Ocean to Desert, 2008

Ocean to Desert Log, 2008:
What is unique about the following writing is that it was almost all done on my iPhone during the time my macBook was stolen and hence the writing style was dictated by the mechanics of one finger pecking.

Surf

Surf is what happens while your busy making other plans.
The smell of fresh board wax in my nose is divine as I paddle out on cold, dark green water. Sky is grey. The first bite of winter is in the air. The waves are peeling perfection. The wind moves the bamboo like a breathing haiku. Is there more than this?
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Happiness

I sit on the floor of the Mothership looking through the bamboo at perfect peeling waves, sipping genmaicha tea. First light and I am about to paddle out. There is nothing but happiness here.
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Sunset

Right this moment the sun is setting, sinking like an orange, molten heart into the cooling sea. Each backlit, translucent wave is a pearl dropped into a cup of satin smooth sake. And now all is one.
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In the World of Sunsets

In the world of sublime, 3D sunsets this one is a Royal Flush. I sit on the cliffs above Swami's drinking a big cup of homemade chai that is sublime in itself and look out almost shivering with emotion at the waves of evolving color, depth, relief and pattern as the sunset continually redefines itself against the foreground of an ever-changing ocean.

Sublime. If there could only be one word to describe this phenomenon, this moment in time, this interactive experience, that would be it.

Memories fade but the sky still lingers. Color lingers forever then fades to night.

I disappear like a ghost into the void.
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Rain

It's raining. It's so beautiful it's almost heartbreaking. The music is piercing into my heart, the rain is pattering on my roof, the candles are soft and air is sweet with lavender. Stereophonics sing "maybe tomorrow I'll find my way home."

I am about to make some sacred tea on this perfect night. I am happy. Right down to my root I am happy. Ah, oh ah, so good and satisfied.

I am looking into your eyes. You are laughing at me. I like it.

Let's get on the magic carpet and ride this long night through space. Who could dare to sleep when there is so much life to live? You are most lovely when you give.

I have miles to go before I sleep.
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Breathe

I breathe in the steam from my yixing clay pot like I breathe in your breath like it is life, like it is holy. I lose myself in the steam, warmth, heat, aroma, experience like I lose myself in your warmth. My eyes, nose, skin, senses flood with the richness, sacredness of the spirit of the tea like they flood with your life-warmth. This is holy, this is now. Perfectly now.
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Fiction

Truth makes the best fiction. Inside the holy I wait tired and excited for the magic prize. Outside the temple the night is alive and cold, living rain patters on the roof and gives me chills. Inside I offer myself on the altar of my own gentle desire. The music is tangible, visceral, poignant, beautiful. I breathe. I breathe again. There is no place else to be. This is full. This is rich. This is complete. This is perfection. This lacks for nothing. The smile spreads from my spine, from my belly, to my mouth and spreads my lips open and moves to my eyes. It hangs, held in perfect balance between radiating out and being drawn inward. The rain is louder, chills on my flesh. Full of grace. This is perfect, there is nothing else. I can wait forever, like Hesse's Siddhartha. I can be as happy alone in a cave as riding a wave. There is no difference. Wave, cave. The same. The warmth spreads inside me, my hair stands up, the wave of bliss comes. I am everything. I am beauty. I am sublime. This all there is. Your smile comes through the softness.
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Night

High above the world in the Mothership. Looking down through the windshield at the hundreds of beautiful colored lights, like Christmas lights, of the town of Joshua Tree far below. Like coming in for a landing in an airplane or a spaceship.

Candles, the best music in the world, homemade chicken soup, eggnog with nutmeg and brandy, baguette and double cream Brie.

Cold cold cold outside and warm and happy inside. Is this heaven?
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Sunrise

I roll out of the warm nest of my duvet, slip on some sweats and a pullover and melt into the desert as silent as a shadow.

Sunrise over the mountains. Pink swirl clouds on a pale, but luminous, blue background. The world pale without direct sunlight but still glowing like the moon, with a seeming soft, inner light.

I wander through the desert flora, newly awakened to its intricate and delicate beauty, one eye on the sky blossoming with color.

I focus on my breath, again and again and think of delicate breath and tender yet oh so strong heart. There is no place I'd rather be.
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Desert Sunrise

Sitting in the high desert hot springs watching a desert sunrise over the mountains that is luminously incandescent, vibrantly rich in color, like a supernova or deep space nebula giving birth to a field of stars. The colors of ultra ripe tropical watermelon, passion fruit, mango, guayaba, papaya and star fruit.

The smell of high desert sagebrush at dawn makes me shiver with delight and memories.

I focus on each breath and I am lost; I am not other.
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Don't Go Back to Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you; don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want; don't go back to sleep.

Before sunrise. Mountains ring the desert. Mountains dusted with snow, etched against the sky, glowing with a pale inner light, dominate the western horizon.

There is absolute silence in the way of the desert and the air is sweet with
the smell of sage.

Two ravens fly overhead. I soak in the hot springs and bring my awareness into each breath, dissolving me into now.
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Happiness

Trying to hold on to someone is like trying to hold on to happiness. It's impossible because happiness isn't something you can hold onto because it already exists inside you. You can't hold it, you just keep making more. ;-)
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Desert Sweat

I walk barefoot following the San Andreas fault from oasis to oasis. The desert air sucks the moisture from my body and licks my sweat dry. The ground is cool and damp in the oases. The air is warm. For ten thousand years before me other bare feet walked these paths. I focus on the breath and there are no feet.
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The Sky

Flat on my back. My hair stands up and goosebumps rise on my skin as the cold, dry morning desert air evaporates the mineral water on my skin.

The sky is vast. A watercolor wash of soft clouds, with intricate patterns and designs float across the soft blue like an armada. The delicacy and intricacy of design and vastness is mesmerizing.

I follow my breath and disappear.
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Kokopeli

Coltrane soars and floats, filling the Mothership with melody and the joy of jazz. Colors fade and the cold descends into my skin and bones. Completely relaxed, soaring with the music.

I came here with an intention to find magic. I reunited with Kokopeli and we made a journey into the desert, found an oasis and a granite channel to the stars where I went into deep chakra meditation and blasted off.

The sun was already setting yet I thought the day had just begun. Pure magic. Today we feasted on the date of wild yucca in the free and pure desert and brought the black seeds back to the altar to share.

Now, the warmth of the Mothership, full of vistas with all her window shades removed. The mellow tones of Coltrane go down like a tawny Port.

There is life and healing here; lessons to be learned, inspiration, fresh vision, new things come to be birthed here; new ideas, shifts in consciousness.

This a place to journey, to pilgrimage, literally over the body of the desert, and inward, and through the chakras, to the universe.

May all beings become enlightened.
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After Nightfall

After nightfall look to the east and see Venus and Jupiter and remember that 95% of the universe is invisible. I walked through the desert alone under the pale moonlight and starlight and watched Promethean fire fall from the sky and heard the music of the desert.

I ask for what I need and for what comes next. A renewing of commitment to myself, my journey and my path. Live simply; walk lightly on the earth. Give what is dear to you away. Let go. Let the circle turn.
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Portals

There are gates and portals in the desert that take you into secret gardens. One takes you into a power spot that can take you deep into yourself and then right into now.

Imagine a granite egg inside a granite rock, but the egg is hollow. You crawl in and sit in this egg and meditate and you will journey deep inside yourself. You will realize things.

I sat in the granite chamber before sunrise this morning and went on a journey within. First, I had a tonglen like none other. I could see the light going out of me to the Buddha and the light radiating out of him into loved ones and I could see and feel them full of happiness.

When I took the pain away from my dad over my mom's death, and my exgirlfriend's pain, and my mom's and more and more people's pain, like a black light into the bindu of black light in my heart representing my own ego suffering I actually felt the unbearable pain of others as my own pain, literally felt their suffering as my own. And I realized how insignificant my own suffering is relative to all the suffering in the world.

I was in such a powerful state of meditation that I went through many meditation techniques, one melting seamlessly into the next. The Buddha sitting in front of me and pure white light shooting between our foreheads and chakras. A deep chakra meditation in my own body. Avilokateshvara melting into my crown chakra. Vajradara's nectar filling me as he dissolved into my crown chakra. Exploding into pure light at the end of my tonglen and being the light. Being filled with blue nectar.

I saw Mingyur Rinpoche's face and then I saw him and brought him to my mind.

At one point during my meditation the spirit of a mountain lion came in and laid down next to me. She was drawn in by the depth and tranquility of my meditation. For a moment I was a little overwhelmed but then I relaxed and she lay curled beside me while I meditated.

I relived childhood memories from around five years old of the thing I loved the most as a kid, riding ponies, for the first time in my life.

I realized at some point that I came here to Joshua Tree for healing and that's exactly what the earth is giving me.

In tonglen, I think of a time I am happy. "Right now." Know that there are reasons for happiness. "Yes, I am happy because I am in nature." Simple as that. My place and my healing is in nature.

It also came to me that I can get my masters in transpersonal psychology or something cutting edge and brilliant. Then combine that to create a holistic healing program set in nature, with yoga, Ayurveda, Buddhism, therapy, changing stuck patterns, crystallizing vision, breaking molds, diet and exercise and engaged bodhicitta, actually doing good for others practically and taking the focus off yourself.

This was my morning journey with the spirit of the mountain lion.
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Ceremony with the Old Ones

Kokopeli came and said he'd been given a pipe and instructed to give it safely to the land. He asked me if I would do ceremony with him on the place of the old ones where they had a kiva.

He led me to a pool of fresh rainwater where he drank and showed me a grinding slick used by the old ones.

Then up to a half cave with pictographs on a ledge overlooking this enclave. He said he believed they did ceremony here and talked to spirits. We found bits of pottery everywhere.

Next he led me to the sage garden where we purified ourselves for the ceremony. He said sage is more powerful when used in the same place it grows. There was a flock of quail living at the entrance to this oasis and nearby we found an ancient arrowhead for birds. We realized it was for this same flock that was also here hundreds of years ago that this arrowhead had been used.

This place was a kind of oasis. I could literally see the people living there, children, moms and dads, drinking the water, eating dates and nuts, acorns.

Finally he took me to the kiva where we laid out stones to the four directions. He took out the pipe. He had filled it with tobacco he had grown from his own seeds. He gifts this tobacco to the Hopi people.

We smoked and prayed. He in the Havasupai Hopi tradition and me in Lakota Sioux. I asked the powerful ally tobacco to take my prayers to the tonkashilas so they could be answered. I prayed for all beings.

We all bring healing to each other. There is no teacher and no student--we all are students and teachers of each other. We all bring the gift of healing to one another.

We wondered at the chain of tradition from the very first people to the natives here. I could feel them so close, the veil so thin. I could see them there all around us.

We placed the pipe near the cave and parted ways. I wandered the desert until nightfall.

The oddest thing is that my first day in Jtree a few days ago, the first thing I did was wander through the desert and ended up exactly where he led me to today. I had already been magnetically drawn there. Wow.
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Owls in the Desert

I was awakened from a deep sleep by the beautiful sound of two owls calling in unison. It's a melodic and haunting sound. I realized that it used to be a familiar and joyful sound in my world. I haven't heard it in seven years. There is nothing but good in being back here. I am on a journey.

It's all about breathing and being here now, in the moment, being present. Not being anywhere else. Not being in thoughts about anything else. Just breathing and being here, now. The simplest and most profound answer. Breathe and be completely present.

You will walk this same earth.
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The Desert World

My site, number 18, is the gateway into the desert; on the one side is the campground, civilization; on the other, the desert, timeless nature. My backyard *is* the desert.

In the secret garden above my site where wild tobacco grows (nicotia rusticus), below a granite wall we sat and found the tiny bones of mice from owl pellets that the rain-washed down the cliff.

There is a plant abundant in this most beautiful secret garden with a fragrance that is a perfume to the nose and a balm to the senses.

We make a mandala with the bones.

The desert calls me in. I have my bodhicitta mala in hand and I chant "Om mani padme hum" once for each of the 104 beads on the mala, over and over as I follow the desert in deeper and deeper until I am sitting under the biggest Boojum tree I have seen.

Under this tree I sat, faced the sun and went instantly into deep meditation. When I came out I laid on my back with my legs up the tree looking at the tree against the blue sky.

Then the desert called me deeper and deeper into new places. Eventually
I cross over to the sage garden where I purify myself with the fragrant smoke of this sage.

I find the kiva and meditate. Next the pool. Finally I sit in the cave with the pictographs studying them and looking over the valley. I meditate. Outside in the sun I do yoga and feel the energy surging through my body.

I stealth run home like a happy ninja.

Finally home. Hot chocolate with whole milk, real cacao powder, turbinado sugar and cacao nibs. Ahhh. Now I will study yoga and listen to mingyur rinpoche give a dharma teaching.

Yesterday with the old ones I felt a strong connection or presence of Tibetan. Today I found out the Hopi consider themselves related to Tibetans!

This is a whole new dimension to life. This place is pure and there is strong teaching, learning and healing here. There is renewing and maybe even rebirthing. It is a channel.

This goes out to my muse who inspires me.
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Practice

At five AM I step outside and am surprised to find, instead of frozen stars, heavy cloud. Coyotes are singing on all sides. Without realizing it I am drawn into the desert. I walk and walk until I hear an owl hoo hoo hooing. I love this sound.
The first blush of pink begins in the east. I sit on a rock and chant ohm for a long time, filling my lungs with air and my body with life-force energy. I do pranayama and feel very present and full of life.

Now it is light. Excited, I go home and make chai.
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Sunset
Alone with the birds in the silence in the heart of the maze of rock formations, lying in a wash. The sun descends. The air temperature drops. The sunset through the rocks is pink swirls on a light blue background.

The sky turns violet and mauve. A crescent moon with a thin pearl white light tracing the outline of the full disc hangs low. Directly above it Venus and Jupiter line up.

I am enraptured.
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Unique

This morning while wandering long and far into the desert, letting it lead me into secret kingdoms of hidden rocklands, this occurred to me:
My experience of this high desert rock wonderland is that each moment is uniquely different from every other moment. Therefore nothing is taken for granted; nothing is routine, nothing mundane, nothing runs on autopilot.

Everything is new, unique, fresh, original, pristine, present, awake. Eyes are open and they see. Focus is on the breath. The mind is not lost in itself but is awake and present. Each moment unfolds with a sense of wonder.

This is a little of the healing the desert is giving me. If you come here with a clear intention and ask for what you want then everything becomes medicine.
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Intensity

The candent pink of sunrise clouds spreads across the eastern sky. I vibrate in the Mothership, trembling.

Yesterday I rode a bike far into the desert and returned in time to take Monty to meditate in the hollow granite egg and then share the ritual of homemade chai with him.

Then alone into the rock formations for yoga as the sun set lingering forever in a constant spectrum of changing hues of lucence and the full moon rose over the desert mountains against a darkening blue sky.

Lost in beauty, deep in the present, alive to my primal roots, every sensual undulation of creamy granite glowing with an inner light ignited by the moonfire, I was mesmerized in a field of exquisite, piercing perfection and wisdom, pearls of understanding blossoming and dropping like a gentle, cleansing rain into my knowing from the magic of now.

Back home, for a long time I sat beside a fire playing my guitar and singing, watching the moon move across the sky and sucking up the warmth with my flesh and bone until at last I heeded the call and let the desert pull me in yet again.

The moon had turned the desertscape into a palely glowing dreamscape where I glided effortlessly through the formations alone and in silence utterly frozen with the beauty, breathing, while constant wisdom and learning came to me, through me, from somewhere, as the desert, answering my call, revealed.

Tired, naturally coming to a close of it's own rhythm, the wave of exploration subsided again and left me gently at rest in the soft warmth of the Mothership. I already felt as though I'd been through a cosmic blender, emotionally, mentally and physically. The intensity and depth of experience is hard to capture with my words. I literally trembled with excitement, energy, and sheer intensity of the long rollercoaster of a day and night of being bared naked to the desert and having my outer and inner eyes exposed to the pristine beauty inherent in every vibration of isness, from a grain of quartz, to a tiny plant, to the soft pale desert rockscapes, to the sky. From the atomic to the cosmic. From my breath to the exploding electric energy unleashing in my chakras.

A knock on the door, a soft voice and Annie entered with a gift of dark chocolate. She is a climber and a modern dancer with a dance company in NYC. We sat quietly eating chocolate while she talked about life changes and then for a couple hours we shared a very relaxing and gentle massage and then I walked her home and, unable to resist the magnetic pull of sheer beauty, once again I let the desert take me.

This time I surrendered completely. I found myself walking with direct, steady steps far into, and across, the desert. Lost in deep canyons, climbing glowing rock formations in exultation, watching the moon track across the sky, roaring at an imagined mountain lion in a tight, remote canyon like a wild, primal beast.

It occurred to me that I am absolutely comfortable and at home alone in nature.

Eventually I turned and circuitously wound back to my own familiar rock formations, my own known and loved secret rock gardens, alive.

When I finally collapsed into the soft warmth and sanctuary of the dear Mothership, place of peace, I was vibrating and pulsing, my muscles shaking, with sheer intensity and depth of experience. I had journeyed deep into the present. I felt like I'd been through a blender.

Utterly in a state of deep peace that was the aftermath of the naked initiation by fire into the simple, pristine, naked beauty of now, I write, while morning whispers gently to the dawn.

Avanti.

There is nothing but this, and experiencing this, even for a little while, is instantly liberating.
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Snow

Outside, the rock formations are soft, muted forms against a sea of all-encompassing white, as a hard wind drives the thick, soft flakes of snow, in swirling trajectories, almost parallel to the ground, to stick, cover and silence everything, even the wind.

Inside the Mothership, watching through the glass, I shiver and am wet from my dawn hike into the snow world. Two things on my mind: chai and Baja.

The window is sealed with snow now, just white. I want no more cold.
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Happy

I sit in the utter silence of a world buried in snow, feeling the Mothership sway in the wind that drives the snow horizontally. She is covered in snow and insulated like an igloo.

Inside, drinking hot chai and reading Dorothy Dunnett under a down comforter, I am as utterly content, at peace, comfortable and satisfied as the snow is cold, fresh and silent.

Joshua Tree has emptied out; I have dug in. This is the life I love; this is the freedom I love; this is the nature I love.
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Outside the Pleasure Dome

It's a shock to be out of the desert and back into the developed world. Like a meditation retreat, you don't realize how deep the experience was until you leave and have a reference to compare it with.

Being in JTree for 2.5 weeks I was so deeply in it it just seemed normal. I didn't realize how different it is from life outside the desert world. But it was also getting really cold.

In a world of rock and sky, walking in the footsteps of the old ones, meditating in caves, measuring time by the sun and moon, it's easy to very quickly forget about the world of development out here.

It was so wonderful living in the Mothership in nature at last. A great prelude to life in Baja. I was so content.
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Wonderful

It is so wonderful to be back here in San Diego! Sunny, morning, fresh and cool (and thank god, not COLD!)

Michael's cottage is special. Outdoor shower, garden, incense and Indian music, surfboards.

Last night I was so excited by the sound of the rain on the roof and the train I got up and danced with uncontrolled delight. ;-)

It's so good!

Hugs smiles, breathe.
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Five AM. Cold. Rain falling on the Mothership. Inside, warm under down comforter. This is delicious.

A new storm is here. It would be hard to feel more content than I do. Great skateboarding dreams and magic. I look forward to going south to warmth and waves. Oh Baja.

Breathe.
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