Lets Try Another Way

Yielding to the Spirits as Guides

I was seated outside on the patio, a brisk wind had come from the northwest cooling the land after the terrible heat of the last week which has kept most of us indoors with AC. We lost power the first day for nine hours when the temperature peaked at 112. Fair enough. University of Empathy. Soon there would be thousands of unhoused people, suffering far far more than we would, many without any possibility of finding safety or comfort even as hospitals in areas like Phoenix (more than 100 consecutive days of temperatures over 100) find themselves needing to offer burn units, the sidewalks themselves like walking on fire. Efforts are being made to declare intense heat a federal disaster in recognition of the growing threat to life.

Here in Topanga, we only suffered such heat for a short time. Another of the many wake-up calls the spirits send. It is another story in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains where several fires, (of too many burning up and down the west coast), are blazing without any containment, at so great a heat, they create their own weather of fierce winds and lightning, the fires expanding and expanding. More and more people are being evacuated while the trees, the birds, the animals, the insects, the wild who have no responsibility whatsoever for these fires, cannot go to a shelter but will burn in place.

The Buddha fountain had been a reliable instrument to assess the extremity of the heat. It was covered with bees, dozens and dozens desperately seeking water. Today the numbers have reduced to familiar small communities that stop to take a drink while at work pollinating the world. It was a great joy to be outside again, observing the great beauty of Earth and the dance of light and shadow as the sun crossed through the sky fields of blue and drew the patterns of leaves on the ground through the groves of trees.

BUT … I had an iPhone in my hand and could not resist the addictive pull, physical, emotional, social, to check the responses to the Presidential debate, seeking who knows what balm for the horror that a pathological liar, a sexual predator and verbally violent individual, without heart or morals, should not only have been President but has been authorized to run again by a huge cabal of power seeking individuals. This is our country? In this time in history? With so much wisdom behind us, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, ancestral, scientific, historic?

On the one hand, this beauty, the bowl of green, soil and stone which is this canyon, birds, wind, Bees, Roses, Oaks, the Sun moving toward setting, the Moon about to rise, and on the other hand, the programmed overpowering banality of social media and contemporary American culture. Not impervious to the lure, I fell into an older New Yorker article about Agnes Varda, who at least interests me very much as an artist, and pretended that reading about film, intelligent film, was a reprieve.

One thing leads to another, free-associating, I remembered hearing about Agnes Varda’s cousin, Jean Varda the visual artist, who Agnes Varda immortalized in the film, Uncle Yanko. He was a close friend of my friend Anais Nin, whose devotion to writing and to emotional intelligence, educated me as a young writer. One of his magnificent collages hung in her living room in shades of rose, violet, lilac and gold. One of Anais’ pieces about him was contained in her book of stories, Collages, clearly named for his artistry. Once Anais described his arrival at a social event where he spied a woman wearing a magnificent coat with a tapestry lining. Varda pulled his scissor from his pocket and proceeded without asking permission to cut a swatch for one of his constructions.

Jean Varda lived on a houseboat in Sausalito which he shared with the philosopher, Alan Watts. Watts’ side of the boat was painted black and white while Vardas side was painted in wild colors. It is this contrast which I have been reaching for, between one form of beauty and another, as between dark and light, or Earth and Sky rather than the conflict that is tearing us apart, between what truly matters, the natural world, the spirits, meaning, essence, and the opposing powerful draw toward the superficial cultural forms upon which we are increasingly dependent. Yet, If we individually disconnect from these, we risk our economic and social survival.

This thread of associations leads us to AI and its developing penetration of our lives, our relationships and even the arts and literature, which if it dominates, as it well may, will be no more. It is another great and inconceivable, perhaps ultimately mortal danger that we are facing, hinted at by the iPhone that held me captive this afternoon. This last week it was announced that iPhone 16 from Apple has AI embedded in it!

How shall we save beauty, mystery and the imagination, and also the wonders of all the beings in concert in the natural world? The next generations will need wisdom to negotiate these times and preserve the future for humans and for non-humans — how shall they access it?

I begin to muse upon all of this – the egregious consequences of phone, computer and the media, and the true value and resources of the natural world. What to do? There is only one thing for me to do. I begin a healing gesture, an antidote, a medicine for desperate times. I invite a conversation with the spirits who may be willing to speak a few words or gift an understanding, as we humans seem only to know the way to hell but not the ways out of what we have wrought.

It was a beautiful day in Topanga. We, I, this writer and all the myriad beings, were finally meeting outside. We live by the wild, at the edge of Topanga State Park. Looking from here toward the next rise, I can see the area where a Black Bear, bless her, was spotted a few days ago. Wherever exactly the Bear is today, I do not know, but there is a Falcon living in the pine behind the house and Coyotes, Deer and Rabbits and, careful to avoid both Bear and Mountain Lion, you can hike past the great old Oak tree to Eagle Rock.

The Oak in Spring

For several years, I have been calling us to cultivate the ability to listen to, to ask for the counsel of the spirits and of the beings of the natural world. On our own, we demonstrate no capacity to stop our trajectory toward absolute destruction. Earlier today, I heard a talk sponsored by Pachamama Alliance¹ by the remarkable Peruvian Medicine person and Ceremonialist, Arkan Lushwala, whose last book is entitled,The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks: Ancestral Teachings of the Andean World for the Time of Natural Disorder. He spoke of willing and able to receive the wisdom from all the spirits, because, as he said, on our own we will probably not survive.

When I heard Lushwala’s talk², which itself felt like an invitation from the spirits themselves, he confirmed what I am trying to convey here — we are in great danger, and likely only alliance with and yielding to the wisdom of the Others will help us survive.

So, of course, as all of this was in my mind, I opened to the spirits as best as I know how. And it seemed, they responded. “Yes,” they said, ‘We are here.” Not in words, of course, you understand that. We hear them within, and what we hear is not our voice or our thoughts but something else quite distinct. As I write this, trying to convey the mystery, I am filled with amazement, gratitude and awe for the familiar and entirely remarkable communications that come from elsewhere.  

I had asked them, as I always do, “How do we meet these times so the natural world and all beings will survive and thrive? How do we reverse extinction, climate collapse and social chaos and violence?” This is my repeating desperate inquiry.

The spirits answered repeating what they have said so many times, “What is being done is what needs to be done.”

The implication is that those of us who are trying to act on behalf of Earth are doing what needs to be done and should continue with devotion. But that did not answer the particular question, certainly not directly with information or instructions which is what I was hoping for. I felt downhearted, concerned that I will leave this Earth without being assured that we will save Earth, save the planet, her inordinate beauty and the glorious beings who reside here, save them from ourselves.  We never know how much time we have, but I am of a certain age and I know something of age’s parameters and limitations and so my disappointment and rising concern. 

Then I found myself falling into a prayer, a writer’s prayer, I suppose: ‘May I remember and record what needs to be remembered.’ It is a prayer about memory and history and preserving them, as needed, for the future.

Then it is was that the voice or voices said,

“Forget your memories. What matters now is vision.”

The lines startled me.  Forget memory…?

“You got it,” they said. “Forget your memories.  What matters now is vision.” They repeated, “You must learn to vision.” This means deep listening. Deep listening to what is beyond us.

These words are not only for me. Didn’t Lushwala just say we must form collective vessels to hear what the spirits have to say to guide us? These words are for you. They are for us.

Forget our preoccupation with our little lives.  What matters now is vision. Vision, which is the gift we receive from the Others.

The words were suddenly punctuated by loud calls of four Ravens who came swooping into the old Oak. They waited for me and GentleBoy, my Husky companion, to stand up and come to where we could see the birds clearly.  Then they rose up in lyric exultations of flight, circling and spiraling on the back of the winds which raised and tossed them in wider and wider circles, as if inscribing everything for us in the air. Black wings, wheeling and whirling, writing in their mysterious alphabet against the bluest sky.  Then they were gone.

Without a seconds delay, I came into the house to write this to you. 

Blessings for the future,

Deena

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Classes beginning in October: for writers working on a project who would like to join a writing circle; for those interested in studying the 19 Ways. For more information, or to sign up, please email deenaworkshops@gmail.com.

On another note: I have been freely offering my writing to the community for about 60 years and posting essays on Substack since January 2022 and earlier for many years on WordPress (and will continue to do so). My intention was and continues to be to provide support, understanding, vision, and the wisdom, as I receive it from the spirits, in all the ways I am able. If you can support the work with a paid subscription or an intermittent donation and recommend it to your friends and colleagues, it will be greatly appreciated and make it easier to meet this summons which I cannot deny. (It helps the work circulate if you leave a comment and check ‘like,’ when you do.)

1. Pachamama Alliance Earth Listening Circles

2. Listen to Arkan Lushwala’s talk here