This will be a very personal e-mail. If you aren't interested, you can delete it, but so many of you wrote asking if everything is okay. Yes, it is, but there is a bit of a story and I had wanted to wait until today to tell it.
At age three, I had a helium balloon and somehow it got away from me. My father, an aeronautical engineer at that time—other things later—took a hose and directed the water on top of the balloon and brought it down for me. I held onto it well after nightfall. Some nights later, we came home to an enormous full moon and I asked him to get it for me. He said it was too high so I said, "Daddy, get the water." He said the water wouldn't reach so I told him to get a "yadder". I was twelve before I could pronounce "l's" properly. I'm sure there are some clues to past lives here.
I took this as the beginning of my astrological pursuits. They actually developed fast. There are obviously countless stories here, but let's fast forward to around age 30 when Jupiter and Neptune were both transiting my Moon. Ivy Jacobson came into my life and became both a great teacher and blessing. Her first letter to me was signed "forever trine" and these wonderful letters continued right up to her death at the age of 97.
Ivy's life story always fascinated me. She was born in Brisbane, Australia, in the nineteenth century. Once a year, her father allowed her to order anything she wanted from London. At three, she asked for a copy of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, a two thousand year old and still relevant astrology textbook. It took a while to source it but no time at all for her to memorize it. So, when other children had not yet learned the alphabet, she knew the Tetrabiblos cover-to-cover. Her father did not want her to attend school because he was afraid of the influence of other people on his precious daughter. She was thus completely self taught in music, architecture, foreign languages, and, of course, astrology.
At the age of twenty, she emigrated. Upon arrival in San Francisco, the thing she most wanted to do was to see a classroom. In her entire life, she had never seen others seated in rows facing teachers with blackboards. It was a totally visually and emotionally impressive experience for her. Those of you who home school or who were home schooled might appreciate the power of this experience.
Ivy married a man much like her father. He not only kept her home but he phoned three times a day to make sure she was there. There is a picture of her in her Horary Astrology book. She was unbelievably beautiful, but probably more importantly, she was a special person with sensitivities that are, in fact, easily corrupted by our world and the experiences we have in the world.
Her husband, Louis, died when Ivy was 65 and she began publishing, nearly one book a year right up to her death. At 30, when I started reading those books, I could not believe that anyone could take an enormous idea and condense it into very concise thoughts that evoked instant intuitive understanding. I wrote her many letters asking about how she developed her writing style and she always said, "It just comes out this way the first time." She was impervious to typos and digressions. More importantly, for someone with such a clear connection to a discipline, it was astounding that she not only preserved and perfected her gifts but did not publish until the age we are expected to retire.
I have always been interested in our gifts from our Creator as well as why mathematical and musical talent manifests so young and generally fail to unfold if the prodigies are not discovered while still young whereas some gifts seem to mature like good wine. I have also been fascinated by longevity because I observed that great astrologers, orchestra conductors, and sometimes gardeners tend to live long lives, especially as compared to doctors to dentists.
I used to obsess over this because I sensed that being in harmony is not all that easy. Astrologers have their own concepts about the harmony that should exist between humans and Cosmic influences. I suspect conductors also have a definite sense of exactly how inspired compositions have to be performed. The inspiration is, of course, part of humankind's relationship to the Creator.
Gardening can also be very inspiring because, I believe, plants are in tune with the Earth and the Cosmos. I believe they worship all day long and that they have a deep, abiding faith in their value, something they impart to us in food and medicine as well as visual virtuosity.
As I have been approaching my own 65th birthday, I have been acutely aware that life is just beginning and that everything up to now has been a preparation. For this failure to accept 65 as a retirement age, I will always be deeply grateful to my beloved mentor.
This belief, however, is in stark contrast to our society that warehouses seniors in retirement homes. Over the years, I have visited many such places, only to be shocked by the social isolation and mental deterioration of our elderly. As a sort of hobbyist anthropologist, I am acutely aware that in other cultures, youth look to the elderly for guidance. A society that retires seniors and packs them full of drugs that modify their personalities and potentialities is a tragic society. I explain this a bit in my bio on kitchendoctor.com. No civilization can afford to render life experience useless and this is one of the many ways our society has gone amok.
I have always respected wisdom and been fortunate to meet some people whose words and ideas impacted me greatly. Yes, of course, it was hard to fit in and I have probably been a little too iconoclastic at times, but the soul is the most important part of each of us and I fought off any inferior influences on my soul and I try, as a counselor, to do the same for my clients. Awakening to the soul would, of course, completely transform planetary reality so I have fussed with whether to turn bioethika.com into a more dynamic place to discourse or whether to continue to use soaringspiritwithtears.com as the place where I put my most personal thoughts. A few weeks ago, I did what was most unthinkable to me. I bought my own name to host ingridnaiman.com. I promise you, I will never name a medical part or procedure after myself, but the intent was to provide a master index to my 20 web sites.
You know I have been outsourcing some work. A lovely lady in the Philippines is working on the indexing of cancersalves.com. These are actually big undertakings. If you remove all the pictures and just single space the lines, that web site has 308 pages of text. Moldmisery.com has 175 pages of text. I don't have any idea how much is online, but there are also 32 unpublished books.
It takes an enormous amount of time and money to publish. It is rarely remunerative so I have to wrestle with the issues of how to allocate my energies and resources as well as how the greatest good is served. Just getting it all organized was a big step. Starting very soon, I will be adding audio to many sites, beginning with the mid-life tune up program on kitchendoctor.com.
This was not practical before DSL, but most people now have fast internet connections so the potential for using more visuals as well as audio is there. I think the audio appeals to some people. The podcast was a sort of trial balloon. A few of you have now listened to that broadcast and given feedback. I hope more such ventures will be possible.
My goal is not to preach. I actually don't even believe in any attempt to persuade and I hate the way TV anchors and politicians talk. I would like to create context around sound bytes so that the richness and fullness of Creation is made more apparent.
When the internet first started, I was afraid that the next generation of children would not recognize an outdoor butterfly or bird. All creatures would be computer animations. I no longer believe this. I believe that we can not only raise the standard but make access to information and ideas global. The most remote area of Africa can link up to the global community and select what to see and learn. The possibilities are totally exciting to me and I am glad that at my age, I am still acquiring new technological skills.
This last week, I spent some time helping a colleague with his web site. I'll tell you about it when the project is finished. Much to my glee, one the most interesting design proposals came from Ghana, hardly the IT capital of the world. I was used to submissions from Romania and India, and even the occasional Egyptian or Argentinian bid, but when the leading contender was from Ghana, I was thrilled beyond my wildest imagination because it proves to me that what we all need is the opportunity to unfold our gifts. To deny this opportunity is a crime. What is more fascinating is that something as potentially sterile as a box with some chips and cables and software can be transformed into a device to producing masterpieces.
Moreover, I have no doubt that the computer is a microcosm of our relationship to Space and this subject, alas, might be best deferred to another time.
In any event, my message to you is not to worry. I am not, knock on wood, ill or depressed or even stuck, just contemplative.
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