2015!

What a way to begin the year!  Lots of introspection.  Departing from the tasty bakery where I last sat and blogged, I encountered a couple on a scooter who admired my bag, offered me generous herbal gift, and recommended that I camp at Waimea Bay.  I took the bus east along the north shore to the suggested stop and ventured into the valley, where I was greeted by an enormous Hawaiian couple on a golf cart.  They told me the valley is all private property and said I could camp by the beach.

I set up my tent at the foot of a retaining wall that held up the road and slept until the morning light.  Upon waking I met a short and thin old woman with a huge bun of dreadlocks covered by a beanie. She introduced herself as Jean but told me that everyone calls her Bird Lady because she always feeds the birds.  She had five or so cats at her little camp further on down the wall as well. Of all things she was shelling shrimp.

She had a great jolly belly laugh that welled up frequently as she spoke,  She laughed heartily at the insanity of a world filled with delusional people, who call her strange for loving nature as she does.  She couldn’t help but stop and laugh at the absurdity of many modern lifestyles, in which disconnection and fruitless frivolity thwart the quest for understanding, the quest I on!

Knowing well this prevalent paradoxical pathogenetic powerless populace problem, I took comfort in relating to the cheery bird lady as she offered her miraculous laughing wisdom, alchemical emotional reaction to widespread worrisome wayward wandering miraculously transformed from woe into joy by the willful power of her pure heart.  I gave her the new year’s gift of a small amethyst heart before journeying onward back aboard the bus.

I passed right through Pupukea and by Pipeline and Sunset Beach, knowing I would return.  I rode around the tip top of the island and hopped off the the bus at Hauula, drawn to the scenery there more than anywhere I had already passed.  I was greeted by the adoring energy of a bearded old man named Jerry, who said he was looking for someone to celebrate with; it was new year’s eve day.  I agreed to take the bus with him to his apartment, where we drank a few beers and watched a twilight zone marathon.  Jerry was very friendly and open except he wouldn’t tell me what he did for a living when he was younger.

I camped on the beach nearby, just a little too close to both the ocean and the spot where some kids started shooting off powerful mortars towards midnight.  In the morning I found the moat I dug between my tent and the waves washed away and even the floor of the tent just inside the entrance wet from ocean water!  The first and last time I underestimate the tide!  I guess the bushes on either side of my camp spot take some water around the base from time to time!

On the first day of 2015 I rode the bus down the windward side of the island to Kaneohe, where the sign for the Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden tempted me out onto the street.  I trekked up the wide, nicely paved suburban roads to the garden’s entrance. Just inside I found a thick tangle of large jungle vines and trees beside the road, a perfect place to camp surrounded by nature spirit and stash my pack, with a short fun skate back down to town; I am traveling with my longboard.  I ventured a ways into the botanical garden but came to a no trespassing sign; the garden was closed for new year’s day.  I decided to head to the beach.

Now the other thing I’ve had to learn in recent travels is not to assume public transportation will take me to my destination simply because it is going that way! I made that mistake most terribly on the BART system in San Francisco Bay, absent-mindedly riding all the way to Castro Valley when I meant to go to North Berkeley!  This wasn’t nearly as bad as that, but instead of taking me to the beach side of He’eia State Park, the bus I stayed on went to the Valley of the Temples, where I enjoyed the breathtaking scenery, ate a late lunch, and got tired of waiting for the bus to take me back towards where I orginally wanted to go.

The assessment of a local that marsh with “who knows what living in it” lay between me and the beach deterred me from traversing the state park, so I walked and skated back southward along the road to Kaneohe. Once there the coming night directed my steps back to my new home garden, leaving the beach for another day.  I opted for Kailua beach park, where I washed the mud from the preceeding night’s powerful storm off my tarp and swam and frollicked while my clothes dried out on the sunny grass.  I was in paradise!

I have avoided the big city entirely until tonight.  Although the high concentration of extremely cute girls I have seen in the last few hours make me wonder why!  Theirs is such an awe inspiring divine beauty!  When I look at them, I literally feel as if my heart is being simultaneously tugged upward to the heavens and downwards to the heart of Mama Gaia!  It kind of stings. Youch!!  Anyway, after three nights at the botanical garden, precious time alone spent in silent contemplation, I headed north again.

I got on the bus with a 66-year-old Vietnam war veteran with a partially disabled arm from a bayonet wound.  He got to talking and I got to listening, and he invited me to hang out back in Hauula!  It’s a very beautiful spot!  According to my new friend, my old friend Jerry, who is his same age, used to be a bear wrestler in North Carolina.  I don’t think that is what he did for most of his money, which is what he hadn’t wanted to tell me, but I can’t guess why he wouldn’t tell me about wrestling bears, if he did….

After hearing war stories and much more until 3:33 in the morning, I slept in a forest spot with no fireworks or encroaching waves and caught the bus to Sunset Beach when I awoke.  Gargantuan waves broke all along the shore, signs and lifeguards cautioned against swimming, and I made my way to the calmer waters of Shark’s Cove.  There I met up with my friend Sarah, a classmate from the January 2013 Permaculture Design Course at Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living and Learning in Costa Rica.  She had seen on Facebook that I am on Oahu; her boyfriend lives in Hauula!!  I didn’t know that until I met them face to face at Shark’s Cove however.

It is uncanny how much her boyfriend looks and sounds like a younger smaller version of one of the boatmen that would bring people and goods to and from Punta Mona!  He is a surfer, and they brought me along to a barbecue at Jamie O’Brien’s house, where a group of surfers were hanging out and playing guitar hero.

Sarah suggested I get in touch with Tia Silvasy, a permaculturist on the island.  I sent her a message on Facebook, asking if there were any permaculture community happenings I could join in during my last few days on Oahu.  She told me about the Wednesday morning volunteer day at Waihuena Farm, which was the next morning right across the street!  Synchronicity, ease, and flow!  Such the way to go!!

During the barbecue I did a couple hand stands and the surfers said, “Don’t be doing none of that hippy shit.”  Jamie didn’t seemed too stoked that I turned up and didn’t know who he was, but at least he let me hang out and even play his ukelele for a couple minutes.  After Sarah and her boyfriend went home, Jamie said, “We don’t like hippies around here,” and I went and slept on the beach.

I woke up to the crash of Pipeline and ventured across the street to a beautiful permaculture farm where I met a couple WWOOFers and local residents caring for the plants and building a yurt!  The property has an outdoor kitchen, a tomato greenhouse, and a workout floor under a roof between storage containers much like the set up my Dad built on our property.  There is a house high up on precarious looking stacked stilts, electric line around the veggie beds to keep wild boars out, and many species of delicious and wonderful plants!

We spent the sweet morning conversing over oatmeal and doing a little tasting tour before gathering and preparing lunch after the vision of a wonderful Japanese lady named Nami.  I was reunited with several of the staple species from Punta Mona such as Chaya, cranberry hibiscus, moringa, passionfruit (called lilikoi in Hawaii), and taro (called Kalo).  After lunch I exchanged some seeds that I got from the Bioneers Conference in Marin, California with a resident named Doug, who planted what I gave him right away.  Nami and I discussed some of the earth magick from Anastasia and The Ringing Cedars series, making me want to read it more than ever.

Doug invited me to go to a farmer’s union potluck near the northwest tip of the island.  A wonderful soul named Peter or “Peat!” rode with us out to the gathering.  He is doing permaculture in Waimea valley and knows good places on both Kauai and Big I, as it’s called.

The coming spring is sure to be a most magical time with my friends Bloom and Sophia coming to Hawaii for the Compersion Permaculture Action Tour!  I invite everybody reading this as well as everyone else who would be interested to come be a part of the blooming in the second half of March.  Owl bee shore to communicate all manner of details once we have them worked out.  I invite everybody reading this as well as everyone else who would be interested to help us work out the details!  Suggestions and connections are welcome!

We intend to bring soul family together to weave our dreams into a reality that nurtures the genius in each of us by sharing celebration, inspiration, sacred vibration, and building thriving community that honors, benefits, and lifts up the voice of every being, animal, vegetable, mineral, and spiritual into a masterpeace of ecstatic divine harmony!  Heaven on Earth is ours to create!  Come cook soul soup with us in Hawaii!

https://www.facebook.com/CompersionHawaiiActionTour?fref=ts

compersionmusic.com

After the potluck I spent the night at Waihuena farm, enjoyed the north shore until after sunset the next day, and took a bus to this 24-hour internet cafe in Honolulu.  I fly to Kauai in about 4 hours!  Once there I will meet up with my great friend Presence, whose birthday it is tomorrow!  We plan to visit a very special Hindu temple with a huge and ancient crystal that I read about in Drunvalo Melchizedek’s book Serpent of Light.  I am very excited!  I’m so excited that I have stayed up all night in this cafe!

The other news is I am now officially a part of Immortalize LLC.  I will be selling blue spirulina, a unique and wonderful superfood!  Check it out!  I am dancing a bun dance for the bright future I have with this superhuman fuel.

http://www.bluespirulina.com/home.html

Happy happy new year!! Bless one and all! Let’s come together in joy and love, aloha and mahalo! ❤

The Gift of Flight! To Hawaii! MAHALO!

The Quest I On is blossoming in the tropics as we welcome this new year, thanks to the surprise present of an airline voucher from my beautiful friend Feather!  After enjoying the holiday season from Thanksgiving to Christmas together at home, my family drove down the coast day before yesterday to the city of angels for the traditional gathering of my mom’s relatives.  In the midst of the trip I was glancing at facebook and read a post from a friend I had met in the beginning of Summer at Rain Dance in Northern California’s Feather River Canyon and celebrated with later at the rainbow gathering in Utah and Beloved Festival in Oregon!

He was giving away airfare that he purchased last year but never used on account of a delayed flight and the resulting decision to rent a car with some new friends and drive instead of flying from California up to Eugene, Oregon.  With the year drawing to an end, the still unused credit about to expire, and an adorable puppy named Guru keeping him from flying, Feather generously offered up the travel as a gift on facebook!  A few people responded before I did, but I guess they turned out to be unable to organize a trip on such short notice; today was the final day to claim the miles.

In any case when Feather told me I could be the one I didn’t ask why!  And since I am naturally predisposed to journey with little to no planning, I cruised smoothly into place as the grateful recipient of this joyous offering!  Feather’s voucher covered about half the total cost of the flight (just over three hundred dollars), and I used some of my earnings from installing pavers in my grandma’s garden to pay for the rest.

Allegiant Air gave me no trouble for bringing my longboard as carry on luggage (for skating island roads).  We took off from Los Angeles at a quarter until two in the afternoon and landed just before sunset at almost half past five island time.  I got to see the channel islands after take off and the fiery orange sunset-hued peaks of Oahu before landing.

After reclaiming my backpack I simply began to walk towards the distant hills; I had made no plans or reservations.  After twenty minutes I came to a park beside a hotel and a Chinese restaurant, where I ordered a bowl of Look Fun!  Real Chinese food sure is a delight!  The sky is clear and this park has wifi! I have a feeling this is just the superb beginning of a blissful continuum of ideal synchronicities and ever-higher heights, righter rights, and brighter light!  Bless all beings with fulfillment and rapturous awe!  Unending thanks and praise to the Ancient of Days!  LOVE! ❤

……

So I wrote all of the above on the 28th, day before yesterday, but my park wifi turned out to be unable to pull off the post.  Since then I have eaten more exquisite Asian food and bussed up and down the west coast before another bus brought me through the heart of the island to the north shore.

I spent the night in my hammock up in the branches of a huge tree in Haleiwa.  I was inspired to endeavor this not only because it was the most apparently convenient place to sleep but also because my grandmother recently told me how she slept in the branches of a tree in her childhood.  It was delightful, and I passed unnoticed except for by a fellow vagabond who claimed to be looking for his wife by the dark seaside.

This afternoon the sunny weather gave way to a ripe rain storm, and I am blissfully sheltered in the righteous little Waialua Bakery.  I bought another airline ticket to fly next Friday to Kauai, where I hope to volunteer at the Resonance Academy, a permaculture community and research institution bridging science and spirituality with breakthrough science called Unified Physics and who knows what else!  The days between now and that coming now are sure to be adventurous!

Happy New Year!  Aloha! ❤

Boogie Back to the Garden of Eden

The Polish Ambassador show in Ashlantis (Ashland) was my favorite because I had the opportunity to see my wonderful new friends from the area.  We danced our buns off then drove to the home of a very magical artist by the Rogue River to watch the lunar eclipse.  Her name is Lindy Kehoe, and she paints nature spirits, some of which are called NuMu’s.

http://lindykehoe.com/

I take this to be a cute little name for “new Lemuria,” the highly conscious civilization we are dreaming into reality as our souls remember the ancient land (also called Mu) of humanity’s origin!

The eclipse was magical, and though I conked out shortly after Gaia’s shadow complete covered the moon, my friends stayed up nearly the entire night.  In the morning we enjoyed a long goodbye before driving to Seven Seeds Farm in Williams for the permaculture day of action.

The farm is very beautiful and lush with all kinds of plants as well as goats and ducks.  We mingled with the lovely local community during lunch before planting some rows of garlic and making cob for touch-up on the walls of a greenhouse.  When we finished working everyone joined in an ecstatic dance inside a yurt, and I got to zipline, jump on a trampoline, and play soccer with some munchkins!  We ate dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before driving back to Ashlantis for a soak in the Jackson Wellsprings, where we of course met some soul family to make music with before venturing to dreamland (or dreamspace).

I am so blessed to have spent the next day enjoying Lithia park with a great group of friends and visiting the fairy ponds above the park in the evening!  In the trees by the fairy ponds I developed a style of overtone singing with my mouth wide open that I have never seen before.  We came back down into town full of inspiration and did some Kung Fu and busking in the plaza before driving to Medford to stay over at our friend Alex’s house.

From there we drove to the forest outside of Eugene for a soak in Cougar Hot Springs before being received at Lost Valley Education Center, a very innovative community where we woke the following day to the sound of rain on the roof of our earthen dormitory!  We joined a group of Polish Ambassador fans for a tour of the place before helping the residents out with some cob and apple juicing!

After lunch we learned about the wonders of parabolic solar ovens, and the oven specialist, a very engaging and thoroughly sunned wizard named Bart, busted out the stationary bike blender to make everyone smoothies while Compersion serenaded the work party from atop a stack of hay bales we had just unloaded!  I climbed up there and had a blast singing with my favorite band ever so far!

After the show we hustled right onward to Portland for our final Polish Ambassador dance party of the tour.  We rocked a grandiose venue called the Crystal Ballroom, complete with springs beneath the dance floor to amp up the bounce, and I was pleasantly surprised to reconnect with old friends from Lucidity, Rain Dance, Beloved, and Peace Village!

We stayed at the beautiful home of young man named Milo who played a large role in organizing the day of action, which was city-wide phenomenon with work parties at several different community gardens and Tryon Life Community Farm.  In the evening everybody converged at Alberta Park for some group yoga, a picnic, and the epic occupation of an overgrown lot across the street from the park.  We observed and discussed the space all together then cleared weeds and planted garden beds and an herb spiral while a DJ in the park channeled music through headphones that were passed out to whoever wanted a pair.  This kind of thing is the future of Festival Earth!  I am certain many will be inspired to follow in the footsteps of the Polish Ambassador to make our collective dream of a healthy, caring, thriving, groovy global community a reality!!

http://www.permacultureaction.org/

We spent the night at Bloom and Sophia’s friend Gary’s house, where he is designing his own permaculture paradise!  Bloom and Sophia wrote many of their songs there last year, so it was a very special visit.  We felt the completion of cycles as we joined in morning yoga with wonderful new friends and began the return journey south.  Before we said goodbye to Portland, I was able to recover my hiking shoes that were left at Singing Alive weeks and weeks before from the house of the creator of that gorgeous gathering.

We voyaged all the way down to the San Francisco Bay for the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael.  What a powerful weekend of great minds coming together to dream the vision of a thriving and just world into reality!  Such an inspiration!  So much knowledge and light!

I encourage everyone on here
To be a beautiful bioneer
Like Keegan and Hafiz 🙂

High Tidings

It’s lovely to spend a rainy day writing and watching Princess Mononoke with a beautiful girl who resembles the princess in a cozy cabin hidden in the forest.  In the evening we rode into town with Dominique and her roommate for the first show of the Polish Ambassador’s Pushing Through the Pavement Permaculture Action Tour!  There we ran into our friend Lila from Bliss Camp, and Kaia decided to travel with her to Mount Shasta the following day.  Our hosts tired of dancing before long, so we retreated to another movie, Les Miserables, before bed.

On Sunday morning we road back into town and met with Lila.  The three of us had breakfast, conversation, and songs until nearly two in the afternoon then headed to Alta Sierra Elementary School for the first community day of action on the “Permaculture Ambassador’s” tour.  Our tour joined forces with another eco tour called Common Vision to prepare a space for planting a garden behind the school.  We installed irrigation, posts for a deer fence, and holes for kids to plant trees in.  It was a blast!  Such good work!

My nomadic acrobatic singer-songwriter friend Niko suggested that we catch a ride to Oakland for a weekly circus-like skillshare that night.  We couldn’t find anyone amongst the activists who was going that way, so we decided to hitchhike, not leaving until it was almost sunset.  After having such a smooth time hitching from Harbin Hot Springs I felt the ease would continue to flow, but we only made it to Roseville that night and slept in some trees by an on ramp.

In the morning Niko decided to fly out of Sacramento to meet a friend in North Carolina, so we hitched to Cesar Chavez Park and parted ways.  I caught a ride to Berkeley and skated out to the Marina and back before getting picked up by RoBloom, the dynamic duo formed by Bloom and our lOakal (Oakland local) friend Rob.

After a restful night at Rob’s, Bloom, Sophia (recently returned from Canada), and I drove Bloom’s brother Nick’s car back down to SLO town for a Compersion show at Bliss Cafe (featuring Bloom’s dad Bob on cello!) followed by a Polish Ambassador dance party at SLO Brew.  Before the DJs took the night away Bloom and Sophia got a group to circle up on the dance floor and sing the empowering song from Singing Alive that I shared in my last post. 😀

After the party my friend Kristen and I drove to my parent’s house, where I worked with my Dad the next two days, remodeling my grandma’s house.  Unfortunately I missed the permaculture action day at Cal Poly Organic Farm because of this, but life’s too magic to be tragic.

In the evening I went down to the farmer’s market in SLO and met up with David and Sophie Brooks, who had recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary on the equinox.  David’s invitation for me to be his best man was a big part of my decision to return home from Costa Rica last year.  We danced to the choro band from Cuesta College and watched a video of Venus and Earth forming a beautiful pattern with their orbits that I looked up on my phone when David gave Sophie a rose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cgQNUhtmHM

That was Thursday.  On Friday evening my mom and I visited my brother Wade at his house near the university.  It’s a very nice place full of students who are outdoor enthusiasts.  “And they got a pool table too!”  Wade went to an event on campus, and my mom and I met up with Bloom, his parents, and Sophia at the nearby Steynberg Gallery.  After a spell my mom ventured home and I begin a wonderful night of socializing downtown with old and new friends.

One of the latter, a magical fellow named Levi, missed his 3:10 am bus to the bay when we drove our friend Jesse’s spaceship (van) to the stop at 3:20, so Bloom, Sophia, and I gained a passenger on our Saturday drive.  We motored straight to Golden Gate Park for the last hour of music at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival before reconvening with the Polish Ambassador tour at the Regency Ballroom.  I slept in the car through this show in order to save twenty dollars, and we returned to Rob’s to sleep some more.

In the morning we drove to Gill Tract Community Farm in Oakland for the day of action!  We helped plant a hedge to protect this urban farm from the road and then gathered in ceremony to bless the land and the movement it embodies in a large and diverse herb mandala we then proceeding to plant.  I met friends from the rainbow gathering, got to speak in Mandarin and Spanish to locals of those heritages, learned about herbs, enjoyed a delicious meal and a half provided by Food Not Bombs, and began to get very excited about journeying to Latin America this winter!

We reluctantly pulled ourselves out of this beautiful scene in order to pick up Bloom’s brother Nick from their Aunt and Uncle’s house just up the road and head back to the Hardly Strictly Festival for Rising Appalachia, a soulful band I first saw at Envision Festival in Costa Rica!  After the show we enjoyed deep conversation while Sophia played the digeridoo on the ride back across the bay, a scrumptious dinner and the lovely company of Bloom and Nick’s Aunt and Uncle, and a good movie called Her.

It is now nearly three in the afternoon.  Soon we will embark on a journey north, to be in Ashland for the Polish Ambassador show by tomorrow night.  Mercury is going retrograde  and the full moon is coming, with an eclipse at the axis of Aries and Libra.  These are my very signs, and I feel I have much to look forward to in the coming days.  Owl let you know how it goes!  Time to shine bright the light from within and win Amen!

“The river is flowing, flowing and growing

The river is flowing back to the sea

The moon, she is waiting waxing and waning

The moon, she is waiting for us to be free”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwIUuSZ01f4

And so it is!

 

Heart-melting Multiventures

Last weekend I learned a very appropriate alternate way to apologize. A friend of mine said “starry” instead of “sorry.” I’m starry for neglecting to post on this blog for such a long while. Life has just been such a brightly shining ball of light each and every moment that I have been in a constant state of interaction with the present, unwilling to take time away for review of the past until now.

I am a guest in the home of a kind soul just outside of Nevada City, where a very sweet girl named Kaia, who I met down in Joshua Tree at Bhakti Fest, and I arrived on Friday afternoon after the smoothest (and her first) hitch hiking experience of my life so far. We had spent three days at Harbin Hot Springs, a beautiful retreat in a canyon in Lake County filled with friendly deer, fig trees, and healing pools of steaming water. Our Canadian friends Simon and Maggie generously treated us to this paradise after a week volunteering together with Simon at the Sebastopol Village Building Convergence (Maggie flew in just after it ended.)

Simon is a wonderful person to have shared this experience with as he worked at both the Global Permaculture Convergence in Cuba and the North American one in Minnesota.  Kaia, Simon, and I camped in a circus tent that had been set up for the convergence behind the Sebastopol Grange Hall along with a lady named Lindsey who was orchestrating the facility.  In the afternoons this space became an “Open Village,” with vendors, some workshops, and tons of free clothing.  I picked up a knee-length straight golden robe/dress that makes me feel like some Egyptian Jesus.

We helped plant a food forest in between the library and city hall!  It was such a dream realized!  Before that we helped paint a beautiful work of art onto the pavement of an intersection by the community market.  This is just the kind of thing I want to be doing everywhere I go!  Other gems of the convergence included hearing from Starhawk, teacher of the permaculture design course I was planning to take last year in Cazadero before deciding on Costa Rica, and Mark Lakeman, founder of Portland City Repair, which has done so much for positive community transformation leading to a just and sustainable society!

We also were privileged to meet a Mexican man named Gustavo who lives in Ojai and delighted us with his two dogs and constant hawk calls.  Throughout the week we always knew when Gustavo was soaring nearby.  At Harbin my friend Waheguru explained how the hawk (Horus) is a symbol of Christ consciousness of unconditional love returning to the planet.

Before the Village Building Convergence was Bliss Camp, a very beautiful festival held at Camp Navarro, a scout camp in the redwoods of Mendocino.  I traveled there with the Compersion dream team of Bloom, Sophia, and the wonderful photographer Kristen (Sapphire) Woo.  We worked with Bliss Cafe, a vegan cafe from San Luis Obispo run by really wonderful people.  I joyfully reflected on working at Envision Cafe during Envision Festival in Bliss Cafe during Bliss Camp.  We also worked with them at Bhakti Fest the weekend before.

Compersion got to open the festival, playing just before the opening ceremony with our friend Daniel on mandolin and a violinist as well!  While they were playing I struck up a conversation with Kaia, at that time going by her given name Kayla, which she never liked too much.  We first connected when she helped break down and clean up the cafe at Bhakti Fest, and we dove into a wonderful relationship as Bliss Camp commenced.

And what a weekend it was!  There were so many incredible musicians, such as Narayan from Zion, whose house we stayed at in Santa Rosa following the festival.  He is an absolutely amazing freestyle rapper and has produced loads of sacred music with such beautiful conscious lyrics!  On Saturday night I danced so hard for almost the whole night, rising to new heights of bliss and vision!

I was dancing with a girl that surprised me with loads of insight into my soul when we went to the side of the dance floor for a water break.  She said we had been close in past lifetimes and could help each other much in this one.  She told me about ozone therapy as a way to cure disease and detoxify and offered to treat me.  So after the after party at Naryan’s, which included a trip to the beach for singing, a pipe ceremony, and Indian food, I caught a ride with the mandolin-slinging Daniel to Petaluma, where I received an IV of ozone created with what she called a Tesla generator.  It caused aching in my body, burning in my lungs, and a feeling of disorientation that lasted a few days.  She told me to take capsules of charcoal to complete the detox process and recommended that I do an Iboga ceremony with her in the future, and I caught a ride back to Sebastopol with my friend Alex from Marin Sierra Boy Scout Camp Staff a few years ago.

Moving backwards, I can say that Bhakti Fest was such a healthy experience that transformed my relationship to Joshua Tree and to my childhood self, bringing me a great sense of peace and satisfaction with things I was less than satisfied with before.  I suffered some trauma out there when I was little and had an ear infection, something I went through every year for a several in a row when I was young.  The amazing positive experience of celebrating at Bhakti fest healed the lingering emotional wounds left by boyhood misery, bringing me to a much more positive spiritual place!

Before heading out to Joshua Tree I had chance to surf with my good high school buddies in Morro Bay and catch up a little with my family. Such a joy!  Before that I had the new opportunity to explore Oakland and the bay area, staying for a few days in the lovely Fruitvale home of Bloom’s friend Rob.  We visited some great local sustainable co-housing projects with lovely people and went to hear a talk by Joanna Macy at a Buddhist social activism convergence, all the time singing and writing songs along with our friend Niko, who we joined together with after Peace Village to go to Singing Alive.

Singing Alive is my favorite gathering that I have gone to this summer, or ever really!  A few hundred people came together at a big outdoor kitchen in the forest near Salem, Oregon in order to sing heart songs.  The weekend began with these lyrics:

“We are a people at the full height of our power

This is the place and now is the hour

We recognize our sacred word

We have the power to transform the Earth!”

So many beautiful uplifting new and ancient songs were shared in a three-day ceremony carefully planned by a man named Morgan following his vision.  Bloom, Sophia, and I rode to the gathering in the piano-equipped van of a brother named James from Santa Cruz.  He picked us up from the Jackson Wellsprings on Thursday afternoon, just as Pranafest was about to turn into a big party.

Before that I had a chance to go to my friend Eastar’s birthday party, during which we held a fairy circle at the exact time of her birth.  This entailed her passage between a circle of altars representing the elements to receive and offer blessings.  This led into a pool party, during which several of us jumped up and down making dolphin noises and movements for some twenty minutes then sang like whales in the steam room.  So much Aloha!

The weekend before I had my first chance to work in a booth at Peace Village.  This was very different from my other festival experiences; I am usually running around to workshops and dancing, but it was very joyful to care for the booth just in between the main stage and the Goddess temple.

Back to the Present!  We intend to go to the Polish Ambassador show tonight and community work day tomorrow to kick off his permaculture action tour called Pushing Through the Pavement!  We have had quite an adventurous time since arriving in Nevada City!  We ate pizza on the boardwalk downtown while waiting to meet my friend Oscar, who I worked with by Mount Shasta at the beginning of the summer.  He has been living her for almost two months!

After meeting with him we got caught under a downtown roof with all our bags while rain poured down for a couple hours.  When it let up we met with a friend from Bliss Camp and Bhakti Fest who treated us to some gynostemma tea at an incredible shop called Elixart filled with super foods and our friend Lindy Kehoe’s extraordinary nature spirit artwork.  From there we went to an electric dance party, freestyle rapped with Oscar’s buddies on the street for a long while, got kicked out of the downtown wooden tipi by the police, and walked two miles out of town around dawn with all our bags before realizing it was not the road that led to Oscar’s place and camping beside it!

This morning we were picked up by a girl named Dominique and taken to town for more superfood beverages, including a durian shake, and the best miso soup I have ever had.  Dominique graciously offered us shelter from the continuing rain showers in this beautiful cabin.  I feel so incredibly grateful for all these amazing blessings!!  I hope to share more of them with you in the coming times here on the Quest I On!

Love and light to each of you!  My warmest regards 🙂 ❤

 

Beloved

I am back home in Ashland after a weekend supercharged with love and beauty at Beloved Sacred Art and Music Festival! Since I last left off in this epic tale Ashland and I have grown into that homie relationship. I first came from Mount Shasta for Inlakesh Festival at the beautiful Jackson Wellsprings, where I thoroughly enjoyed an introduction to this blessed community! From there I journeyed to the national rainbow gathering in Utah with a squeaky RV full of people.

This began a long string of situations perfect for learning to get along with others in a small space. I believe we left from Ashland with 12 people and picked up a couple hitchers on the way to Shasta. Not long before getting there we blew a tire but were able to drive with it the rest of the distance. We spent the night by the headwaters of the Sacramento River and got the tires replaced in the morning before journeying inland. We drove through the night and reached Heber City in a few days.

However the RV, which we named Spaceship Gratitude, broke down in town before we could travel the last few miles to the gathering. The owner, a mother-to-be named Alexandra, had us towed to the overflow parking lot, where we spent the night before trekking a few miles into the woods to the site of the gathering. On the way we met Alexandra’s partner Eric, the most zealous freestyle beatboxer I have ever met.

As we entered the main meadow of the gathering we were greeted by a naked parade. In its midst I encountered my friend Bloom, a fellow San Luis Obispo SLOcal who I first met at Envision Festival 2013 in Costa Rica and unexpectedly reunited with in a bar in SLO on New Year’s Eve. Bloom is an absolutely wonderful singer/songwriter, and I spent most of the gathering hanging out with him and his friends, singing songs and socializing.

He and his friend Toreye facilitated a workshop called a Wakeup, basically a forum for youth to discuss our role in the world and how we can empower ourselves to create a reality that is thriving, just, and sustainable. They had recently completed a leadership training for this through an organization called Generation Waking Up. I enjoyed participating in this each of the three days they did it.

We camped near three kitchens that served up regular meals to the rainbow family (everyone who came to the gathering). They called themselves Shining Light, Fat Kids, and The Lovin’ Oven and gave us a wide variety of flavorful nourishment throughout our time there. The celebration included huge drum circles, a trading marketplace (rainbow is a moneyless event), theatrics, group meditation, squirming kids, crusty old-timers, and lots of sharing! My friends and I enjoyed doing acro yoga by the creek and singing by the fire until early morning.

We spent a week like this and began the struggle to get Spaceship Gratitude working and home again to Oregon. We fiddled with the motor for a day in the overflow parking lot and were able to drive into town, where our friend Tiki worked late into the night on the fuel lines and eventually produced a large ball of fire while attempting to start the engine while pouring gas into the carburetor, accessible from next to the steering wheel. It was very beautiful to witness him throw this flame down the entrance steps onto the sidewalk, but the event caused the decision to bring the spaceship into a mechanic in the morning.

By the afternoon we were on our way and made it almost to Nevada before breaking down in Wendover, where we spent the night at a gas station and had to borrow money from my lovely mom in order to get repairs. These brought us midway across Nevada to Winnemucca, where we broke down again and decided to get towed all the way to Reno. In Reno we spent three days in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, busking and spanging (playing music and asking for spare change) to make enough for another repair job.

I finally got in touch with my old middle school friend Allison just after we made the repair, so we gratefully showered and ate dinner at her house before driving up to Shasta! I tell you it felt so incredible to be back there! I stayed that Saturday to go to a Lemurian Gathering, where an author and channel named Saryon Michael White spoke on many fascinating topics such as the Egyptians, Lemurians, Atlantians, Ascended Masters, and the evolution of consciousness.

At lunch time I met my friend Kristi from Cuesta College, and she joined me for the afternoon portion of the gathering. After that we drove to the splendid Mossbrae Falls near Dunsmuir for a dip and then back to Shasta to meet up with Bloom, Toreye, and Sophia (aka Soul Fire), Bloom’s musical soulmate and partner in a duo called Compersion, which means the opposite of jealousy, as in elation over the good fortune of another.

The three of them were on their way to Cascadia Free Witch Camp, a weeklong gathering to learn about Earth Magic. We spent the night near Castle Lake, and after swimming in the morning they gave me a ride up to Ashland for Tribal Crossroads Festival at Jackson Wellsprings. There my friend Presence, who traveled with me to and from the rainbow gathering, connected me with a being named Dakota, who invited us out to do work trade at a budding intentional community near the border of California.

The place is called Heaven on Earth and includes 70 acres claimed by an Ashland restaurant owner, a few houses with renters, a greenhouse with half a roof that also houses a kitchen/folding chair living room, a large hilltop pool beside a treehouse of sorts with a rope swing (though the pool is currently empty), and spectacular views of Mount Shasta and Pilot Rock, another nearby sacred landmark. There is an impressive Buddhist Temple just up the road that we visited yesterday.

After Tribal Crossroads I came out here for a day of work, clearing around the greenhouse and planting an Herb garden with my friend Rufio and her adorable baby Shalom. They are friends from San Luis Obispo who also went to the rainbow gathering. The following day we journeyed to Mount Shasta with a singer/songwriter from Colorado known as Jenanda or Jai Ma as well as a couple from Kauai and their baby Legolas. So it was seven of us plus Jen’s dog in her little red car. It was even more cramped than Spaceship Gratitude.

We went to the mountain to celebrate the Day Out of Time, the Mayan New Year on July 25th. We joined with much rainbow family and people I knew from my time in the area to welcome in the new year. We swam in the Buddha Hole and Lake Siskiyou and camped up on the mountain at Sand Flats one night, where a very elvish looking traveller named Basking Roots shared a mild Ayahuasca tea with chai, ginger, and turmeric in a new year’s ceremony.

One morning after camping some folks camped nearby offered us two teacup chihuahua puppies! The couple from Kauai took the dogs, and the car became that much more of a mobile party! After a very adventurous few days we headed back to Ashland. It was funny because originally Jen had planned to simply drop us off and continue home to Colorado, but she was strongly vortexed by the mountain and just had to stick around to experience what it had to offer her. And then she was contacted by a friend back in Ashland and decided Colorado could wait even longer. This really is a lovely area.

Back in Ashland I was contacted by Dakota and a persuaded by the beautiful Lucinda, who’s house is right next to the greenhouse, to return to Heaven on Earth. I worked a couple of days with my friends Presence and Alex, both of whom traveled on Spaceship Gratitude with me. Then another brother staying on the land, an ex-army super hippy who we call Rainbow Warrior, suggested that we go to another intentional community near Eugene to work with a friend of his who could pay us for our time.

We traveled to Eugene but never connected with Rainbow Warrior’s friend because of lack of communication. Instead we went to a big block party in one Eugene neighborhood, saw some of the city, and then took the bus far out into the country to visit Rainbow Warrior’s spiritual gangster friend Jakob, who is working with a rapper named Rick Ross to bring peace and conscious viewpoints to the hoods and hip hop culture of the world!

After a day and a half out there we returned to the city, and Presence and I hitch hiked to Beloved! It was such a beautiful experience to be there and share moments with very open-hearted loving people in that breathtaking forest! Bloom and Sophia were there, and we made amazing musical memories together with so many other truly talented individuals. After the festival we went to the beach, which made me extremely happy after being so long away from it.

From there we went to Umpqua Hot Springs for a totally blessed out soak, mud bath, and swim in the river before heading back home to Ashland! Before coming back out to Heaven on Earth we went to an open mic night and Compersion graced the stage. Now we are getting ready for yet another epically beautiful weekend at the Wellsprings. Peace Village Festival will be much bigger than Inlakesh or Tribal Crossroads, and I will be helping Lucinda with her booth, offering massage, delicious chocolates that we made last night, crystals, and so much love to everyone!

I am infinitely grateful for this most lovely Summer of my life, being welcomed into such a wonderful community in this beautiful place. I will let you know how the journey unfolds from here!

http://www.compersionmusic.com

SO MUCH LOVE AND LIGHT TO ALL

So much to tell and so little time!

The Quest I On is now posed to you from Heber City, Utah: what wild adventures have come to pass? After finishing my last entry I met a Dutch lady named Nani who has a beautiful piece of land not far from Weed where she rents lovely cabins built by her son and teaches children natural skills such as basket weaving and adobe construction.

She and I caught a ride with her neighbor to her place, and I helped her refurnish her tipi, where she normally sleeps. We celebrated the rain by building a cozy fire inside the cabin, which reminded me very much of my childhood house in Mammoth Lakes. She also designs homes. Her property is a magical nook by a creek in the woods with deer, ferns, and fairies! Nani’s middle name is Fern, and she told me with glee how the ferns only appeared on the land after she moved in. We shared stories, and she invited me to stay at her home in Holland, where she spends the winters!

In the morning I caught a ride with the same neighbor into the town of Shasta. After browsing the shops for a spell, I hitched up the mountain with a natural foods distributor from Oregon and went to Panther Meadows, a campground with a beautiful spring of sacred water. I was the only one there as the road would remain closed a few miles below the campground for another few days, presumably because of snowmelt runoff, but the low precipitation this year left the road and meadow utterly dry.

However the spring continues gushing glorious gorgeousness. I filled my beautiful blue abundance bottle and sat in gracious grateful meditation, gazing inward for guidance. I grew cold in the shade by the spring and flowed down across the mountainside to a sunny sand, stopping for the most blissful nap along the way!

I worked out in the sand, resulting in exquisite tender soreness for the rest of the week, and made my way back to the road, where I encountered a couple from the bay area on their way to the spring and familiar with a nearby spot to dunk the whole body in the sacred Shasta water! This I did before continuing downward to a dinner of fish from a Buddhist temple in Oregon, offered by the owner of a Thai massage school in San Francisco parked by the road closure sign at Bunny Flats.

A couple from Wisconsin gave me a ride back down at sunset and dropped me off at the Peace Garden on the edge of town, where I sat in meditation before walking through town and over the highway towards Lake Siskiyou. I had this wild hope of swimming in the lake or even making in beyond the lake to the Buddha Hole campground in the morning before catching a ride back to Portal de Luz to gather my things, water Leticia’s plants, and meet up with my aunt and uncle to travel to Oregon. Being from SLO, sometimes it takes me a while to realize that some things are just out of the quest I on!

I spent the night next to the fish hatchery and the museum in a park called Dick Bliss Park!

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fc2.staticflickr.com%2F4%2F3392%2F3188923846_98a8666763.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Finodeidaragender%2F3188923846%2F&h=375&w=500&tbnid=AaQfCntgV58zUM%3A&zoom=1&docid=gFWBRixjFMY4tM&ei=0fa-U5iKI-HJ8AGY1ICoDw&tbm=isch&client=safari&ved=0CB4QMygAMAA&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=2065&page=1&start=0&ndsp=19

I will have to continue this epic later as the the adventure rolls onward without rest! Sorry to leave you hanging, but we’ll catch up soon!

Summer Solstice Celebration in Shasta!

The name of the place I have been staying is Portal de Luz (Portal of Light).  When I returned there on Friday evening I found the owner Leticia, her daughter Eilyn, Oscar, and four other Mexican ladies ready for the solstice sweat lodge and Ayahuasca ceremony.  Because of the possibility of other participants in the ceremony arriving later in the evening and wanting to sleep in the little cabin where Oscar and I had been staying, I carted my things up the hill to Bill’s place in a wheel barrelI and put them in the empty trailer next to his.

Bill is an extremely giving soul who works for others all the time.  He cares for many animals and has built them a nice facility but continues to live in a trailer himself.  When people would ask him why, he would always reply that he was waiting for the right woman so as to have her input when building their home.  The great news is that he found that woman!  

Katelynn is a conservationist and horse person who has lived just down the street for years and been traveling in Bhutan for several weeks.  Bill drove to Portland to pick her up from the airport last week.  He wore chauffeur apparel and held up a sign with her name in the terminal for fun.  (He has lots of jokes and lots of great stories!)  On the drive back down here he said that they should seriously think about getting married.  She just said yes!  The two of them told me after the three of us hauled the generator Bill was using to weld the celestial hospital together back up to his property.  I am so happy and excited for them!

I felt extremely tired but stayed around the fire with the people in Portal de Luz until 10:30 enjoying speaking and listening to the Spanish language then stumbled up to the trailer and slept until almost noon on the longest day of the year!  When I came back down I found 22 people getting ready to enter the sweat lodge and begin the ceremony of Temascal!  I gulped water from my precious blue glass Abundance bottle and joined them!  Leticia smudged me with sage, cleansing my body of negative energy, and, once all the people were in the lodge, I began picking hot stones from the fire pit and passing them in to Oscar.

As each stone entered the Temascal, I said, “Aho mitakuye oyasin,” a Lakota Sioux phrase meaning “All my relations,” and Oscar said, “Bienvenida Abuelita, “Welcome Grandmother.”  I worked with another man named Scott to pass seven stones into the lodge, and then we entered, bowing our heads to the ground, and closed the door.  In the complete darkness Oscar poured water on the stones and lead us in songs of prayer for healing and purification.  We were joined by people all over the world praying for and meditating on peace and liberty during the solstice!

Vital water, purify me!

Fire of love, calm my fear!

Wind of the soul, bring me to the altar!

Mother Earth, I am returning to my home!

In the Temascal!

We opened the door three times and brought more hot stones and more cold water.  The ceremony was particularly grueling on this sunny midday; I had to wear my flip flops outside to keep my feet from burning.  I sounded a singing bowl while Oscar beat the drum, and at the end each participant offered his or her own prayer.  One girl offered hers in Mandarin!  I prayed for my Grandmother, who’s ninetieth birthday was approaching, and for global peace, freedom, harmony, and abundant health!

Afterwards Leticia’s daughter Eilyn showered every grateful body off with the hose, and we had a short while to relax before the Ayahuasca ceremony began.  We sat in a circle of chairs and listened to Leticia speak about the medicine we were about to take.  She said it can offer much healing and wisdom if we work with it and maintain our focus during the experience.  She called for us to remember ourselves as divine multidimensional beings of light and love walking as children of Mother Earth and asked us to connect profoundly with our mother through the medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca

I have taken Ayahuasca twice before.  The first time was on a permaculture farm on Bastimentos Island in Bocas del Toro, Panama.  I had come for a few days to renew my Costa Rican visa during a six month stint of volunteering at Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living and Learning near Puerto Viejo in Limón.  Stephen Brooks, the founder of Punta Mona and the real life Willy Wonka, suggested that I visit his friend Bruce at Finca Luminescence on the island.  I traveled with another volunteer named Olivia and arrived in the evening to find a European couple caring for the farm in Bruce’s absence.  They had helped a shaman harvest and brew Ayahuasca shortly before we arrived and offered it to us.

We drank early in the day, and I sat by a tree and saw visions of first a fiery snake and then the beautiful multi-colored Grandmother Spirit of the plant offering me everything.  Then I felt incredibly small and weak and overwhelmed by the energies of my surroundings.  I found it difficult to look at the plants nearby because of the powerful waves of electric energy they were exuding!  I closed my eyes, hugged the tree, and felt just what it was like to be the vine climbing ever upward!  The sun felt unbelievably delicious on my skin, and I began to feel a great and beautiful calling from the sky.

With my consciousness so wide open, everything around me was me.  This was wonderful and very confusing, almost like I was going insane, but I felt the presence of guardian spirits that were making sure I didn’t lose my mind.  I felt so loved and protected!  I sent powerful tangible healing energy to Olivia’s grandmother, who had lung cancer, and to Olivia, herself dealing with cigarette addiction.

The second time I partook was in Sedona.  The medicine was not nearly as strong, but my friends and I created a very powerful ceremony singing shoulder to shoulder until late in the night and experiencing incredible amounts of love!

The medicine administered by Leticia on the solstice was incredibly powerful!  I connected to the earth, but the energy from the sky that night was what really affected me!  I felt the energies of the other people journeying with me come together above us and open up the portal of light, which I traveled through! I went on an wild journey through space and somewhere out there found my true Self, an enormous electric radiant being of all colors and immense power!  I used this power to send healing intent to all the Earth.  This journey, which opened my consciousness to such galactic proportions, was even more confusing than the one in Panama, but in the morning I was still Keegan Meade and felt super empowered!

We shared our experiences in a circle.  One man heard the voice of Mother Earth saying in sweetness like he had never heard, “Hello!  I am your mother.”  Another spoke with a tree and a Native American in his own language and then became Mt. Shasta!  Many incredible experiences where had!

In the afternoon I went with Leticia and her daughter to a beautiful waterfall in Dunsmuir.  All day on Monday I stacked earth bags for the celestial hospital.  Yesterday I washed Katelynn’s windows and filled the leach field for the Portal de Luz with rock.  Now I have some spending money for a trip to Ashland this weekend!  My Aunt and Uncle are going to pick me up on their way to Rockaway Beach on Friday!  I will be giving massage to performers at Inlakesh music and yoga festival and sacred ceremony! 

Blessings one and all!  I leave you with this beautiful solstice meditation video!

 

Up on the Mountain!

Something I should have included in the previous post:  You can listen to the choir!  DVDs will also be made of this event.
http://www.pineal-tones.com/pinealtones/listen-here/

Dr. Todd seems like a very laid back and silly person.  Being around him makes me think of They Might be Giants.  This song could easily be about him.

Picking up where I left off, Fabian and I checked out of his suite and drove a few blocks to the house of a very friendly young local named Antarra who I met during the choir event.  He hopped in and directed us to Headwater Park, where we filled our bottles with fresh water gushing out of the rocks and met our friend from Kauai, who had spent the morning in a crystal shop.

We all went from there to Berryvale, the natural food store, where we met many other choristers lined up for lunch at the deli.  For me it was a very late very welcome breakfast!  After one o’clock the four of us finally headed up the road to the mountain.  A short distance along the way Antarra guided us to pull over at a sacred sight where two stars of David were laid out on the ground and encircled with small stones in adjacent clearings in the forest.

The first one we came to is about two meters in diameter.  Fabian performed an alchemical ceremony to support his intent to bring love and light to the world through music while the rest of us explored around and performed yoga, meditation, throat singing, and playing of the digeridoo.  Check out Fabian’s love and light here:

Antarra and Dylan, the Kauai-an, discussed topics such as Yeti, who they described as higher vibration multi-dimensional beings of light that work to balance planetary energetics by adjusting the crystal light grid.  Antarra told us about encountering the beautiful creatures at this same place not long before.

I followed the drifting sound of Dylan’s harmonic throat singing to the other star some sixty meters up the trail.  It is about 8 meters across, and the woods around this larger clearing offer a beautiful echo.  He told me that a few days earlier seven different Native American voices came through him to accompany the sound of his friend’s drum.  Before returning to the car all four of us joined hands in the small circle and freestyle toned for several minutes.

A few miles further up mountain is a place called Ascension Rock.  We passed by maybe 60 or 70 people who were camped in the forest all around and climbed straight to the top of the 5-meter-tall landmark, remarking at the apparent upward vortex of energy.  Antarra informed us that the rock stands directly above the council chamber of the city of Telos.

After a moment he took us to another pile of rocks, this one above the city library, where vast amounts of knowledge are stored in crystalline templates.  As we sat and looked out at the view of the valley, I asked him how he knew what he was telling us to be true.  He replied that the rocks had told him and that he had been to the city of Telos many times, not physically but ethereally in meditation and sleep.  He revealed that Antarra was not his given name but had come to him one day while sitting on these rocks.  He marveled that he is a Scorpio and that Antares is the name of the brightest star in that constellation, known as the heart of the scorpion.

We sat together for a while longer absorbing information from the library and exchanging our truths, Dylan explaining for a long moment how each of us is a fractal aspect of Source energy, reflecting, supporting, and enriching the Whole in an infinite variety of unique ways, like snowflakes in the water cycle.

When the others returned to Ascension Rock, I remained at the library for a long while in meditation.  Our time on the mountain was drawing to a close as Antarra had to meet with some friends back in town, but before we left the Rock Fabian offered an inspiring freestyle poem that I wish I could recall for ya’ll reading this, but alas there is no capturing what flows ever free.  We left those trees and headed down to town in glee. Weeee! 🙂

I said goodbye to my new friends, and Fabian was nice enough to drive me back north beyond Weed before heading south to Nevada City.