Dear Subscribers,
As I near the fortieth anniversary of my vows, I would like to devote two posts to the order into which I was later ordained. It is called the International Assembly of Spiritual Healers and Earth Stewards and is an international assembly with tens of thousands of ministers. It was founded by a lawyer in Washington State. Obviously, there are histories, but I will not attempt to relate the story but rather concentrate today on stewardship and within the next week on healing.
Unfortunately, I cannot do this without reference to the ongoing meltdown, but I will try to be light on that part of the whole. Earth Stewards have taken it upon their shoulders to do what is necessary to assure sustainability of the planet and its diverse life forms. Unfortunately, while this sounds lofty and idealistic, agreement on how best to achieve this is lacking. The biggest example of this is probably climate change. Regardless of what we hear via the biased media, on professional levels, there is actually no consensus as to whether the planet is warming or facing the potential of a sudden ice age. In short, one's heart may be in the right place, but facts may be utterly different from what we imagine. However, the policies are based on whichever facts are officially accepted by governments. At the moment, the president is holding his ground on his view of climate. Experts are, however, all over the map, and many have accepted rather enormous tribute for supporting the official position. Since weather has been weaponized, it goes without saying that the official line will be whatever justifies manipulation of weather. That said, we do have carbon footprints, but I personally believe the issue is so large that the piddly measures individuals might take pale by comparison to the larger concerns. Where does this leave us? It leaves the stewards in the position of trying to manage what is within our means, means that are incapable of addressing the possibility of being hit by a meteor or crescendoing solar emissions.
You know my brain is equipped with a sort of zoom feature so I can shift from picky details to the bigger picture without even thinking of how inconvenient this might be for readers. So, one of the more facetious images on my mental screen is the vast gap between the Pachamama provision of the Ecuadorian Constitution and the citizenship given to a robot who is potentially the prototype of some psychopath with an IQ of 6000. I surely hope there is a provision for removing the batteries!
Realistically, what can we do by way of stewardship that will make a difference? Few of us realize how powerful our wallets are. Every time we whip out our plastic, we are making a decision to support one activity as opposed to another. It therefore matters whether we eat organically or consume genetically modified organisms. That said, I am still running an experiment with that loaf of bread bought before my last trip to Ecuador. I flew out of here in January and the bread says "organic" but has not got any mold. I have not tried to compost it, but I am thinking of sending it to someone like Mike Adams to see what his laboratory discovers. It is a well known brand . . .
Composting is important and over the last several days, I have read quite a few differences of opinion on that subject. It is uncomfortable for me that the spectrum there is also very broad which means we have to be discerning. I think we also need to go to the source as much as possible, and there are two ways to do this. The first is to avoid all the plagiarists online. There are two main types of plagiarists: the robots who read materials stolen from original sources and those with copy and paste propensities. In both cases, the question is why are they contributing to the clutter? Some of you want to know why I make it difficult to contact me except via official forms. It is because only 1-2% of my incoming mail is really addressed to me. The rest is headed for the trash bin. This is our culture today.
Let's take a White House briefing as an example. Why don't we just listen to the briefing on a WH channel? Why do we have to listen to tiresome anchors whose commentaries are 99% irrelevant? This is not journalism and cribbing someone else's material is not research. In any event, the main sources for compost information are Nature Herself and credible field experiments. We can observe Mother Nature and see how She handles the issue; or, we can do real experiments with countless variables so that the proofs required by the allegedly scientific mind are provided. I favor the first approach because it is for sure natural and usually easier. It is why I am a Fukuoka-style permaculturist and not an enzyme soup specialist.
Taking now as an example, we had high winds and my driveway is deep in pine needles, not to mention leaves. Now, it is bitter cold and my gutters are full of leaves so what am I going to do? The "American" way is to bag up everything and put the huge bags out for others to cart off in big trucks. The middle way would be to collect everything from my yard and from the neighbors and make a big pile that will get very hot at some point and produce nice soil. I could spread the leaves around and protect plants that are a bit frost tender or I could chop them up with a machete or mulcher. Nature just puts the nutrient-dense leaves on the ground where the leaves break down naturally over a period of months so they are ready to recycle the nutrients into new growth come spring. So, if I move the leaves around or chop them up, am I aiding or interfering with Nature? The answer can actually be found online where there are studies to show how far down into the soil the various composting strategies work. There is a symbiosis between fungi and yard "waste" that is fascinating and profound, and heat plays a vital role in this relationship so more happens in spring than winter.
As you all know, I am 100% opposed to ingesting fungi, but there can be no denying that what is good for the soil and the plants that grow in the soil is a different matter. We also need to recognize the complexity of the various parts of natural processes and make sure that nothing we are doing is interfering with Nature. We should also try to determine what supplies nutrients and what just builds dirt. For instance, should we really grind up junk mail and add it to compost?
Gosh, decades ago, I heard about the experiments with rock dust and the orchards and forests in Germany that were being chewed up by acid rain. Obviously, rock dust alkalizes the soil, but does it do it better than caffeine? Seriously, caffeine is an alkaloid and most herbs have lots of alkaloids so do we know which is best for the fungi, bacteria, and worms in the soil? All I am suggesting is that if one wants to be a responsible steward, one needs some education.
To this end, I started with a few "no brainers" that included landscaping changes. If you recall, the domain names I first sought were all taken, meaning I was not actually the first kid on the block, maybe the first on my block but not on the world wide web. I ended up with "revolution" because it infers non-conformity as well as alignment with the motion of the planets and stars . . . but that is another story for another day.
The first step of the landscaping revolution was to desist from practices that are not natural. I would find the plants that attract beneficial insects and birds so that no pesticides are needed. Well, there had not been any on the property so far as I know, but builders do not always tell the truth. The second step was to replace the useless features with practical ones without sacrificing any aesthetics. Flowers that attract pollinators or that are found on medicinal plants are attractive in all senses of the word. They attract attention from pollinators and our eyes. They are visual feasts and they sometimes make excellent remedies. I tried to do everything in the laziest way possible so that the yard was actually low maintenance. That has turned out to be very fortunate because it has been a while since I got down on my hands and knees to fuss. I had a couple of nasty injuries that interfered with my good intentions but the yard has survived without much help after the initial efforts . . . which did, of course, take time and energy.
As years passed, I became more and more purposeful. I believe this is a side effect of taking responsibility for my actions, but it sometimes comes with maturity and experience. However, in my case, I was simply walking my talk and trying to be responsible. In the forested parts of the yard, I did compost some cardboard but no junk mail. Where the edible and medicinal plants are, I made sure that only leaves and kitchen waste were used. Over time, the depth of the soil has changed. I measure this by the bottom of the fence. I would say that I have added at least four inches to the soil since beginning the revolution. However, the quality of the soil is not great once going a few inches down from the surface. It was not alive when I bought the property: just sandy and very soft, meaning my feet sank when I walked, worse than on a beach. It was a long time before I saw my first worm and longer yet before seeing any deep color in the soil. So, this is a recovery process, and it needs to happen on a global scale, one parcel at time from Cairo to Cape Town, from Caracas to Tierra del Fuego, from Anchorage to Auckland, and Dublin to Dubai.
My attention to permaculture was sidetracked after the Fukushima disaster. Though I have written very little lately on radiation, I believe it is still a problem, but a somewhat different problem than it was before. There are pundits on the subject, but also a lot of very poorly informed people. There are many types of radiation so we cannot lump them all together. This last week, I watched a film about the wolves of Chernobyl. It is a very nicely done documentary with many versions online. For me, the poignant parts were the visuals of the particular way that plants have recovered in what was once called the red zone. It is perfectly obvious that plants are doing well, but so are most of the animals. It is contended that humans cannot survive in the exclusion zone, but there was a lack of evidence to support this statement. Comments on YouTube tended to refer to the life expectancies of animals versus humans, but I feel this is a misunderstanding since cancer does not always take years to appear. There is something else here and you can be sure, my synapses are hard at work.
Now, I am trying to translate my life experience into the Ecuadorian plans. For all intents and purposes, I have lived in most climatic zones at some time or other. I spent most of my childhood in Southern California, not all, but a large part of it. We moved to Hawaii in my teens and I spent years in Asia, some in Europe, lots in Santa Fe, and now the Pacific Northwest. To give a tiny example of how my mind was working, there is a video on the Institute site where Kitzia is showing that the soil is lifeless. A man is chopping cuttings to mulch the soil. I sent her links of mulching machines but she showed almost no interest. I am trying to see through her eyes to figure out what she is thinking. I know it will be creative and productive.
This brings me to the last topic for today. Another property has come onto our radar. This is a small hotel, 20 rooms, with quite a bit of land and a seminar room. Kitzia knows the property well. We have each committed to putting our funds into this (pending sales, of course) and want three more partners for the project. If you are open to considering this, please contact me privately (using the link at the bottom of this post).
Last weekend was a very good weekend for sales. I managed to send half of the payment for the reprinting of the book. Then, sales went through the floor. I realized how impossible it is to compete with the World Series! In any event, I would like to thank everyone who for their loyalty. Being a fire type, loyalty ranks very high on the list of traits I crave. I love it when you share posts with friends and family. You don't need to ask, and you can urge others to sign up also. This said, I am part way down the road of making the list mobile compatible. Sit tight.
Likewise, when you refer people to my sites for products, I feel that my hard work is valued and am very grateful to you. Sometimes I share points of view or experiences that are very personal, but there are usually reasons for drawing attention to the issues revolving around the tales. I do want to assure everyone that we are moving forward, but I seem to go from crisis to crisis with the IT issues. The problem is all hosting eventually becomes obsolete so we are updating and updating but the Institute site crashed, and we moved it three times in the last ten days or so. It means there were times when it was not even available. You don't know how badly I want to stabilize so that my time is used more efficiently!
I will probably write a couple of posts in the next days because there is a need for focus as well as for understandings the energetics of what is happening in the sky as we speak.
Blessings,
Ingrid
Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2017
Review of What in the World are They Spraying?
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