Etrusca Ecuador Permaculture Plantation and Healing Temple

June 5, 2015 BLOG: Etrusca Ecuador Permaculture Plantation and Healing Temple Dear Friends, It’s time to get serious. Near the beginning of my Journey, I wrote a piece: This is not a Travelogue. I came away in December from the United States driving my red Ford van carrying my household with me, carrying what I would need to re-locate and live in a new country and to build a new life not only for myself but for a village of many people participating in a growing and healing community (come unity) open to the world, serving to remediate the land and restore the forests everywhere. It is the vision that has inspired my research for nearly 5 years and it is what drives me now, even though it has been necessary to stop here in Panama partly to wait for the ferry to Cartagena, Colombia to resume sometime in the fall and partly because I have mostly used all my funding. The van was also an inspired choice because as I am here in this small, quite unique town in the old…
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Tropical pret a porter

April 28, 2015 BLOG: Tropical prêt a porter In our Euro-American world of fashion, we look at the top which might be the Italians, then the French and we look at the bottom, K-Mart, Marshals and T.J.Max. There are some few who regularly attend the Paris atelier to buy their clothes. The New York houses boast thriving businesses: Dona Karan comes to mind and Bill Blass for a few of the big labels. And America does jeans of many sripes. When I lived in Washington DC, I knew a couple of those lovely ladies that regularly attended all the best parties. We joked together to unload their disdain about my clothes. I said, Well darlings, I have clothes to wear while you have wardrobe!” We laughed at the difference as we were both ‘properly’ dressed. All depends on the image, does it not? Most of us are not concerned about our image except perhaps the corporate  and business ladies. But I know a small number of even those ladies who regularly shop in upscale recycle shops an…
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Raven’s Medicine: Making a Successful Life

April 28, 2015 Raven’s Medicine: Making a Successful Life There are many ways to have what may be called a successful life. The materialist says: money is the measure. I just saw a list of 50 people who possess 50% of the world’s wealth. The usual question asked is, “but, are they happy?”  For some of us having the rest covered keeps us happy. Some few I suspect are seeking a cave in the mountains, a sparse existence physically filled with meditation, chanting and spiritual practice. Somewhere in between these extremes live the majority of human beings all of us making our way through life in a body. I’m certain most never think of it this way. There are some, though, that  are thinking, contemplating and considering their lives. Some are even reading RavensMedicine.com! Welcome! Let us work together for a short while on what it might be to live a successful life. When asked for his message, The Dalai Lama said something like this: do good through you…
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Life in the Bodhi Hostel, El Valle, Panama

April 25, 2015 BLOG: Life in the Bodhi Hostel, El Valle, Panama El Valle is a small town. From what I hear from Diana the real estate agent whose office is next door, the town is mostly native Panamanian peoples, some with old time, quite large homes here and a smaller group of white folk many of whom come here only for the weekends. I can understand the appeal of a trip up to about 2000 ft., because just at dusk, a sweet cool breeze comes up and lowers the sweat factor very nicely for everyone making the evening hours conducive to conversation and assorted kinds of hanging out, including the late dinners favored in tropical climes It is the same at the hostel. Our population, of course, changes often. Some of our traveling brothers and sisters are intent on their travel and many do come here because the geology and geography are rather unique: living on top of a volcano even if inactive for 200,000 years, does have something quite interesting to offer the traveler.…
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Kids on Parade for Peace and Justice

April 25, 2015 BLOG: Kids on Parade for Peace and Justice Since I found a parking place to actually stop the van for more than 24 hours, I have been cleaning up and drying it all out. With that in mind, I had Brad here at the hostel take down the spare tire and loosen the hitch out of its place and open the back doors. Not a pretty site. Everything was wet and moldy and so for the next three days it has been necessary to take everything that is wet out of the back and get it dry and clean once again with nearly endless laundry! I have been ‘at home’ on the parking lot in front of the hostel. Friday afternoon, I was astonished to witness what looked like an entire school of kids marching en masse along the main street here carrying their own hand made art work placards proclaiming their stand for peace and justice in the world. Here I was sitting in the front seat facing the street with a damp cloth in my hand working on some of the few dishes that I brought…
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Moving on from crisis

April 19, 2015 BLOG: moving on from crisis There are moments in every life that it becomes necessary to simply end the story, end the circumstances, leave behind the mess and move on. After three and a half weeks in Paso Canoas doing okay thank you in a safe place to park in a bus nest next to a hotel, using time to get more fit, making it but still waiting for a packet to be mailed from the United States with money in it that did not come, I woke up on tax day in the US with the idea that it was time to shift gears and move on. It takes something because the resources in the packet were important but even without them, I was not again in a stall. I was motivated even more because my ally, friend and a definite Princely person, Danny Thomas, showed up early in the morning to take me to breakfast. Some people just have a way with mornings and I am beginning to get a little tropical before 6 am. Seems Daniel was intent on making sure that the old lady found a place…
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What is Lotus?

April 13, 2015 What is Lotus? When you were doodling around with an ordinary compass as a kid, you probably drew a circle with it and then, shortening the radius of the compass a little, you set the point on the circumference of the circle and drew an arc from the 2 other points on the circumference. You were able to do this 5 times to make a five pointed flower-like form within the boundary of the original circle. It looked pretty. Remember? This is the Lotus. It repeats forever within an enormous fractal code which turns up as our world, our physical universe as far as it goes and it is the entire unknown, hidden, inner universes, as I have noted, side by side and piled one on top of the other within you now. The Lotus is a symbol of Life and a symbol of each of us created Spirits now inhabiting physical form. I have said to many people: Without you/me the Universe would not be what it IS. Each of us is unique. There is only one me; there is only one you. Yo…
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Making Your Own Medicine: a new definition and a new way

April 11, 2015 Making Your Own Medicine: a new definition and a new way The First Nations, Native American peoples lived on Turtle Island (their name for North America) many millennia before any of the White Lodge peoples came. Theirs is a very mature society. Understand that what we think we know about any of them is an observation coming from the White Lodge perspective, often prejudiced by religious considerations and the result of our making much deadly mayhem for them to which they responded in kind. Custer had no idea who or what he was dealing with and largely we still do not. The idea of medicine is not about a pill, a drug or the doctor. Remember their life was what we can call a ‘natural life.’ Their day to day existence depended on their land, their relationships with the flora and fauna all about them and on the cooperation among them founded on a Sacred Circle of Power to which every mature person belonged. They were very knowledgeable about plants: …
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Raven’s Medicine

April 10, 2015 Raven’s Medicine Some of you who come to this site which we call Raven’s Medicine might wonder what it’s all about and so, after about 4 months of our progression called Journey of the Lotus, I decided today to talk a little about this. For the average kind of white folk, those of us who belong to the White Lodge, it is difficult to wrap our heads around the idea that a bird, or the spirit of a bird has anything to do with anything. The notion does not live anywhere in our experience so this piece I’m writing may be the very first take on a very old tradition of the Red Lodge our native or first nations peoples. Our world separated church and state. The Indian world considers everything as part of the Great Spirit, part of the Creator and its creation. Everything is imbued with Spirit. We are all Spiritual Beings, sacred and divine. Red Lodge people know the eternity of all life, being born was not our beginning nor is death our end. The world o…
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The Mornings and the Evenings

April 6, 2015 The Mornings and the Evenings Each day of a Journey takes on its own character. I believe every day is like this but the embarking on a specific trip has a way of focusing my attention when I might not have been doing that at other times. Waiting for a certain time to come also brings with it an attention. All these criteria are in place for this one: I am stranded once again, a stranger in a strange land. Let me explain, if you will. Here I am in Paso Canoas, Costa Rica. I am forced once again to sit and wait for money to become available to continue my run. This time, money is in the bank but nowhere is there an ATM machine that will read my flat imprinted card. I do not even know if that is the reason it says, ‘insufficient funds’ when I know my bank balance is ample to handle what I am asking the machine for. There is something, don’t you know, about the electronic matrix that has the power to shut down everything, at least for me and for right now. …
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Work Ethic

March 4, 2015 Work Ethic When I was quite a young woman working for my daily bread in a warehouse business that sold lighting, fixtures, cable and assorted equipment for illumination there came a day of intense transformation for me. There was a brilliant 5 minutes of the time I was there when several quite significant things happened. I had been hired to learn the business with the offer that after 3 months training, my wages would double from the pittance that would just get me by while I was getting up to speed. When I went upstairs to talk to the boss about the deal, it became clear in about 90 seconds that this self satisfied troll was never going to see me as a valuable asset to his business and that he was never going to pay me the offer made. At the top of my voice, I retorted when he told me I was fired, that he was much too late: I quit before I even walked up these stairs! It was a defining moment that kept me from making that foolish mistake ever agai…
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Leaving El Salvador, the next step

March 3, 2015 Leaving El Salvador, the Next step A Journey happens on many levels. Likely the first step at the very beginning was the decision to do the trip in the first place.  I was told once that as soon as a decision is made, the brain responds immediately with its specific chemicals to support that decision. Seems there is quite a lot to note that we are spirits inhabiting our bodies, So today in El Salvador (the Savior), there was yet another step to be taken on this Journey of the Lotus. As George and I have been surveying my household goods, his counsel about border crossings was to organize everything properly and then categorize it into a proper list to minimize the need to inspect in the first place. To that end, yesterday, we visited the local ferreteria, the Iron Man location to have some welding done on the inside of the van. After a quick trip up the highway to Cara Soucia, we hove into the side street where Chola has his place. He and his helper…
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Elections in El Salvador; the Will of the People

March 2, 2015 Elections in El Salvador; the Will of the People There is, no doubt, that the American media has reported that there were elections held in El Salvador yesterday, Sunday, March 1. The polls here in Puente Arce were closed early because two women were fighting! The rest of the family went early to the high school up the block and around a corner to vote but George was too late mostly because he focused his attention most of the day on the store room where we organized and categorized my load to be re-packed in the van. There is a little more to the story, of course. George has been making all the moves necessary to get an official driver’s license. It has meant already two trips to Santa Ana on the motorcycle which takes about a three hour round trip and the bureaucratic hoop jumping added in. On the second trip, he learned that he would have to get a newer birth certificate. It was necessary to make a trip to the other side of El Salvador to the mou…
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Participation, the Short Version

Part One: Pay yourself First My personal story begins in 1979 when I attended a ‘Prosperity Seminar” given by John Roger. His teaching was simple: Pay yourself first by tithing (10%) to the God Force living within you/me. Separate 10%, 10 cents of every dollar, one dollar of every 10; 10 dollars of every one hundred and keep it in a sacred stash (not in the bank.) The basic idea is that in order to empower yourself, your natural creativity, your natural generosity, your natural magnanimity, it is necessary to do that with sacred money; money not related in any way to the private bank’s fiat money. Even though we are using that fiat currency, when we separate it from the ‘system’, as soon as we declare it sacred, it becomes our personal empowerment. At the time, I placed the tithe I had in a small cotton bag and wore it in the front of my jeans at my naval. People came to me to pay me back the courtesy loans I had made to them. People also asked more often for my se…
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