attention into the root of your pelvic bowl using meditative movement to activate your physical center and open fluid state consciousness.
Discover the path of ease as you invite fully embodied breath to be the source of body movement.
Activate life force as you explore the joints, organ systems and the resonating chambers of your body with movement and vocal sound.
Weave the consciousness of the group as one through improvised vocal sound and movement meditation.

When :Sunday September 20th 2009 3:00-6:00 P.M
Where: Olandar Center @ the home of Leigh and Carla McCloskey

6032Philip Road, Malibu CA 90265

RSVP (torcarleigh@aol.com) 310-457-5398

Or RSVP. ruth@ruthgouldgoodman.com, 310-392-3612,

$30/ suggested donation, no one turned away
Bring Mats, comfortable cloths for movement. www.ruthgouldgoodman.com

Exploring the Concept of The Deep Feminine

2009-08-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Deep Feminine is the principle of Yin. Yin is an elusive concept because Yin deals with that which is unseen and unformed. The Deep Feminine is the vast infinity of potential energy, the womb space, and the emptiness that allows new possibilities to take form.

The energies of the Deep Feminine are deep and profound. As human beings we gain access to our infinite being through our contact with the Deep Feminine.

The modern, Western world is out of alignment with the power of the Deep Feminine. Without honoring the Deep Feminine, we unconsciously and violently deplete the power behind that which nurtures us with out realizing how dependent we are on that sustaining quality to support everything we call life.

The Deep Feminine is the source of our deepest creativity. She can create another human being or actualize our ideas in form. The Deep Feminine is the source of our relationships and communications with others. She creates who we are at every moment. It is so easy to forget her when we bring our attention to ourselves. Our habit is to take her for granted. When we forget to honor the Deep Feminine we become over controlling and seek satisfaction by manipulating and consuming our world. She invites us to create our world anew in each moment. The Deep Feminine is actually the deeper source of Yin energy in our body.

Applying Yin Yang Theory to our Present Economic Picture

2009-08-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

We may apply Taoist Yin Yang theory to help us better understand our present social economic challenges. If I diagnose our societal values by noticing what we deem worthy of a monetary economic bailout, those things that are Yang are given great weight while those things that are Yin are being depleted and not supported. The Yin weakens and dies. We use our Tax dollars to buy implements of war, create armies and make War. We also direct our money resources to bailout our financial institutions and, our banks.

Our financial institutions are not what create wealth. They appear to create wealth because they accumulate money at the top and then manipulate that money to produce more money. They do not create wealth that is synergistically distributed through our system. Real wealth is created by what we manufacture and how we transform goods to be bought and sold. Real wealth is the way a community functions to raise children, to teach them the values of the culture and to help each individual to become valued and valuable adults.
Maintaining infrastructure of towns and cities so the paths of communication are open to support a viable market place is wealth. The building of roads, community centers, medical centers and places for the arts and performance are other expressions of wealth. The creation of good schools and teachers that can teach is wealth. The creations of artists, dancers, musicians, composers, poets and writers are wealth. The creation of medical doctors, clinics and hospitals that can treat the sick and help people stay healthy and vital is wealth.

I fear our present narrow view of wealth, as money that can be invested to make a profit, is bankrupting the real wealth, the support systems of our culture that actually nourish and feed the ongoing life of a culture. In the present picture of our economy we have the Yang energy of war and finance eating the nurturing energies of education, arts and health care.

Defining Yin and Yang in Taoism

2009-08-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

I am an acupuncturist trained in diagnosis of imbalances of subtle energy in the body. The philosophy behind acupuncture is based in Taoism.

Taoism is an ancient system of thought that developed to help people find healthy and balanced relationship with the world. Taoist believed that the natural world was inherently balanced and that humans could learn balance by observing nature. To be able to better understand what they were experiencing, Taoist divided the world into two categories; Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are two words that are used to describe the dance of the basic polarity of life.

To help my reader understand the two categories of yin and yang I line them up with their correlates:

Yin: Feminine, negative charge, dark, night, unformed, potential, empty, yielding, nurturing, sustaining, quiet, supportive, passive, follow, earth.

Yang: Masculine, positive charge, light day, manifest form, full hard, moving controlling, active, loud, challenging, lead, seed.

In Chinese medicine, a patient is diagnosed by their systemic balance of Yin and Yang. Yang’s tendency is to become excess and Yin’s empty nature is to become Deficient. When the two forces dance in balance, life generates a flourishing. When the Yang becomes too exuberant it feeds on the Yin resource, inadvertently depleting the Yin energy supporting it. As the Yin grows weaker, the Yang is no longer contained and limited by the Yin. Instead it eats the Yin to grow as big as it can. As the Yang grows bigger, the Yin gets smaller until there is no more Yin to support the Yang. At that point the bloated and overheated Yang collapses and the patient dies.

Description of the Saturday Class:Movement, Breath and Sound Work

2009-08-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

In my Saturday class I guide people to the source of their creative expression by inviting their attention to journey deep inside their body. Through meditative movements we explore the terrain of their body: the emotions, the spirit and the soul.

I teach my students’ how to self activate their energy switches by guiding their
attention into their organ systems and skeletal structure.I use a sensed relationships to gravity to help each person find their physical center.

Since so many Western people think they are the thinking in their heads, we further root our attention into the depth of our pelvic bowl.

Once my students fully ground their attention in their body, we explore how our breath moves through our body. To consciously engage our whole system we use our spine as a microcosmic map to help us track the journey of each breath. We practice directing our internal energy from the path of our central channel, down our legs, and out our hands through gesture and our mouth through voice.

We than cultivate our conductive capacity by dancing with the internally felt unfolding waves of organic energy pulsing through us.

A major focus of the class is to assist people to open up to the vast power of their own being while simultaneously inviting them to open their eyes. We practice grounding connection to a present moment direct personal communication with cosmic power in front of others. We lovingly witness each others authentic dance to grow comfortable in meeting the divine beauty we each bring forth.

The last part of the class integrates the activation of vocal expression arising from our center. Through sound we explore body resonance. A group vocal circle develops sophisticated listening skills that open group creative process. We are challenged to listen to the creative river downloading through our own center and then resonate as a group without a conductor or score. Each person expresses their vocal sound while simultaneously, listening to the sound tapestry the group creates together. We practice being conductive to the creative stream of the cosmos while simultaneously creating together with others.

Somatic Emersion* Journeys: Ecstatic Embodiment through Meditative Dance and Sound

2009-08-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

Join Ruth Gould-Goodman M.A. L.Ac.,
Energy Healer and Pioneer Explorer of the Somatic Wisdom of the Body.

Author of
The Sacred Book of U: Unveiling the Lost Teachings of the Deep Feminine

In her
Somatic Emersion* Journeys:
Ecstatic Embodiment through Meditative Dance and Sound

*e.mer.sion - The reappearance of a celestial body after it has been eclipsed
.

• Dance into your body’s self healing wisdom.
• Synchronize Meditative Movement with breath and intention to harmonize your mind, body and emotions as one
• Stimulate, and rejuvenate internal organ systems
• Activate and root into your core strength.
• Dive into the naturally ecstatic core energy stream of your body to decode the lost teachings of the Deep Feminine (decoding the body’s innate intelligence).
• Feel the deep satisfaction and personal empowerment of provoking a more wakeful consciously embodied relationship with the present moment

The practice is Life Enhancing and helpful to people who injure easily
Joyful, creative, improvisational, body-centered, loving and very potent.
It involves breath, ecstatic movement, meditation, chanting, vocal toning, trance music, and Ruth’s unique Tantric, Belly Dance, Chi Gong and La Madre Yoga.

When: August 22, 2009 Saturday, 1:00 P.M. -3:00 P.M
Where:1372 Appleton Way Venice, Ca. 90291
Under Ruth’s tent through the side gate in the back

Wear layered clothing. Bring a mat, pillow, blanket and water
Please call to confirm. 310-392-3612, www.ruthgouldgoodman.com, ruth@ruthgouldgoodman.com

Anti-depressants and the "TAO of NOW "

2009-08-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an article about the use of Antidepressants doubling in the USA from 1996 to 2005. As an acupuncturist and energetic healer, I works with the integration of the mind body connection. I have learned to re frame the way I think about depression. I see depression is an intelligent signal arising form our body when we refuse to listen to its message. When we block our own inner voice in order to squeeze our self into an external paradigm that more than likely does not fit who we really are, the voice of our inner power comes forward to guide us to move in a different direction. Since our culture teaches us to fear and shut down our inner voice. Many of us judge that voice as a bad and dark parts of ourselves that we must control and hide. We sequester the energy of that voice inside our body and often assume we have a bad part that must be kept inside at all costs. The inner voice becomes angry that we are not listening to it and eventually turns inward upon our own self. Our unexpressed frustration and anger turn inward and we loose our motivation to even try. We do not understand that voice is our inner connection to our life force. Our life force grows exhausted. Why should our inner voice keep trying if all we do is shut it up?

The problem is our own voice is the only voice that can guide us back to our truth and our right path. When we drug ourselves to not feel the pain of what we are doing to our own being we have lost the tread back to our health. We give our power over to an external substance and lose all sense of our own sovereignty. We now observe many people on anti-depressants grow suicidal or act violently toward others out of a desperate attempt to break out of the internal jail or fortress that they have misguidedly created for their own inner being. Taking anti-depressants places our being in an unresolvable dilemma.
Instead of masking our voice(the symptom of depression), we need guidance to enter that voice and discover what our own being is asking of us.

I have developed highly effective system of synchronized breath, movement and sound that guides people back to a much more natural relationship with their own life force. People discover the internal central channel that allows them to live from their center in flow and balance and ground their power in a safe, efficient and directed way. The yoga is called "Conscious Body Energetics" and the system is called the "TAO of NOW".

I long to be washed clean

2009-08-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Late at night on to Facebook.

I became overwhelmed with how much information was flooding toward me I wanted connection to my world. Instead I was drowning. Due to word limits on Facebook’s Status update, My initial response was stopped. I explore my thoughts to share with you.

Information floods my brain.

Waves Stretch and Arch out of the vast ocean

Slide over the hissing rush of the previous waves dance over wet sand and rocks

Simultaneously Crashing reach to the shore

And pulled back to its source.

In my dizzy spinning of endless infinite limitless possibility

The hum in my heart that sees beauty in your smile are my North Star

Ruth Gould-Goodman 7/13/09”

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

I long to be washed clean, swept back to the ocean, a tabla rasa knowing nothing except that which is essential. Instead of believing I am the wave crashing upon the shore I want to know in my bones I am the Ocean each wave arises out of. I revere the mystery of my own heartbeat and breathe. I trust the endless rhythmic pulse. I witness the effortless cycles of growing out of itself and falling back into itself.

I do not want to control it all. I do not want to arrive at some ultimate ending in which I can finally stand for the rest of eternity.

I want instead to trust I am a part of a hugeness that is so grand that my little mind can not even conceive of it. I want to open to the endless joy of finding my way out of myself and back into myself. I want to know the beginning is in the end and the end is in the beginning enough to release all fear of death. Life, not just my life but all life, deserves to be loved with a fearless fierceness that knows how to respect and cherish everything in life. I want to be awake to the exquisite special uniqueness of each moment knowing I will never pass this way again; each encounter, each moment, a brilliant jewel of light on water. I want to trust and love life so much that when I am called to return I welcome the dive into the deep darkness of my death. I do not want to resist my death out of fear when it is my time to go.

Each breath and heartbeat initiates me to know I am a part of endless cycles; waves in the oceans, the circling of the moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, and the sun through the Milky Way. I am darkness turning to light and light to darkness, the turning of the seasons. I watch my birth my death, my birth and death in every thing alive. No straight lines only endless hoops of joyful circles growing out of it self, then dying to itself to be reborn: infinite expression of precise uniqueness. How boring to cower in the narrowness of fear. Let Go, Trust this magnificent dance. We are all coded in our essence with this truth. No matter how hard we try or how completely we forget we can never stretch too far away from our source before we are drawn back like a wave to be born again out of that great Ocean. We all arise out of this playful and ingeniously creative oneness. I want to love enough to be fearless and empty enough to allow this subtle uniqueness called life to register and be savored by my conscious mind. Relax. Enjoy the ride. Do not cling to what has been when you are drawn back.

Ruth Gould-Goodman July 17, 2009

Advice for those with eating disorders

2009-07-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

I recently assisted a young woman who was dealing with an obsessive-compulsive eating disorder. The following are the words that I shared with her. I post them here in the chance they may help those who suffer in a similar way.

“ Before you eat breathe into your body to feel what is hungry in your body. Ask that place what it really wants. It is a place inside of you that you have forgotten to love. With your breath touch that place and bring gentleness and kindness to that place. Look at your [parents] and realize that you have ingested [their] voice inside of you and you eat to quiet that voice as a defense against being hurt. Instead of loving yourself you give power to the voice that asks you to seek yourself outside of your own center. You habitually dislocate yourself and eat to quiet the fear and anxiety you feel. Food will never quiet that voice.

The ingestion of food is a desperate attempt to quiet the terror of your own habitual abandonment of yourself. As I am sure you have experienced, you can loose yourself in food only for a few moments. Then the roar begins again. Food does not work to heal the basic dilemma. Only by rewiring consciously with nonjudgmental gentleness toward yourself will you quiet the crying pain of your inner fragmentation and abandonment.

Watch how over and over your desire for food overwhelms you each time you abandon yourself by seeking your answers outside of yourself. (Food, others, money, power. success, approval of others, manipulation of image). The abandoned being within does not need food… It needs your conscious love. It needs to be loved for no other reason than the fact that you are here. You need to pick that gentle part up in your arms like a mother would pick a crying baby up. For no other reason than the fact it is here and deserves attention because that is the way it is. Babies need love to live. We all need to be loved in purity but to get that we must first rewire and give that love to our self. FIRST FIRST FIRST

Print this out and read if each time you feel like eating and breath and search for real answers within.”

Making room for a spontaneous fluid sense of time in our structured lives.

2009-07-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

It is important to maintain a spontaneous fluid sense of time in our structured lives. A fluid sense of time allows opportunities that would otherwise be a stillbirth.

My complex life demands I schedule my efforts to achieve my goals. Yet I can miss life’s greatness if I don’t stretch my sense of time to include fluidity.
I must balance my sense of spontaneity with my need to structure and define time.

Recently, my husband and I spent a Sunday looking at real estate to assist our son in buying an entry-level house. The Realtor, a Korean woman, saw my husband’s marathon t-shirt and talked with him about completing a 10k. She then invited us to a potluck at her house later that afternoon.

Although we had tickets to a theater event that evening we decided to stretch time and drop by. We were glad we did.

We dropped into a culturally rich experience. We met her community of friends and family, ate delicious Korean foods, and shared very stimulating conversation. When she gave us a gracious tour of her house, she showed us her newly built piano room and treated us to a musical concert.

We would have missed so much if we had not stretched time to take in a spontaneous possibility. I want to always find ways to stretch time to see the beauty of other people. Sometimes it can be as short as a five minute conversation. I want to always be open to the generosity of sharing a meal in the middle of this and that.

Weighing in: The American Flag and the Bald Eagle

2009-07-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Americans national symbols

The comparison of two American revered icons came to my attention when the LA Times ran two seemingly unrelated stories: the American Flag and the Bald Eagle.

The first article was about war veterans protesting the possible sale of the Veterans Administration property to private developers. Originally the land was a gifted with the stipulation it be used for public purpose. In protest Veterans turned the American Flag upside down, an international signal of distress. Instead of receiving their signal, the government arrested the Veterans for “desecrating” the American Flag. Ignoring the well-established symbolism, outrage over the mistreatment of the flag was used to stop the veterans’ peaceful protest.

A second article reported on the re-appropriation of a 200 acre forest for the expansion of the Office of Homeland Security. Ironically, this forest is home to the first bald eagle nesting pain to locate near the capitol in years. Currently, there is little government discussion of protecting the forest essential for this living American symbol.

The different reaction to these two symbols reflects the unconscious values of our culture. We do not support the maintenance of the living systems that allow a living symbol of American freedom to flourish in the same way as we protest the perceived desecration of the symbol of our flag. The icon of the bald eagle flying free near our capitol does not carry the same symbolic weight as the flag.

To be “the land of the free and the home of the brave is to become sensitive to the innate impulse to freedom expressed in the world around you; it is to understand the right of our veterans to express and articulate their point of view. To truly practice freedom is to protect wildness and to understand that wilderness inherently reflects our own sense of freedom within ourselves. It is our adherence to the principles of freedom that has the power to keep our land secure.

If we forget to honor our living symbols, I fear we will see more examples of symbols manipulated to suppress freedom of expression, as in the example of the Vets and the Flag. We seem so ready to fight for the idea of freedom as expressed in our flag but seem to relish sacrificing the living symbols of America’s greatness. I fear we cherish the idea of freedom more than the nitty-gritty physical reality of what it takes to be free. I pray America connects with the bald eagle deeply enough to protect it with the same fervor we protect the American Flag.

Afghanistan War Resister to "Put the War on Trial"

2009-07-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

I dedicate this poem to Victor Agosto and Ehren Watada and all of our soldiers who have had the courage to put down their guns. May this poem circle the globe, bringing our troops home to rebuild our country.

Soldiers Put Down Their Guns

Sit down and make audible in this world the music you hear that comes from the world within. Open your mouth from deep within your pelvis. Grow a sound from a thin line to a thick resonate ambiance that fills space until Beauty and Joy sparkle everywhere.

Actualize right now! Be totally who you came here to be. Allow the integration of mind, body and breathe to become so complete that all fluttering of fear and doubt, all hesitation, simply cease.

Hear the silent symphony unfolding within the boundaries of your skin. Set the passion living inside you into rivers of color, light and sound. Roaring like a crashing wave, an unstoppable force breaks the limited boundary of your known world.

Life cries through your throat, and is born into the space around you. Your passion is a storm, a hurricane--violently demanding time, space and attention. Your passion crashes and roars through red lights, fences, fears.

The birthing is now! Here! Let it out. Let it be born as a new consciousness that sees beauty, hears beauty, feels beauty--everywhere. Let it be born as this new world. Nothing to do but align heart, mind and breathe with the creative powers of this Universe. Nothing to do but create Power, Beauty and Peace with the natural and indigenous creativity of this Universe.

People passing are attracted to your sound. They are compelled to bring their voices to the mix and take the sound onto the street. Soon the whole city is harmonizing, open-mouthed, like a huge flock of hungry bird-chicks.

Our tribal sound resonates the heavens open. The blue of the sky becomes a vortex for a great funnel of light. The Light fills us deeply. Our sound spreads, jumping across oceans to all continents of our planet.

Soldiers hear the sound.

Suddenly, they find the guns they shoulder so heavy they can no longer make sense of war. Without a word, they unbuckle straps that hold implements of combat to their bodies; and they leave their guns on the ground. Burdens lift. They walk toward the sound. Slowly tilting their heads to the heavens, their voices join the chorus of humanity.

As soldiers join the sound, the heart of Humanity opens. We each find a great joy in the center of our hearts. Borne through us all, we are enjoined by the passion and beauty of our living planet moving through us.

The force is unstoppable. Those who resist sicken and lose strength. The blue of Peace perfumes heaven and hearth.

We stand in the power of our truth; fear of the unknown subsides. Shining the light that we are, in joy with creation, we deeply celebrate the mystery in our creative expression. We feel the complete, simple satisfaction of recognizing one another.

Vital Force unfurls deeply, fully from within us now: You, We, Together, Weaving our Future.

deep love to you all, Courageous Ones,

Ruth Gould-Goodman

www.SacredBookofU.com

excerpt from my book, The Sacred Book of U

I long to be washed clean

2009-07-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

I wrote this late at night while on Facebook. I became overwhelmed with how much information was flooding toward me. I wanted connection to my world and instead I felt I was drowning. I share my thoughts with you.

"Information floods my brain.
Waves Stretch and Arch out of the vast ocean
Slide over the hissing rush of the previous waves dance over wet sand and rocks
Simultaneously Crashing reach to the shore
And pulled back to its source.
In my dizzy spinning of endless infinite limitless possibility
The hum in my heart that sees beauty in your smile are my North Star"

(The above thoughts then produced these thoughts)

I long to be washed clean, swept back to the ocean a Tabla Rasa knowing nothing except that which is essential. Instead of believing I am the wave crashing upon the shore I want to know in my bones I am the Ocean the wave arises out of. I long to revere the mystery of my own heartbeat and breathe, to trust the endless rhythmic pulse, to witness the effortless cycles of growing out of itself and falling back into itself.

I do not want to control it all. I do not want to arrive at some ultimate ending in which I can finally stand for the rest of eternity.

I want instead to trust I am a part of a hugeness that is so grand that my little mind can not even conceive of it. I want to open to the endless joy of finding my way out of myself and back into myself. I want to know the beginning is in the end and the end is in the beginning enough to release all fear of death. Life, not just my life but all life, deserves to be loved with fearless fierceness to respect and cherish everything in life while we are here. I want to be awake to the exquisite special uniqueness of each moment knowing I will never pass this way again; each encounter, each moment, a brilliant jewel of light on water. I want to trust and love life so much that when I am called to return I welcome the dive into the deep darkness of my death. I do not want to resist my death out of fear when it is my time to go.

Each breath and heartbeat initiate me into remembering I am a part of endless cycles; waves in the oceans, the circling of the moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, and the sun through the milky wave. I am darkness turning to light and light to darkness, the turning of the seasons. I watch my birth and death in every thing alive. No straight lines only endless hoops of joyful circles growing out of itself, then dying to itself to be reborn: infinite expression of precise uniqueness. How boring to cower in the narrowness of fear. Let Go Trust this magnificent dance. We are all coded in our essence with this truth. No matter how hard we try or how completely we forget we can never stretch too far away from our source before we are drawn back like a wave to be born again out of that great Ocean. We all arise out of this playful and ingeniously creative oneness. I want to love enough to be fearless and empty enough to allow this subtle uniqueness called life to register and be savored by my conscious mind. Relax. Enjoy the ride. Do not try to hold on when you are drawn back to essential original state.

Ruth Gould-Goodman 7/17/09

My Upcoming Events

2009-07-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Events

Mystic Journey Bookstore Workshop on Wednesday 7-9 p.m.
I guide people to journey into their breath and to reconnect with an embodied experience. We will focus on the feet, the spine, the pelvic bowl, the throat, the central nervous system, and the joints of the extremities.

We resonate our body with sound and explore sound production.

The next step will be to explore how we create a “Soundscape” together with others in the room. If there is time there will be opportunity to sing our soul as individuals.

Ecstatic Embodiment: Movement and Sound Workshop Series
I will teach a three week series of Saturday afternoon classes July 11-25th 1-3p.m. at my Venice studio that will take the journey of ecstatic embodiment and deepen the process. IT is an opportunity to explore consciousness and how we embody our awareness.

Science and Sprituality

2009-07-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Pro-science is not innately anti the Deep Feminine. However, I have reservations about the motivations of Western Science. This “new” scientific mapping of the inner worlds of our body/mind can point the way for us to reclaim the sovereignty of our hearts. Instead, I fear the exploration is being used to keep us in a fractured state to maintain us as dependent consumers of reality. We worship machines of power instead of reclaiming the innate power living in our heart.

Science is a methodology that observes the evidence of “what is” to base its conclusions. I honor science for its desire to dissect the physical universe to understand the laws of nature to assist humans to live more fulfilling lives. Spirituality does the same thing; It methodically observes and studies the internal material of human subjective experience in order to better understand how to live a fulfilled and harmonious life.

Western scientific thought expresses a masculine, authoritarian cultural perspective. This prejudice narrows science’s capacity to serve the human race. Science, in its bias to only consider hard objective information, only permits evidence that is measurable and quantifiable by the intellect.

Modern science assumes the superiority of a rational, linear perspective. It places the intellect process on a throne and gives weight only to that which is quantifiable and measurable. Western, left brain, logical, rational, objective concrete thinking dominates all other ways of knowing.

The scientific community reinforces the bias of Western intellectual thought. It does this by vehemently refusing to admit subjective direct experience as viable and meaningful.

Ironically, rational science is finally developing instruments that measure subtle energy… events that our hearts haves always been able to perceive. Western science now measures data that was previously dismissed as a fairy tale. Spiritual events that were dismissed are now given the currency of hard evidence by sophisticated machines. Now deeply subtle paths are quantified.

Through intermediary machines, science is finally able to objectively observe the subtle interconnecting web holding life together. Indigenous culture, the human heart, and feminine intuition have recognized and perceived these events through subjective ways of knowing since the beginning of time. The ancient wisdom of the deep feminine, which comes from feeling the interconnected relationship between all things, is entering the halls of science.

Leigh McCloskey: Spiritual Mentor in Venice, CA

2009-07-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked to speak about spiritual mentors whom I respect in the Venice area and I thought I would share it:

I respect the work of Leigh McCloskey. He does not promote himself as a spiritual mentor but as an artist who is devoted to honoring the depth of the creative process. I like that he does not separate function from spirit. His whole life speaks of a dedication to creating within himself and in his community the space to allow a new possibility to grow. His spiritual vision includes the community around him.

I was acutely aware of my first encounter with Leigh. After meeting him at a friends art gallery opening I visited him in his home to see his studio and his artwork. Although he did not really know me, he received me fully and shared with me the pillars of his world, his art and his relationship with the internal source of his creative process. I received his vision and shared mine. We talked for three hours. I understand that we did this not because I am special but because of the passion Leigh has to share philosophy and an understanding of the Divine.

Leigh teaches in a deeply individualized and democratic way. Every person is equal to the process, including himself. He understands that to take any other position of power would immediately exclude him from a direct experience of what he knows to be his truth. It is so refreshing to be with a masculine being who has bowed to the deep freedom, and fertile generative creative power of the feminine aspect of GOD. HE seeks not to control her but to love her by honoring the flow of creative impulse with in his own being. This is a teaching I align with.

Balancing the use of technology in my life

2009-06-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

I am affected by the sudden push to incorporate technology into my life? I struggle to maintain the balance between my spirit and my computer for they each take me to such different places with in myself.

I have a deep resistance to consumerism being the underlying motivation of a communication. Many internet communications direct my attention to get me to consume a product. I also use the internet get someone to consume a product that I am selling. There is a place for the market but I believe the place that buys and sells should be a very small part of my life not its greatest motivating force. The computer mesmerizes me to let it take much too much of my attention.

Since the Internet functions on a narrow band width of thought it does not comprehend the internal universe of feeling, presence and being. Many feel empty because their involvement on the internet takes them away from their connection to their inner world. Because we become fascinated with information and there is now endless access to information, I believe humans are breaking our threads to the web of life. Too much of experiencing life through the internet disconnects us from our selves. If we are to use the powerful tool of the internet we also need to spend more time going back to that connection within our own being which is silent and mysterious beyond words. Just by retuning our attention home to our inner world we pick up the threads to our inner being and reconnect with our soul essence. Then it is much easier to express gratitude, celebration and Love for the life we are given.

I loose my way when I forget to thank life for what life gives. I have to take time to see the gift of free-will and consciousness I am given. If I do not take time to stop and remember to celebrate LIFE with each breath I become mesmerized by the endless internet market place. It then becomes much harder for me to feel the gratitude and joy necessary to celebrate life. Celebration is a human being's Cosmic Job description.

Social Networks Spread, Defiance Online

2009-06-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

A Response to “Social Networks Spread, Defiance Online:”

Technologies that are simple enough to slip between the cracks of the authoritarian goons of censorship are exciting and necessary. Child like, they seem to rise up spontaneously just in the nick of time when it appears nothing can save the power of the people against the brute power of a well-armed militia. It seems to be a cosmic law.

With every technological advance in the government’s capacity to incarcerate the freedom that lives within each human heart, there is a corresponding development or understanding that allows that impulse to squeeze through the cracks and keep growing.

The impulse to be free and equal to everything constantly rises through our human nature for it is encoded in the deepest stream of life itself. It can’t be stopped. The impulse to be free to be equal to everything will always find a way to grow just as grass finds its way through stone and concrete.

Currently the technology of Twitter is flowing around the tightening fist of the authoritarian control of the Iranian government. Twitter is allowing the Iranian people to speak with one voice and express their anger and rage at having their election stolen from them.

Twitter is working to communicate beyond thick walls of fear and contempt for the life of a government that is deeply insecure in its legitimacy. The truth can be stopped some of the time but it can’t be stopped all the time.

Truth will find its way.

Thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of Twitter

2009-06-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

There are benefits to using and understanding online social networking systems such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can enter a communication stream that is open- ended allowing me to find connections that I never would have found in any other way. Even though the medium is thin and narrow, it has the power to attract people to my soul message.

Learning how to use online social networking systems feels like going fishing in the deep ocean. Most people are fishing for the same reason I am; to attract people to their work and business. If the Internet is used as an indicator that directs attention to connections that have physical substance, then it works.

There are also negatives to using networking systems. Time put into cultivating the virtual world of the Internet takes time away my current reality, my relationship with my body and and my local community.

I believe our world needs our physical attention and love. The medium of the Internet, by its very frequency takes me away from my capacity to feel my own heart love. Sometimes I feel the Internet is a thief that steals the time I need to spend in more analogue carbon based communications with the earth; Plants, animals, other people and my own body.

What is my initial reaction to Twitter?

2009-06-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

My initial reaction to Twitter is one of defense. I want to defend against using my focus and time in a way that feels shallow and superficial. I seek connections with people who have enough meat on the bone to offer me emotional and spiritual nourishment.

We greet people with simple phrases such as“ Hello, how are you?” These responses are a way to simply acknowledge one another. Too often the communication on Twitter will not go beneath this formal level to an honest discovery of the present moment. We do not expect people to bare their heart to others in superficial formal communication.

I am interested in heartfelt, honest communication where a person’s intentions to tell me something truthful and real about themselves touches and moves me to find an authentic response within my own being. There is plenty of noise and garbage in the universe. I try to be quiet except when I have something sincere to communicate.

Twitter is a derivative form of communication that narrows the field into such a small space that there is little room for depth. I am afraid twitter will steal my precious life force by using up my limited time and energy.

Invitation to Ruth's Book Release Party 6/26/09

2009-06-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

WHAT: Celebrate the release of my book

The Sacred Book of U: Unveiling the Lost Teachings of the

Deep Feminine

WHERE: Exhale 245 South Main Street Venice, California 90291

WHEN: Friday June 26^th 2009 7:30P.M.- 9:30P.M

RSVP: 310-450-7676 or info@exhalespa.com

$20 includes signed book, music and refreshments.

See attached flyer for more information

Ruth Gould-Goodman

www.sacredbookofU.com

The Virus of Fear and War.

2009-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I think my human race is infected with a virus that disconnects them from the wisdom of their own heart. The name of this virus is "FEAR". There can be no other reason that we behave toward each other with such mindless, cruelty and violence. A human body is so fragile and breakable, the skin is so thin and the organs and muscles so soft. A sharp steel knife can so easily slice right through us and cut us to the bone. We build weapons of such horror that you would think we were fighting extraterrestrial aliens made of steel who like the "Terminator" never die. It pains me to watch the mayhem of destroyed broken, bloodied bodies our projected nightmares create. We are bombing woman and children and men who are farmers, fathers and husbands.

We are made of the stuff of dreams, fluid and light but we seem to have forgotten we are all the dream of God. We are fragile because life is fragile, a delicate dance of the balance of opposites.

Humans, infected with the virus of fear, can not feel their connection to their own source within their own bodies. Once a person looses contact with their source with in their body they easily forget that they are a part of the creation that everyone is a part of. That is when the virus of fear can really take hold. Fear makes people leave their body for fear of experiencing pain. Fear makes people forget to feel the present moment reality of their body that connects them to the living systems of life and only listen to their thinking. Their thinking becomes inflamed and overheated and projects itself into a world that they see as black or white, good or evil and "US" against "Them". In forgetting their own source they project the pain of their own self abandonment onto anyone who is the slightest bit different from them. The possibility of the dream that they are turns into a nightmare as they project their fear outward. The world becomes a threatening place and War begins to be the only action that makes sense. The only event worth funding and giving our resources to.

It seems my country wants everyone to be just like we are. We want them to see God just like we do. WE want them to buy the same things that we do and grow the same crops and worship money just like we do. If they do not they seen as a threat to our assumed authority and they must be oppressed and colonized. This is exactly what the virus of fear does. We uproot from the center we are threatened by anyone that is the slightest bit different from us. Different skin, or hair, or language, or beliefs, or religion, or customs are cause for absolute judgment that is then used to justify the use of absolute violence and war. To solve the worlds problems we first must understand the virus of Fear with in ourselves.

What do YOU think??????

Those who fear life can only love the unborn

2008-09-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I could not sleep. Many Americans are being seduced by the appearance of Palin as a strong women. These thoughts came through.

Yours, Ruth Gould Goodman, Venice CA

For Palin only the Unborn Idea of Life is pure enough not to be Sacrificed on the Altar of War and Profit

Oh My America please do not be seduced by the brittle appearance of strength from Mrs. Palin even though she is in a woman’s body, has breasts and a vagina and has given birth. Sarah Palin is the same old tired solutions to our world’s problems as the old tired men who you are finally realizing do not have any solutions to your real everyday problems. Just because these ideas are being expressed by a female is no reason to suddenly become excited by them.

Sarah’s ideas are tired and old and incapable of solving the problems we face in the world. They are divisive, not integrating and non-cooperative and deadly. They thrive by stifling the personal freedoms of many while giving complete impunity to the elite. They speak of a top down authoritarian spirituality that places the divine and the sacred far away in the sky somewhere. These ideologies are incapable of recognizing the god force inside of anything but an unborn baby and other people who belong to the same church they belong to.

Animals, forests, oceans; in fact all living things are fair game to be sacrificed on the altar of their perceived entitled dominion to use this earth in any way they see fit to make a profit. Who cares if all the animals go extinct and leave this planet; to hell with the polar bear, the wolf and the elk? Animals are not worth of saving. They are not Christians. They do not matter. The deaths of women and children of a different color or religion all over the world and in this country as well are dismissed as collateral damage. It is o.k. to sacrifice any life but fetuses and other “Saved Christians” on the alter of maintaining the “American Way of Life”. This completely irrational self-righteous, infantile, entitled mentality is incapable of recognizing the sanctity of life itself. Obviously it can only see the pure god force in that which is ‘the unborn’ (not yet arrived on our planet). The implication being once born to life on earth you are a sinner unless you are saved.

I am tired of people talking from both sides of their mouth about the sanctity and the preciousness of the life of the unborn while the other side of their mouth rationalizes dropping bombs on people, separating young children from their mothers in immigrant raids, polluting the earth with the waste of oil and coal extraction. They are so disconnected from life that they cannot feel the loss to this planet if the great animal species go extinct.

They do seem to be able to feel the god force of the bottom line, for the real god they worship is the profit margins necessary to satisfy the stock holders.

The same people who cry for the unborn fetus shout for more police, more bombs, and more war. They refuse to raise taxes for schools, health care for children and working families. It is a cynical joke that the people who would self-righteously jail or even shoot another person to protect the life of the unborn fetus have no qualms with starting a war without provocation. I think they use the euphemism “pre-emptive” to justify their forays into other lands and cultures. Their self righteous ideology demands the sacrifice of blood. The ultimate cynical blasphemy.

To the right-wing pro-life position, the sacrifice of life to prove your religious ideology makes perfect sense. There is a coherence of belief. Those for whom war is the one and only answer for what ails our country would kill to protect the “life of the unborn.”

I am terrified to watch so many of my fellow human beings, my fellow Americans swept away in this angry ideology. I ask myself is this the real face of my American or is this the face that is being generated by the media to sell this face to America. I do not know. For me all life is a precious miracle.

I ask myself why and these thoughts come. Perhaps people including Sarah Palin and John McCain unconsciously are really terrified of the awesome power, mystery and beauty of life. Instead of facing their fear of the power of that force as it moves through their own flesh and blood, they project their denied fear onto everything outside of them that is different from them that they cannot control.

Only to "The Idea" of life turns them on. That is why they focus all their saccharine sentimental care and love on the unborn. Their unconscious fear of the sacred in the real flesh and blood of life as it lives and dies makes them unable to identify and relate to life. What they cannot control they hate. Any direct contact with the awesome unfathomable beauty and mystery of "Real Life" terrifies them. Direct connection immediately hardens their heart so they do not have to feel the vulnerable truth of their own interconnectedness with life.

The hardening to protect from feeling the pain of their self generated disconnection activates a self-protective desire to control and dominate life even more.

If you place yourself outside and above life, then you must attempt to control life. Then the only function of women is to be the fertile womb to supply life for men who are so terrified of the mystery of life that they are compelled to sacrifice their own sons and daughters on the alter of their ideologies to a god high in heaven some where other than right here, right now. Those plagued with the pain of their self-righteous disconnection believe this sacrifice will somehow save their souls from the darkness of the unknown.

Women of America, wake up.

Sarah Palin is a Trojan horse with breasts who worships at the altar of a male war god. She is ready to fight a holy war to deny the right of a mother to choose whether she should be able to take the responsibility to bring a child into this world. She is ready to pillage the earth, kill wildness, and take us to war. War talk sounds sassy coming from a young sexy woman.

Women of America it is easy to project your anger and fear and frustration onto that “Sassy” and think that it is the answer. Beware! That sassy is the same old same old pugnacious that is making a mess of your lives, killing your sons and daughters and destroying the living systems of our planet. It is destroying the true democratic values of the America I Love.

Beware! Sassy from a pretty woman is cute until you look beneath the surface and see the ugly face of contempt for life as a living inter-related system, until you see the denial of your own personal freedom in the rhetoric and the call to continue sacrificing your sons and daughters for some idea of a god that allows a rationalization for certain people to grow very rich and others to loose their right to a descent place to live and enough food to sustain their body and their children’s bodies.

Right to Life????

First protect Life as it is being lived before you demand that women bring babies they are unable to care for into this difficult warring world.

BREATH: Exploration of a Sacred Lesson

2008-07-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

You may ask, “What could the breath possibly have to teach me?” I will tell you that the breath is the path and the way to hold your effort and intention in right relationship with the rhythm and pulses of the vast universe of which we are but one cell.

When we are asked to accomplish a task, we hold assumptions about the learning process and what we must do to accomplish what we set out to do. Most of us are educated to put learning on as a piece of clothing that we acquire. We are not taught to access learning from within ourselves. In fact, the thought that there is inherent wisdom and knowledge written into the living system of our body/being is, in fact, rather alien concept. Though the breath is something that is so close to us that if we stopped we would no longer be living in our body, we rarely acknowledge its primacy. There is an implicit assumption that we must impose a technique to breathe correctly. We seem to have lost the capacity to have a direct relationship with the miracle of our own breath. In beginning such a relationship, our very own breath becomes our greatest teacher.

We think that our stories matter and we keep paying attention to our stories. Our stories embody our belief systems. Our belief systems create the containers of the fluid energy of life. The atmosphere of these shapes in turn reinforces our stories, which in turn creates our lives. We forget that we are choosing the stories we want to make real. If a particular story is dysfunctional and does not see us expressing a healthy and vital life, we must understand the technology which will allow us to go underneath the story to the basic fact of our life and consciously choose to rewrite the story we want to create.

We bring our attention to the breath by activating our senses to the body as it is being breathed. We begin to know our body as present moment breathing aliveness that is constantly pulsing like the waves of the ocean. Once we give our attention back to the present moment experience of the breathing body we gain access to choose to step out of the old stories of the reactive mind and create new stories that place us in a universe that allows us to grow and learn and be in positive relationship with everything.

With the breath as the focus of identity, we become a fluid system. We bring our conscious awareness on the breath. The breath is breathing through the whole body. The quieter we become, the deeper is our capacity to listen to deeper and deeper levels of the breath. Not only are the lungs breathing, but also every cell in the body is breathing. The skin is breathing. We are totally interconnected to everything in every breath to the space we are living in and that space in turn touches everything

In aligning our consciousness with the pulse of the breath as what identifies us, we finally rest ourselves in the living pulse of the rhythm of our unique life force. Your breath is your portal to come back to a state of innocence. Though your breath, you can access the technology of how you are creating yourself in the present moment.

Innocence and beginner’s mind: The Portal to Beauty

2008-07-14T17:56:00.000-07:00

Innocence and beginner’s mind: The Portal to Beauty

The experience of the breath will allow you to enter the garden of your own being. It is very easy to miss beauty. We look everywhere for beauty but right in front of our noses.

To witness the miraculous means to dissolve the blinders to the very fact of your own existence. I wonder how it is that people take their own bodies for granted. There is not a human being on this planet that can express the intelligence and beauty and power of the very body they are using to examine the world. There is an implicit assumption that we must do something to improve upon what has already been given.

The very fact that your body is animated by breath is miraculous. Instead of using mind efforts to control the breath to do it right (the assumption being that it could not possibly be perfect without your conscious mind directing it), take the attitude to learn from the breath. The only effort that is necessary is to direct the consciousness to behold and be in a state of wonder that the breath of life is breathing through you.

When our mind finally stops trying to control our breath and simply witnesses the exquisite refinement and infinite variation and depth of the breath, we have finally woven our minds back into a relationship of innocence with the present moment.

Innocence is certainly the domain of the child, but it is not the child about which we are speaking. While children have the quality of innocence, so does every expression of the natural world. We are apart of the natural world except that we hold ourselves apart in the way we structure our reality in our conscious mind.

It is the adult human mind that must reawaken to the sacred in all things. The most primary place we can reawaken is the breath. It is a simple shift of attention to come back to the breathing pulse that is with us from birth to death. It is alien to surrender ourselves to something that is so close to us.

When I shift and hold the primacy of my breath in my consciousness, I am immediately taken out of the noise of my mind into the unfolding present. Conversely, when I unconsciously give my attention to the virtual thinking reality of my mind, my intellect, I place myself in a two dimensional universe in which I am no longer in the present. From the thinking mind, I am either in the past or the future where I have no control to creatively interface with the present moment. We become victims of our future/past story, we have removed ourselves from the possibility of our true creative potential which only lives in the present moment. Our relationship with our breath is our primary access to the present moment.

In the present moment I am breathing, connected to all things, created by the divine will, which has created all things. We are all divinity breathing itself into existence. Everything and everyone is miraculous and wonderful. Everything comes from the activation of the breath of divine principle.

Only in so far as we are lost in the dark stories of our two-dimensional thinking, outside the reality of innocence and wonder, will we see the Other as enemy. We can only see the Other as enemy if we cut ourselves from wonder, if we have made our own innocence—the sacredness of our own body—an enemy. We do this when we hold our mind outside of our aliveness and then fiercely and desperately attempt to control life. It is a natural response to tighten our efforts to control life if we have lost trust, because we are out of contact with the higher organizing principle of the oneness of all being.

As soon as we correct our relationship with life and allow life to breathe us into the present moment, we can experience the wonder this creation. Immediately, the need to manipulate and control others falls away and there opens a space for the heart to soften. The heart is the direct connection to direct knowing of the interconnectedness of all being.

Feminine enlightenment: Celebration of Life

2008-06-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

An awakened consciousness from the Deep Feminine recognizes the divine mystery in everything manifest in our world. How does it do this? In your awareness, you bridge the polarity between the focal point and the vastness of empty space by holding them both as equal. With the dynamic tension between the polarities of emptiness and the focal point balanced in your attention, the generative and creative impulse of Existence fills the space of the empty womb with Life. If we dishonor this dynamic tension, we take ourselves out of the equation of life. The dance between empty space and focal point generates the exquisite play that produces the fecundity we call Creation.

Feminine enlightenment thus celebrates the fruition of the potency of the union of the womb and seed, the empty space and the focal point. In the state of love outside of fear, emptiness fills with fullness. When you accept you are both a finite being whose physical body will die and that you are a part of the infinite play of the polarities of existence, you fulfill a positive relationship with Life. Instead of shutting down to the inevitable death of the physical body, you accept the whole journey—including the death of your body with grace. An enlightenment model balanced with feminine consciousness inherently knows everything is placed here for a purpose.

Enlightenment is thus defined by the capacity to consciously respond with gentle compassion to the unfolding drama of Life as it grows toward the awakening of all beings. It is the nature of Life itself to grow to be free to be itself. Gentle compassion to the unfolding drama of Life allows you to recognize the urge towards awakening, no matter what appearance the drama takes. An enlightenment process that includes the feminine polarity models a relationship of mutual recognition. It sees divine presence in everything experienced in the physical world. It trusts, includes, aligns, and forms relationship with the irrational, wild, seemingly chaotic forces that generate physical existence. Feminine consciousness knows that “Matter matters.” What is created awaits our recognition of the divinity residing at its deepest causal level.

With its inherent fecundity, the Feminine aspect of consciousness celebrates all the physical expressions of Life. It celebrates family and relationships, food, children, water, sky and all living things. It celebrates that we are all here together and finds the sacred in everything. It is full and rich and pregnant with the beauty of life. It knows Divine presence would never create this world if it were not to be enjoyed and consciously celebrated. It is time for our human race to reclaim its innate capacity to create and to be in a sacred enlightened relationship with Life.

I of II: Shattering the Illusion of Separatism

2008-05-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Interconnectedness of all Being is not just a poetic metaphor, but a description of the deepest truth: We all come from the same source, and we each are unique expressions of the creative play of that one Intelligence. What is also true is that the vibrational frequency of the whole Universe is evolving. No one can hide from the intensity of the mirrors reflecting our selves back to ourselves. The power to manifest through our intention is speeding up. It is time for every human to wake up to our true godly nature, for in fact we are coming into such a great power. We must recognize our power. Otherwise, we will do as we are in fact doing—creating irresponsibly against others out of fear.

It is impossible for natural intelligence to create anything that does not arise out of Wholeness. Humans, on the other hand, are lost in the appearance of the separateness of the physical body. Our whole human race must expand our minds to facilitate a deeper perception of the functioning of whole systems. The functioning of any individual part is an intrinsic aspect of the whole body of creation. Just as our body is an intricate organization of many complex systems that are completely interrelated and interconnected and dependent upon one another for the optimum functioning of the whole, so the body of our planet earth is an even more complex level macrocosm of the body of creation of which each human, animal and plant is a living cell. Each and every cell must be healthy in order for the whole body to be healthy.

Human fear generates defensive intellectual constructs which must then establish separation and differentiation from other forms of life to protect itself. We define other humans who express different aspects of creation as lesser then ourselves. We judge them as inferior, less intelligent, and having lesser moral capacity. We project that these people do not feel pain the way that we feel pain, and that therefore we have a right to make them suffer. Our assumed moral superiority makes us feel we have a right to control these people and to create borders against them, to protect ourselves from realities we perceive as different.

We must awaken to the truth that it is only our perception creating these differences. It only serves the power of people who want to control others to divide and conquer. It does not serve the essentially free, egalitarian and interconnected nature of all things to judge, divide, pillage, conquer and exploit. Those who define themselves as being on top of the mountain, those who think they are elite and above the law of the common being, spend great energy defining boundaries with money, armies, police, guns, bombs, check points, gates and all manner of ways to generate division. It should be evident to all but the most thick headed that we all live on one planet. Every system of life on our planet is connected to every system of life, and all parts are equal to the positive functioning of the whole. There is no garbage, there is no “away” or “over there,” and the health of any part depends on the health of all other parts.

II of II: A Spiritual Perspective on Globalism

2008-05-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

The well-being of a child in Iraq, Palestine, Sudan or Darfur, is a part of my dream of life and a part of your dream of life, even though you do not recognize it as so. The child matters not because I am a “do-gooder.” The child ‘over there’ is your child, for we are speaking of the zeitgeist of our culture. The way we view an Iraqi child is the way we view the unformed child in front of our own noses in our culture. Any child matters to me, because I recognize by the universal law of the Oneness of Being that my well-being, my future, and the future of life of life itself, is inextricably bound to the dream I am creating for every child. This truth also applies to the animal and plant kingdoms. We are all part of the same dream.

If you must have a graphic example of our current society's distorted reflection as it has come home to roost, observe the levels of juvenile lock-up in our society, the lack of health care for families, and the willingness to feed children food that will generate diabetes, obesity, and other expressions of the epidemic of financial greed. If you can rationalize sacrificing any child, you will be willing to sacrifice all children to that monster.

III of III: The End of the Nation State

2008-05-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

It is time for the end of nation states and it is time to recognize each being as a unique expression of the whole. Being from Jewish descent, it is interesting for me to consider the definition of the word Hebrew, which means “border crosser.” Border Crosser is a biblical definition of the Hebrew people. Hebrew was meant to represent being the guest in whatever land they were settled. They were meant to hold the message of this next stage of development of the human race. Hebrews are the thread through time of the possibility of living from a more highly integrated consciousness that recognizes the god consciousness of all things. There is a great leap from this spiritual purpose to an assumed identity of a ‘nation-state’ that divides itself against others and then feels it must generate war (get them before they get us).

The conflict in Israel with the Palestinians will never be resolved until we humans learn to think from another place—from the heart that is capable of perceiving the underlying unity in the appearance of surface differences. For that to happen, we will have to recognize that we all are ‘border crossers,’ for this planet is in fact, round and connected. Borders and walls are a figment of a contracted, fear-infected imagination; an archaic mode of thinking that has not registered the incredible capacity our human race has to create a Shambhala, a Garden of Eden, a Paradise Found—if we would but remove the veil from our eyes and live from the living truth of the abundant interconnectedness of all being, the true nature of our planet Earth.

Two Sides of the Same Brain: Insights from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Experience

2008-04-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

PART ONE

Irony: A Neuro-Anatomist’s Stroke

One morning, a Harvard neuroscience researcher named Jill Bolte Taylor had a profoundly ironic personal experience: She had a left brain cerebral hemorrhage stroke. On TED Talks, an on-line community offering high quality talks and performances on technology, education, and design, Jill recounts her fascinating experience. When the hemorrhaging in her left brain began, Jill watched as her language and sequential logic capacity (where she had mainly abided as a scientist), as well as her sense of time and space, all stopped functioning. As the massive hemorrhage progressed, Jill suddenly found herself feeling profoundly peaceful, curious, and blissful. For a moment, she even accepted the possibility of losing her life. Although Jill logically understood that her cerebral hemorrhage was life-threatening, she explained that her right brain orientation was allowing her to drop into a seemingly illogical state of being for what was occurring. She felt peace, interconnectedness, divine acceptance and child-like curiosity as she attempted to communicate with the outside world with none of her left brain function. Re-telling the story of her physical descent and spiritual ascent, Jill’s final message was that if we want create a peaceful world, we have to understand how to access the right hemisphere of our brain.

In my own words, her basic insight seemed to be that so long as we function from our whole brain, peace is innate and lives within each of us as a potential actualization. With her profound experience, it seemed to me that Jill had been to the mountain. She had also found her way back. Her full recovery was apparent through her transformed role as an eloquent and animated speaker. Though returning from the mountain to deliver her message, however, this Harvard-trained neuron-anatomist did not seem to have a technology to guide people there. Hearing Jill’s scientific explanation of the right brain orientation, the obvious question becomes “How do we get there and how do we choose to stay?”

The Key: Understanding the Right Brain as the Seat of Peace

Upon hearing Jill’s talk, I was very excited because I could see how her insights perfectly dovetailed with the functional spirituality emerging out of my own mind-body work of nearly three decades. Jill’s explanation of the right brain as the Seat of Peace helped me to further clarify what is occurring during what I have experienced as a spiritual embodiment process. Before hearing her explanation, I had understood that enlightenment was available and immediately accessible to everyone, if only we fully returned our mind back to the natural physical universe of our body. I believed that though enlightenment is innate and part of the nature of existence, humans have a special challenge because of the individuated nature of our mind.

In my own personal story, I needed to heal deep emotional wounds that plagued me most of my life. I sought many therapies and spiritual paths to help me find my way back to self-knowledge. My unresolved emotional anguish brought me to my knees, forcing me to enter my own body in a desperate attempt to understand and clear the pain I felt. I explored my body through dance movement and vocal sound meditation. As I learned to directly enter my body, I found my body accessed a great cosmic intelligence.

I began to teach about consciousness through movement. I developed a mind-body integration technology which had its own precise physical language. My spiritual exploration of my body had accessed an innate state of enlightenment. To move into states of ecstatic reverie and joy, all I needed to do was to completely inhabit my body. At first, it was tricky for me travel beyond “thinking about my body” to actually “feeling my body.” The more I was able to drop into these states, however, the more I understood that enlightenment is right here and indigenous to life itself. I began to know that Enlightenment is accessible because Life Itself is already enlightened.

I was able to test my immersion into this ocean of creative intelligence through my own healing practice. Over and over, I discovered that full entrance into my body also brings precise guidance which in turn, assists my client. This technology is also what guides my clients to reside in their body. Inspired by Jill’s “peaceful” stroke experience, I now understand the logical progression that inadvertently opened to me in my own awakening. It goes like this: The more I trust, the quieter I become. The quieter I become, the stronger my connection to the knowledge moving through me. The stronger the signal, the easier it is to put the noise of fear and mistrust aside. Eventually, I stop giving fear my attention. This, in turn, allows me to experience an even stronger connection to the guidance of the message. I then find myself receiving directly from life. From this place, I am able to direct my intention to heal myself and others without the distortion of hesitation and doubt.

The journey of the human is to find the way back to the innate enlightenment of life itself through the body. My conclusion goes against many traditional spiritual practices, which often teach that we must struggle to transcend our ‘low, unworthy’ body to reach the height of our spirituality, or we are told to study with a priest or guru and that it is a great struggle to attain enlightenment. Entering my body with my own attention showed me something very different. I was in awe of the deep intelligence I encountered from within my being. My body showed me I already am enlightened—if only I overcome my fear of the unknown parts of myself. The more I directed my attention to the flow of energy within my body, the more I learned to trust the unfolding intelligence to inform and grow me. Simply, I stopped being afraid of the unknowable mystery of my body.

Embodiment as “Back Door” Access

Through Jill Bolte Taylor’s neuro-anatomical explanation of her stroke, I now understand that the embodiment guidance processes I have developed actually provide a “back door access” to the powers of the right brain. I did not realize it at the time, but my embodiment experiences had enabled my right brain to actively participate in the creative process of my life. When Jill explained how the activation of her right brain brought her to a state of peace and joyful interconnection, I realized that it is my right brain I contact when I enter my body. As the natural seat of enlightenment, entering my body became a technique to gain access there. Anchoring my attention to my body actually quiets the noise that normally activates my left brain. Released from the ‘static’ my entrenched fear loops allows the present moment consciousness of my right brain to activate. A vast creative potential then becomes available to my being. Residing in this awareness, I then know exactly how I must adapt to meet the challenge of the present moment—just as Jill was able to communicate her needs despite her loss of speech and articulation during her stroke.

Two Sides of the Same Brain: Insights from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Experience

2008-04-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

PART TWO

The Choice We have to Make

The first step is to let go of the belief that you must do something to prove yourself worthy. This thought immediately misaligns and separates you from experiencing your Oneness and equality with all. We do not have to attain anything to be enlightened, but we must understand how to move past our fear. To do this, we must solve a paradoxical riddle to find our way back to the Garden of Eden. I now understand that my right brain orientation is not activated if I have even one fear thought.

The cause of our most primary fear is experiencing the finite life of our body.

When we feel separate from Life, we observe our body from our left brain. Our left brain discrimination can cause us to feel frightened of the vastness of Life. By itself, the left brain perceives an essential threat to the integrity of our being and will and attempts to assert control over our life. Since it is impossible to control life, fear of life becomes a primary experience. When we cede control to the left-brain orientation of our mind, it asserts a dominator relationship with our body. If our most primary fear is of the physical limitation of our own body, then the most basic healing can occur by directing our attention to have an unmediated experience with the life of our body. The moment we do this, we cease abandoning or judging our body. We quiet our most primary fear, and our right brain becomes immediately available to our consciousness. This shift is very fragile and sensitive.

Sometimes we hear things we know are important, but we cannot apply the knowledge because we do not yet have the right context to apply what we have heard. Before hearing Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk, I could only intuitively explain the right-brain/left-brain relationship to my own work. Now, Jill’s sharing has provided a scientist’s explanation of what happens when I align my breathing process with my body. Precisely tracking my breath as it moves along my central channel takes me on an extraordinary journey of recapitulation of the complete cycle of my birth and death. As described in the pulse of my breath, I discover the basic format for everything in life: My inhalation creates my exhalation, and my exhalation in turn generates my inhalation; an endless never-ending synergy in which each thing magically arises out of its opposite.

On the other hand, the domain of my left brain describes everything as alien. If I forget that I am one with the infinite creativity of the universe, there is everything for me to fear. Thus, access to the innate enlightenment is determined by my basic orientation to Life: Am I one with All, or am I separate? If I believe I am separate, then all I can do is attempt to manipulate and control my world from all the things that are separate from me and can do me harm. I live in the over-controlling disempowerment of my futile attempts to manipulate the past and future.

Our access to our right or left brain orientations is thus actually determined by the identity that we choose. Again, are we one with everything and equal to everything, as is everything is one with us and equal to us? Or do we live in unstable world of separation and hierarchy, where our position is under constant threat and we must be continually vigilant towards everything we perceive as alien? If we define ourselves as separate from the power of everything else, how could we NOT justify our need to react violently and destructively??

Remember—the primary cause of our fear is our own abandonment of our physical body. This primary separation sets up the prototype of our dislocation from everything. If this is so, then there is a simple path to heal the disconnection of our dysfunctional beliefs that keep us from our enlightened birthright. The moment we quiet our fear, the innate enlightenment that lives in our right brain becomes available to us.

I of III: WAKING SPRING - FIRST THOUGHTS

2008-03-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

A wind is stirring from the East – the place of new beginnings, infinite possibility and choice.
Nothing anchors me in this time but my body.

I buy blackberries from Chile and onions from Peru. I can get everything from anywhere.What does it mean that I eat food grown from a totally different land and air than where I live? Am I a Peruvian, a Chilean, a North American or a Russian? I eat food I do not grow, harvest, prepare, or create.

The stock market falls…I knew it would.
The global market blankets investors like me who have no connection with growing food, with a false sense of physical security. I believe money will always feed me. I blind myself to the facts: Money is not food. Money is not life.

It is time to go inside….

The sun’s warmth feels good.
Breathing slowly and deeply feels good.
Outside, the picture I see -- of trees and green and sun --appears so calm and pretty.
My every action is rendered like fat -- to quantify its value, to identify what and how much can I consume? For what purpose? Of course! To entice me to consume more.
Pegged to data files, nailed into marketing slots that morph into images taking the shape of every hiddenfear and desire living in my reptilian brain.

I stand on the green grass in the center of a circle of palm trees in a public park where I do not have to pay a fee to choose to be. I breathe in deeply, feel my feet on the ground.

A price tag bar coded into everything. What is still free silently absorbs the oozing toxins and poisons created in production of mass quantitiesof stuff.
Billboards seduce me with sexual innuendo to mindlessly open my gullet wide to incorporateeverything. Must keep the stock market climbing.
Impossible not to grow Fat.

I ache for what is still free to cleanse itself of the taint of Human greed.
Ride a bike and you do not have to pay for parking or to work out at the gym.

Watch a flower bloom in the morning sun. Plunge the Body into the powerful pulse of ocean waves. Breathe Clean Air. Sit and walk upon Sweet Earth. Climb a mountain with the effort of my own buttocks.

Exchange a smile with a Stranger for no reason except to acknowledge our humanity.
Listen to the beating of my heart.

II of III: THE PLASTIC SEDUCTION OF CREDIT

2008-03-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am afraid to look at what I really think.

It is not very “New Age Positive”

Fish are free if you catch them-- but they will kill you

if you eat them.

I hate how much I, as an American, have.  Boxes and

boxes of food, furniture and clothes made in some other

place, fill warehouses from floor to ceiling. I pull

out my plastic card from my pocketbook and it is

swiped on an electronic machine.  The machine

registers my credit, how much money I have spent and

whether my card represents a secure exchange.

I do not like that in a nanosecond, all my personal information is

made available by this electronic transaction.

It is not that I have anything to worry about.

I have enough, but I feel the coldness of the exchange.

I could still use paper money, but it is worth it to the credit card

company to pay me to use their card to track my spending.

They know how to get me. It is simple.

Offer me a few percentage of money back if I use the card.

I, of course, am a lamb to the slaughter to obtain these few extra points.

It is my own fault for using the card.

Then, there is the seduction of a plastic card as

money.  I cannot feel the money I spend in the virtual

world of non-form.  It is very easy to override my

physical limits. The temptation to spend even on

things I do not need or even worse, do not have the

funds to buy, becomes very great.  Marketing Gurus know

exactly how to get me to open my purse strings.  It is

called “Sale.” I must take advantage of the sale right

now, or the product will be gone.  The sale provokes

the economics of scarcity. Even though I am drowning

in the ocean of physical objects, sales entice me to

swipe my card in exchange for taking this object home.

Most of the stuff I buy at discount or on sale I do

not need or hardly ever use.  I wind up giving it

to the local thrift shop, which actually  turned

me away the last time because they were too full of stuff

to receive any more.

Everything seems backwards and I am caught.  It would

take a great effort to change my life to no longer

participate in this madness.

I am afraid the housing market will keep falling and that I

will no longer be able to sell my house. I am afraid

the stock market is once again being manipulated to

cream profits off the top.  (Actually, the creaming has

already happened and the bloat in the stock market,

the result of a strategy that allowed so much money

to go into the hands of so few, has already happened.

I am watching the downward spiral.) I knew it

would happen.  I know the system was sick and could no

longer support itself. And I did not follow my

instincts.  We all swim in the same ocean.

I am jumping all around, because the illness I see is all so interconnected.

Everything comes from a belief in the primacy

of money as the reason for Being.

My personal diatribe continues. There are so many blaring inconsistencies:

I no longer grow my own food or build my own house.

There is absolutely nothing that I have to do.

All Time is created for me to watch my TV, consume product and

grow fat. Thank God our human bodies rebelled by growing fat.

We realize something must change.

The solution is to exercise.

Palaces of exercise machines are everywhere.  Mirrors

reflect our images back to us as we sweat and peddle

and row and lift weights. But does any one notice

that the center is taken out of the exercise?

What was once intrinsic in the action of being human

in a community of others-- to hunt, grow food and build

together, no longer motivates the movement of our

bodies. Now, it is the fear of growing fat because of

the temptation of all that we can consume. We sweat to

keep our bodies from growing sick and fat, to ward off

the basic intention of our culture, which is to consume.

Even exercise becomes an act of consumption.

If there were not so many homeless people and so many

slums needing attention, I would not be ranting so.

This is my dilemma. I vision human communities

generating structures of work, effort and power that

help each of us make our city glow with beauty. To

align the effort of the muscle on our backs to create

a world together, instead of working individually just to avoid

a collision with the world of fat -- or feeding the narcissism to

generate an external image as our identity.

"Creating for no reason but the sheer joy of doing"

becomes a forgotten radical idea.

III of III: THE RACE: WILL WE LET OURSELVES WIN?

2008-03-20T15:25:00.001-07:00

We blame the immigrants doing all the work that gives us the leisure to get fat, for all that is wrong in our world. Good may arise out of our misguided effort to not allow immigrants into our country: Immigrants generate the wealth in our economy. Maybe when people do their own gardening and their own child rearing and cleaning their own house, a new balance will come.

Immigrants are the scapegoat for the greed of a few people who are silently sucking the wealth of ourcountry off the public table into their private off-shore fortunes. The wealthy elite think they can isolate themselves from the destruction of the fabric of the society inwhich they live.

They believe they can beat death. Their definition of who they are is as deep as their skin. Clone a few stem cells. Reproduce their clone lineage. Maintain control of the world. Trapped in a thought loop, they think the loop is who they are. Even if you patent DNA, DNA belongs to the Cosmos.

The superficial identity of power over others cannot see with its heart. Heart is the deep intelligence forming the sacred text of DNA that informs the cellular generation of proteins generating the particular form we are.

I yell to the men who think they control the world, who assume the right to step upon the backs of millions of other humans to arrive at the top of the mountain. Now on top, they think God anointed them and gave them the right to destroy the planet that supports all of us.

I shout to all of you. You think you can cloister yourselves from the toxic poisoning spewn upon the four corners of this earth through that very same mis-begotten technology that has birthed your monsters. So blind with power you have forgotten the biological miracle you already are is deeper than your twisted thinking. Even you at the top are a part of the whole universe that insists we all awaken. The whole universe wants everything to awaken. Awaken to Oneness -- to a true democracy that recognizes the equality of every thing to everything. The tower comes tumbling down in your mind through the messages of your own DNA talking to your cells: Vibrate with the frequencies of the evolution of Cosmos.

The race is on. Who will win?

Life always wins. But will my Human race Align with life or death? It remains to be told. The challenge is our Mind. Will we learn to master our fear? Will we learn to open our heart? Will we recognize the Truth?

The challenge is to master our own mind. The challenge is to recognize the power everything represents. The challenge is to take responsibility for what we create with our power. The challenge is to choose Love and create a world in celebration of our recognition of the divine sacred intelligent origin of everything.

Pillar of Salt

2007-10-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

PILLAR OF SALT

I have an impulse to get out on the streets and shout, to protest my upset at the direction I see our planet and specifically our nation going. The impulse is encamped in my body and does not go away. I want to act, but I know that any action taken from the blindness that we are all living in, will simply stir the pot and not accomplish what is necessary to catalyze the transformation that my inner being longs for. Right down to my root, I know that all the old ways of creating action in the world will no longer work. That includes war, elections, government, demonstrations, and organizing in groups to empower a particular agenda. They all lead to dead actions if our hearts are still riddled with the fear that has caused the problem in the first place. From this space, all actions abort the process of life.

I feel as though I am in Sodom and Gomorrah. If I look back at the devastation and destruction that is happening in the world around me, I am paralyzed and turn into a Pillar of Salt. I see the problems of global climate change, the plagues of our hatred of immigrants and Arabs, our desire to tell other people how to live so that we can extract our wealth from them, our neglect of children and the poor, and last but not least, our declining infrastructure which supports rich people to accumulate even more wealth. I see the accumulation of wealth or money being unstoppable. I see the monsters of greed and fear running the show. I remember playing Monopoly when I was a kid and realizing at a certain point in the game that there was no longer any way to win. I would keep losing money until there was nothing left. I would have hocked all my properties and thereby lost my capacity to ever generate any income. That is the way the game is structured—for the one who has the monopoly to win and for all others to lose their money to the monopoly. It is the kind of game that is being played at this time, but by corporations gorging themselves to become multinational conglomerates.

There does not seem to be any way out of this imbalance of power, for the game continues at the expense of not pieces on a game board, but the life of the planet—including all the species of animal and plant, and the indigenous people who live close to the land.

Our human race is playing a deadly game—but we have forgotten that it is a game. We are unable to change the game plan, even though it is killing us all—including the ones who hold all the money and power. The super rich are just as caught on the merry-go-round of destruction as those in poverty, though they do not see that they are just as entrapped despite their wealth.

*******************

These thought have begun to seep into my heart and mind in response to the dilemma I perceive: The problem cannot be solved from where we are thinking, and conversely if we were to change where we think from, our problem would be solved. We cannot afford to look back to those who still cling to the old ways of thinking. We, as a race and species, cannot waste our energies in trying to change the ones who are entrenched in the old ways, to our way.

Someone is in the old ways when their thinking and intentions arise out of fear as the defining beat: Fear of others taking their jobs, or of free medical care as diluting the care for all. The fear of Arabs or homosexuals, or any kind of thinking that in any way polarizes our world into ‘us against them,’ closes down our humanity because it externalizes a monster outside of ourselves. The ‘Other’ is named evil or bad or unworthy.

The above represents an essential flaw in thinking that must be corrected. It arises out to the thought that God lives far away in a heaven and implies that some parts of Creation can be godless. WE must correct this way of thinking. God is here right now. We are god; all of us, and god is finding its way though the creative process that is all life unfolding. It is impossible for anything to exist outside the equation of god.

Once we recognize this, we must find whole other ways to problem solve. Perhaps bringing the awareness that you are a direct expression of god is the first step to your recognition of the god consciousness that is expressing in everything that you perceive in your world. I have come to the conclusion that a human being can only see as much as they can see about themselves. If a person does not recognize the divine aspect that each part of their being represents and they judge that part, they will do the same to the world of humans, animals, vegetable and minerals around them. The deeper a human goes into their interior to identify the god force expression, the more able they are to see the god force in everything around them.

To solve the dilemma, we all need to take a deep and genuine journey to our interior to meet the god process that we each are uniquely. Once we do this, we cannot look back. We must keep recognizing the sacredness that is all things everywhere, in every encounter. We must do this with our hearts with love and a deep recognition of the delicate beautiful creative process that is life. The muscle of love is a muscle that strengthens the more you practice.

Today, I experienced where my love practice is taking me. I went out for my morning walk as I usually do. As I came to the park, I noticed garbage strewn all over the grass. Without a second thought, I started picking the garage up. I could not tolerate the defiling of my world. I was taking responsibility for the park, for the earth, and for everything. It was my action to do, and I knew I was the one to do it because I was there and I saw it. I made bending a part of my morning workout. I picked up three garbage bags full.

That is what happens when you start thinking with your whole heart and you recognize that everything is divine and you know you are the one who is responsible and it is up to you. I am committed to creating the new world in the midst of the old. I am committed to not look back and to only create a world that arises from the love in my heart that I have for everything.

Yours, Ruth Gould-Goodman