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Day 102 of Shelter in Place.  We are doing this…It seems to unfold…I could do with less starch and sugar…but hey!  We are doing yoga…stretching these bodies…being present.  Quite frankly, I do not miss going out to restaurants…there are two or three or four in town that we frequented…one has gone out of business.  I feel for all the cooks and wait staff so we help where we can.  If anything…this is a huge learning process.  I find myself continually learning about allowance and acceptance…someone accused me of being the guru of self promotion recently…what an adage to live up to in this day…promoting this folly that we inhabit has been a job and has afforded me a lot of success and fluidity.  For that I am grateful…And this pandemic has afforded me the opportunity to gaze into the mirror and to access the tools of awareness, creativity and meditation and to be accepting of this huge and spectacular thing we call Life…and to live and create without an audience…Just Richard and I and our critters…Life is truly a gift…mistakes and all…I bow down to the Buddha in all of us…”what is…is…and what ain’t…ain’t…” I heard that proclamation long ago on a marble floor in a garden setting in India…somehow those words have stuck with me…

As some of you readers may know, I was part of a meditation group…ok…it was a cult…I was immersed in the community for part of the 70’s and most of the 80’s in India and Oregon…Many of the people from those days are still my friends…but a large group of them seem to be leaning into the q-anon conspiracy matrix that is so rancid and such a turn off…especially in this time of quarantine…where were these people when their Wizard of Oz and his mostly female Death Squad were reeking havoc in the Oregon high desert almost 40 years ago….?  I am so over this…but it is not my place to try and change them..I just disengage…I do feel that it is important that I note this…the world is in upheaval and it appears there are loony tunes of both equal and opposite sides populating the spectrum…My head is not buried in the sand…I go with my gut and what my heart tells me…right now in this present moment there is no future Buddha…no Maitreya that is going to spread and heal humanity with his/her truth…there is only this moment…me at a computer screen typing…digesting what is…and hopefully dispelling what ain’t….

I awoke today with special tears of gratitude washing over me…today is my birthday…in the back of my mind was that tune from Eric Clapton…”Tears in Heaven”…my feeling are such that despite all my transgressions and self sabotage early on in my life…these events were steps on the ladder…”oars” in the rowing to the Divine…I believe the poet Anne Sexton called it “The Awful Rowing Toward God”…I must say that I had my share of ‘awful” moments…but they seem to diminish over time and ultimately gratitude has pointed the way…So do I know my name?  Anado? Jimmy James Strange? Jimpy? Uncle Shieky?  Somewhere in this mass of energy is the nameless…the Anam…the Silence…I feel such gratitude today…I thank my Mother and Father for giving me this life…Only in Silence…the Word…Gracias a La Vida!

Early Morning…it is a Sunday…April 19 in the year 2020…By chance, today….I remember that I went to the Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon 38 years ago…April 19, 1982.  So much has happened over the years…4 of those years were spent on the Big Muddy which came to be known as Rajneeshpuram…Yes I was there…no regrets…No I have not watched the Netflix series, “Wild Wild Country”.  I am absolutely not interested.  It was quite the ride living in that Commune…quite frankly I was glad when it was over…I went to visit Bhagwan for two more years when he settled in India before he became known as Osho…my devotion to him began to fade when witnessing up close that he was actually just a man with his own set of ego-centric problems…however, he was quite the Wizard and I am not ashamed of my years by his side…So today is noted…we are in day 36 of self quarantine…Richard is still sleeping…I have been up since 5am…we will go for a walk at first light…this Life Journey continues…I am grateful for all the chapters I have lived and created…it is still a “good read”…Blessings to All…