Yoga in the Sault (Soo)

Posted on November 22, 2016 by admin

Much thanks to LSSU in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan for hosting our weekend of yoga explorations, November 11 – 13. The classes were blessed with an amazing spectrum of students. There were parents bringing their children, ranging from 5 months, to 5, 6 and 8 years old; college students, University teachers, yoga teachers, and many of us on the other side of 60 and 70. The college students were a great inspiration, bringing energy, enthusiasm and creativity to the group. What follows is a brief summary of the points covered, some class details, and some links for further studies.

Unique and Universal

Unique: Make your practice your own. Authenticity is crucial in self exploration and self discovery. Every pose and every specific practice can be matched to your needs in the present moment. Learn to be sensitive to what your body/mind soul is requesting right now. In a yoga class, trust your inner instincts about what you are doing. This may not be easy as a beginner, but if you ‘trust’ that the body knows’, even a new student can tell when something does not feel right. Most yoga classes are based on conformity at some level, with students going through the same poses at the same time. (Chaos is not an easy thing to guide!) But even so, you can find a pace that works for you.

Universal, pt 1: There is a spiritual practice, a ‘yoga’ practice available for anyone, from a young child (SBK, born 12/14/96) to someone on their death bed (BKS, born 12/14/18); from a highly trained athlete to an ex-couch potato: from a ‘type A” world conqueror to a laid back hippy. (Your unique needs may require a balancing practice complementary to your dominant mode of being !)

Universal. pt 2: There are also universal principles that apply to all practices. Know these few intimately. “Always stay centered in your heart.” “Keep the breath/prana/chi moving at all times.” “Work with pairs of energy, the yin and yang, in every action, and find the place/feeling of dynamic balance.” “Warm up and cool down if you are practicing dynamically.” ” Constantly check in with ‘how it feels’, using this as the root of your next action. “Bring your practice into the world. Do not leave it on your mat.”

Awareness and Attention:
Awareness is a synonym for the Infinite Silence or Unbounded Stillness, that is the ‘Universal’ source of all. What arises, creation, what we can become aware of, we observe and study through the art of ‘paying attention’. We all create a unique perspective on life through the direction of our attentional field. To grow, we must continually expand the range and variety of our perceptions. In a somatic practice like hatha yoga, we expand our sensitivity into the inner worlds of: proprioception (feeling the breath and other energy) flows coming from within: kinesthesia (the feeling of how the various parts of the body move together. In meditation praction, we expand into self observation of the thoughts and emotions that flow through us moment to moment. In our relational yoga, we notice how our personal energy fields overlap and interact with others. In all of these explorations, we are looking to find more healing, lightness of being, kindness, ease and love.

Matter and Energy: Our attention/identification tends be on abstract thought. When our attention is brought to the body, we often ‘grab onto’ some structure like a muscle or bone to ‘land’. This is a clunky way to be in relationship with the body. If we can shift to an energy based sense of self, we begin to find and feel the chi, the flow that is our aliveness, and our body becomes our teacher, a living presence looking to express the divine light that is our universal fundamental nature. This requires bringing attention to the breath and its more subtle dimensions.

Seven Sacred Directions: please click for a detailed look at these.

Friday Evening Class:

Use a bolster, block or folded blanket for support in sitting. Your lower back will collapse without this and you will either sink down, or overwork trying to sit upright.

Three Limbs of Meditation:
1. Concentration or focal attention: Sustaining your attention in one place over time. Bring your attention to your breathing. If and when it wanders, bring your attention back to the breath.
2. Open Attention or mindfulness: Stay in the present moment, open to whatever arises. If and when you become distracted by following and getting lost in a thought or sensation, come back to open attention.
3. Contemplation: Hold a spiritual question or pithy phrase, (a Zen koan) in the mind field without trying to come up with an immediate answer. Let the question or phrase sit quietly, with the deeper dimensions of mind slowly adding their perspective.

Basic Standing Poses
please click to see the origins of these poses as three basic movements of the pelvis
Relaxation

Saturday Morning Class: Sound and breath: Open up your ‘ahs’ and ‘oohs’ to help clear the energy channels. Sustain the sound by balancing the action of the ribs and diaphragm.

Finding your core channel: Click here for more on the 7 sacred directions and relationship of the navel to the core.

Then, click on following link : Dog Pose and Variations

Pinning the clavicles: To help stabilize the shoulders when the arms are weight bearing, we begin by anchoring the collar bone to the sternum at the sterno-clavicular joint. You can use the fingers of the opposite hand to feel this. Now imagine the other end of the clavicle pinning itself to the shoulder blade at the achromion process. The clavicle feels as it is now extending in two opposite directions. The two ends have to be awake to allow the shoulder a healthy balance of both stability and mobility. Try the dog pose and variations again and compare the feelings. Flipping the dog requires an awakened clavicle to protect the shoulder during the weight bearing rotation it must do.

Now try vasisthasana, the side plank. We just played with the beginning level. If you feel inspired try variations 2 and 3.

Anantasana and variations: more practice on the balance from lateral line. Iyengar is doing the final pose. We began with the legs parallel and stabilized any wobbling through the core.

Saturday Afternoon class: The three pressure cavities, the five Prana Vayus, and Pranayama.
The heart center organizes the field that sustains the breath through the three pressure cavities of the body: the skull, the chest from the roof of the mouth to the diaphragm, and the belly, from the diaphragm to the pelvic floor. The skull and belly have a positive, or higher pressure, relative to the outside, and the chest is lower or negative. This creates a constant flow from skull and belly to the chest, as higher pressure will move toward the lower, and helps support the flow of blood back to the heart.

The problem is that, over time, many humans let the higher belly pressure push out, rather then up and down. Same in the head. And the negative chest pressure leads to a collapse of the ribs in and down. This leads to a very common postural shape. We can begin to restore the happiness of balance by learning to sustain an expanding rib cage, independent of inhalation and exhalation. Imagine the primary action of the heart center is expansion, like the opening of a hoberman sphere. In standing feel how this can help the brain empty downward and the lower body energy rise up. This unified field will then support all other physiological movements in the body.

In yogic terms, physiological movements are divided into five basic categories, known as the Prana Vayus, where vayu refers to the element air or movement. The first is called prana, (with a small p, to differentiate it from the “Prana” which refers to all of the five), is centered in the chest, and governs everything we take in. For our purposes, this is inhalation. From our unified field exploration, the chest should always feel expanding. The second is the apana, governs elimination, and is centered in the lower belly. It is a squeezing energy, and thus the belly should always feel that it is slightly squeezing inward. When prana and apana work as a single intelligence, you have the energetic support for what is now commonly called ‘core strength’.

The samana vayu governs digestion, deciding what to keep, what to eliminate, and generating energy from the oxygen of the breath and the food. Vyana is circulation, distributing the energy throughout the body, and udana is in charge of growth and development.

Breath explorations: pt.1: lying on the floor, supported as necessary to relax the spinal muscles and limbs, begin to relax the breathing more and more. Track the release down through your feet and out through your arms, as well as through head and tail. Pay special attention to the region form the diaphragm downward and try to empty it of as muchtension as possible, so the breath becomes effortless.

Pt.2: Now, without losing that softness, become aware of the ribs and invite them to expand sideways as the primary action of inhalation. Not up and down, not out into the belly, but sideways, like an accordion. On the exhalation, let the belly/abdominal wall squeeze the breaht out by pushing up on the diaphragm. This will ‘stretch’ the diaphragm, which may be tight. The ribs can slowly return, but feel the expanding energy still strong. Keeping the chest open (prana) lets the diaphragm stretch even more as the squeezing apana pushes the diaphragm higher into the more spacious chest.

Pt 3: Viloma Pranayama: here we choose to divide the inhalation and exhalation into stages, rather than a continuous flow. Viloma I divides the inbreath with a normal exhalation; viloma II divides the exhalation with a normal inbreath. The dividing creates a series of pauses, like walking up or down stairs. There may be 2 or 3 pauses, or even more if you are comfortable. What happens during those pauses is what makes Viloma such a rich practice. Our intention here is to balance the expanding prana and the squeezing apana, helping them work together.

Viloma I: on each of the pauses during the inhalation, squeeze the abdomen slightly and open the chest more. As a beginner, you may actually exhale slightly during the pauses. This is just fine. Two steps forward and one back will eventually create a nice soft long inhalation.
Viloma II: on each of the pauses during the exhalation, expand the chest a bit more and squeeze the belly. As a beginner, you may actually inhale slightly during the pauses. This is just fine. Two steps forward and one back will eventually create a nice soft long exhalation.

Pt. 4 feel the effects of the practice and then lie in savasana and enjoy the deep stillness.

Sunday Morning Class: Some fun energy patterns we can play with to help discover more freedom in movement.

Three basic walking gaits: Explore contralateral, (opposite arm and leg move together); homo-lateral (same arm and leg move together); and homologous ( alternating upper and lower limbs like a frog jumping) walking patterns. Walk around and compare the feelings, sensations, and emotions evoked by each pattern.
Walk by isolating each of the three pelvic axes: Flexion/extension, lateral flexion/extension and rotation. How do they feel? Which is most familiar.

Flexion and Extension in the feet knees and hips: to help with knee injuries, learn to act from an integrating flow patterns that includes all joints. From standing, the up lifting or spring loading spiral includes supination (inversion) of the foot, flexion of the knee and hip, and external rotation of the hip. This brings you into a vrksasana like position, or, with a few additional trunk movements, the loaded spring position to begin a martial arts side kick. The down or grounding spiral is the reverse. Internal hip rotation, extension of hip and knee, and pronation (eversion) of the foot. This is the firing of the leg in a side kick.

The pathology is to over work the knees, either by initiating the action from them or jumping in with the quads and bypassing the inner flow. Begin in supta padangusthasana, but use the belt or strap to offer resistance as you bend the knee into the up spiral, and extend out. Do not let the knee overwork. Let it receive the flow and move from flexion through extension and back from within.

Take this into your standing poses, especially triangle and parsvakonasana.

Then explore, beginning in one leg tadasana (see photo right) and then bending and rotating the hips while extending the leg to half moon pose. A wall is helpful.

From half moon, rotate into revolved half moon. Then go back and forth to open the hips. Then carry this awareness into the dog pose series from above. Then, from there, add hand stand, climbing up the wall to find the action in the hips

Preparing the sacrum for backbending poses. Using a block for support, find a fulcrum where the tail and lumbar release in opposite directions away

for the sacrum to open and lengthen the center of the pelvis. Then add the free flowing anemone to the sequence. Keep the chest open without contracting the spine.

From Lying to Standing: the spiral unfolds: 1. Lying on your back, feel how you cannot move well, but your hands are free to explore. Then, from lying on your back, find a way to roll over onto your belly without using arms or legs, hands or feet. Use momentum of your fluid body. Feel the urge to move. Try the homolateral or contralateral actions. Which helps more? 2. Then, find the spiral movement to sitting. Hard to move, but hands are free again. 3. Spiral to crawling pose where contralateral is the easiest. Try all three. 4. Spiral to the ‘almost up position, one knee down, one up. If you are really young, a piece of furniture can help you complete the journey to standing. 5. Otherwise, spiral to standing.

Inhabiting the Chakras: Finding Space

Posted on September 21, 2015 by admin

In the previous post we discussed the triune soul as a habitat, a place to live in harmony with the whole of creation, and what is means to begin to inhabit these three realms. Here we will explore the chakras as habitats, ie actual locations with structures, energies, ecologies and relationships. You will need your imagination, the ability to stay immersed in the energetic world for 20 minutes or more, a comfortable pose or place to be, (supported savasana) and some understanding of anatomy. The intention is to evoke new sensations and perceptions, awaken more integration in movement open to the intuitive revelations that arise from the subtle realms of the body.

To inhabit the inner spaces, for a somanaut, requires a deepening increase in perceptual sensitivity. For our work with the chakras, this begins by learning to differentiate the various structures and elements that allow freedom of movement from the inner most layers of the body. An important note about the chakras before we go further: chakras are portals or gateways into ultimate mystery, and thus cannot be pinned down with any meaningful accuracy. What we can do is recognize their possible effects upon the structures, energy patterns and movements, and explore the sensations that arise as we proceed inward. Each of us will have unique experiences, so when I describe what I feel, that is only a starting point for your own explorations. Your experience may be quite different, but equally valid.

It is my own inner experience, and from what I see again and again in teaching, there are certain areas in the body when structures are con-fused, or stuck together. Thus we cannot differentiate the various components that make up that area. From a chakra perspective, the 1st and 2nd are quite undifferentiated, as are the 3rd and 4th, and the 5th and 6th. Our perceptual field and capacity to feel movements does not quite align with the model above. So we will begin by looking at ways to open up some space along the chakra line. The most subtle, but very powerful is to work from the level of ‘field effects’. The magnetic field is familiar enough for all to use, and the basic rules are opposite charges attract and like charges repel. If we imagine the 1st and 2nd chakras both carry a positive charge, the 3rd and 4th both carry a negative charge, and the 5th and 6th both carry a positive charge, some interesting movements begin to awaken.

Lie in a supported savasana, knees elevated to help keep the pelvis neutral. Imagine the legs, femurs to feet slowly oozing away from the trunk of the body. Imagine the pelvic bones releasing laterally very slightly to release the sacro-illiacs and then flowing away with the legs. Finally imagine your tail bone slowly lengthening and releasing in the same direction as the legs. Visualize the central organizing activity of all of these as the 1st chakra being repelled downward (away from the head) by the 2nd or sacral chakra. The sacrum moves in the opposite direction, upwards toward the heart or 4th chakra. Find the space that opens between 1 and 2 and rest in the depths of that space. Feel whatever sensations arise, looking for pulsation, vibration or slow wave motion as clues for the larger energy patterns. What is happening in the fluid body, through the blood vessels and the extra-cellular fluids? What happens to the lower lumbar discs, nerves, vertebrae? What other realms are there waiting to be noticed in the deep background?

Now bring your attention to the center of your diaphragm and imagine the 3rd chakra just below and the 4th chakra just above. Now add a negative charge to each and let them push apart a bit more. Feel the negatively charged 3rd chakra descending toward the rising positively charged second chakra. Feel the negatively charged 4th rising up toward the 5th chakra/throat region. Feel the organs and deep connective tissue structures of the mesentery, mediastinum, coronary and falciform ligaments melting, softening, opening. Follow the blood flow and the deeper rhythms of the body.

Finally, bring your attention to the soft palate at the back of the mouth. Imagine a positively charged 5th chakra below and a positively charged 6th chakra above, gently pushing apart. The positive 5th descends toward the negatively rising 4th, while the positive 6th rises toward the crown chakra just above the top of the skull. Soften inner ears and the backs of the eye sockets. Release the tongue, teeth, gums and jaws. Feel the field generated by all of these penetrating through the cells of the body.

Notice that the 5th, 3rd and 1st chakras are all moving downward slightly. This follows the natural flow of peristalsis and the gastro-intestinal tract energy. By unblocking the first chakra, back pressure is relieved from the anal mouth so grounding can continue at all levels. The unblocking down of the 3rd chakra allows the esophagus (and the vagus nerve) a free run down through the diaphragm at the esophogeal hiatus all the way to the anus to help to prevent or heal hiatal hernias here. At fifth chakra, where swallowing begins, the descending energy helps release tension in the neck and shoulders, the vocal cords, and the floor of the brain.

The ascending currents of the 2nd, 4th and 6th chakras resonate with the cranio-sacral system, with the heart chakra synchronizing with the cranial and sacral regions. In a future posting, we will explore the cranio-sacral system in more depth, including the three layers of the tide. In the overall field of the body, there are always ascending and descending currents seeking dynamic balance and harmony, within and without the body/mind/cosmic field.

Notice also that as the 2nd and 3rd chakras are drawn toward each other, they combine to help strengthen the lumbar region and integrate its movements with the sacrum and thoracic regions. Similar in the cerivical region when the 5th and 4th combine to support and integrate movements of the neck with the rest of the body. Humans seem to be the only creatures who have lost the inherent liquidity of their spinal columns, including flexibility and subtle integration. The upright posture is only partially to blame as we can restore some of the integration by waking up and inhabiting the spine and chakras again.

We can use our supported bridge pose to deepen the sense of space and expansion along the chakra line and through the chakra spaces and we will use a great new prop designed by old friend Randy Dean, the Bhoga Block. These blocks are hollow, making them lighter and easier to move around. They have a squared end for standing upright, and have curved surfaces that allow a much more organic experience of the back-bending support we can use to open 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. Experiment where you place them, and which direction the square end faces. You can use a single block, or a pair, so there are many different possibilities to support, perceive, awaken and integrate.

Here I am using two blocks placed between 2 and 3, the weight of the tail and chakra 1 inviting chakra 3 to follow the downward flow to the feet, opening the liver and root of the diaphragm, among other structures and energies. The feet gently pressing out, following the direction of 1, create a rebound at 2 sending it up toward the heart. As soon as possible, let the repelling/attracting magnetic fields take over the work and you can rest in the stillness between and around the field lines.

With the blocks higher up, three is starting to sneak back up, creating a slight break in the field, but 4 is releasing up lifting the sternum, opening the shoulders. The blockage at 5 is slightly more pronounced leading to redness. Inner adjustments are needed, but the inner glue is beginning to melt. Fire and water are beginning to work more coherently, but it is a work in progress. Finding the magnetic field lessens the strain tremendously.

By removing the blanket under the head, I can get more differentiation at 5-6, especially where the cranial bones sit on the neck at skull – C1, the atlanto-occipital joint. My crown chakra opens into the floor to help 6 open into the back of the skull. 3 still needs to move toward the feet.

To bring in rotation, we can use the basic standing wall twist. Now that we are vertical, the chakra line and gravity have a radically different relationship. The role of the feet in grounding the energy is enhanced when we can relax down into them, receiving Mother Earth effortlessly. The ascending energy is then more internal. In this photo, there is still congestion at the back of 4, the origin of the wings. but there is lift rising up through the skull. In rotation, the chakra spaces expand radially outward, perpendicular to the chakra line that is the central axis of the body. We will look at this more deeply next week. Or soon! Our shamanic weekend at Esalen is coming so the next blog might be about our experiences journeying to new places.

Cosmic Yoga

Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin

I decided to call my Ojai classes “Cosmic Yoga”. I’d rather call them just ‘yoga’, but there are so many variations of yoga out there, some truly horrifying, that the term ‘yoga’ can be very misleading. And I figured I might get the right people’s attention with the word ‘Cosmic’. We’ll see how it goes!

What is Cosmic Yoga ? My cosmic origins go back 13.7 billion years or so, but my cosmic teaching actually began when I met Thomas Berry and his protégé Brian Swimme back in the early 1980’s. They provided a context for my life and teaching that was unlike anything I had ever experienced or even imagined.

Bea Briggs, a yoga teacher from Chicago, told me about Brian, an astro-physicist by training, who lived in the Bay Area and suggested I contact him. I did and he mentioned he was just about to begin teaching a course at Holy Names College in Oakland, a few miles from my home, and suggested I take the course. The material covered the core of Thomas Berry’s work and became the basis for Brian’s ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ video/cd set, which I highly recommend for anyone with cosmic aspirations. Through Brian I met Thomas and my life changed dramatically. (Brian, also featured in the Science section of this site with the “Powers of the Universe’ also has played a huge role in my own unfolding.)

Thomas became a major mentor to me also, and I was blessed to spend time with him on many occasions over the years, the highlight being the week Bea Briggs, Thomas and I spent at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana, somewhere back in the mid 1980’s, co-teaching “Yoga and the Cosmic Creation Story”. We were a little ahead of our time, but it was a fascinating week.

Thomas was a Catholic priest, amazingly enough, but primarily a scholar of human culture. Widely read in European history, Thomas also was deeply impressed with the East and wrote books on Buddhism and the Religions of India. And most of all, Thomas was an awakened Visionary. I am still in awe at how clearly and succinctly he assessed the modern era, saw how as a species we arrived at our historical moment, and chartered a very detailed path to restore harmony and balance to the planet. He fully embodied ‘the awakening process’ in a totally unique and profound way. He was a Taoist, a cosmologist and a spiritual teacher, but he always referred to himself as a ‘geologian’, a student of the earth.

The core of the cosmic teaching revolves around what Thomas called the ‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’. What follows are the 12 principles, and then my own commentary and translation for yoga people.

‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’, by Thomas Berry.

1. The Universe, the solar system, and the planet earth, in themselves, and in their evolutionary emergence, constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being.

2. The universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. The unity of planet earth is especially clear; each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet.

3. From its beginning, the universe is a psychic as well as a physical reality.

4. The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.

5. The universe has a violent as well as a harmonious aspect, but is consistently creative in the larger arc of its development.

6. The human is that being in whom the universe activates, reflects upon and celebrates itself in conscious self awareness.

7. The earth, within the solar system, is a self-emergent, self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-governing, self-healing , self-fulfilling community. All particular life systems, in their being, their sexuality, their nourishment, their education, their governing, their healing and their fulfillment, must integrate their functioning within this larger complex of mutually dependent earth systems.

8. The genetic coding process is the process through which the world of the living articulates itself in its being and its activities. The great wonder is the creative interaction of the multiple codings among themselves.

9. At the human level genetic coding mandates a trans-genetic cultural coding by which specifically human qualities find self expression. Cultural coding is carried on by educational processes.

10. The emergent process of the universe is irreversible and non-repeatable in the existing world order. The movement from non-life to life on the planet earth is a one time event. So to the movement from life to the human from of consciousness. So also the transition from the earlier to the later forms of human culture.

11. The historical sequence of cultural periods can be defined as the tribal-shamanic period, the neolithic settlement period, the classical civilization period, the scientific-technological period and the emerging ecological period.

12. The main task of the human in the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth community in what can be considered the emerging ecological period of earth development.

My notes: (watch the ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ series if you really want to go more deeply into this.)

1.Revelation: Thomas was deeply immersed in the religious practices of India, as well as those of the Native Americans, and both were very clear that creation was sacred. This has been lost in the Judeo-Christian-Scientific West where spirit and matter were somehow cleaved apart. Heaven, and God, were ‘out there’ somewhere, and the degradation of the Earth was the result of this belief. Thomas wanted the return of the feminine perspective that creation is Divine and the primary source for Revelation, not the Bible, or written scripture.

2. Oneness: Thomas was an advaita Vedantan. That the infinite and the finite were one, not two, was implicitly obvious to him. That every aspect of creation was intertwined is also seen in the image of Indra’s Net, or Web, the Indian metaphor for wholeness.

3. A recapitulation that Creation is not ‘just material’, but has layers of reality not easily seen. This ‘esoteric’ aspect in known in Shamanic cultures as well as those who hold Creation as Divine.

4. That these are the fundamental driving forces in the universe is one of Thomas’ fascinating insights. Amazingly enough, remove any one of these three and the Universe collapses. Brian unfolds this quite beautifully in lesson 4 of the Canticle. For yoga students and yoga teachers, the question becomes “are you allowing all three of these to manifest as deeply as possible?”

Differentiation refers to uniqueness. Every iota of creation is unique, never before existing, never to appear again in the exact same way. Like snow flakes, we all have total cosmic permission to be totally unique. Your body/mind, your life, is yours alone, unique and special. We all imitate in the beginning to get started. That is why we have mirror neurons. But ultimately, trust your own individuality. As teachers, this is even more important. Can you give permission for each student to be unique while still honoring the integrity of the pose? Fundamentalist communities have serious problems with this because they control people by limiting/stifling their individuality.

Subjectivity states that every iota of creation has Cosmic depth. Each of us, from atoms to galaxies, and all beings, speak from the Infinite Depths of Mystery. Atman is Brahman. Tat vam asi. In any posture, in any and every moment, feel the infinite presence, drashtuh svarupe. Nurture this!

Communion reflects wholeness and the inextricable intertwining of all forms across space and time. Wholeness, or Oneness is not just a good idea! To dive into this one is mind boggling. Awakening allows you to draw upon many traditions and teachers where awakening is emerging. The Whole Universe is Awakening. You just have to wake up and pay attention. Cosmic clues are everywhere!

5. The explosion of a star gave birth to our solar system. The churning and shattering of volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons actually helps replenish and refresh the life conditions, even as destruction is also needed. Kali serves this purpose on many levels.

6. Awe is the primary expression of awakening, and then celebration. To Quote Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it.”

7. This begins Thomas’ instructions of how societies and cultures self organize and begins to lay out a blueprint for large scale social changes.

8. Biology is a major means for the Cosmos to carry forth learning and experience in time. Humans can see because 2 billion years ago, a cell learned how to convert solar energy to food. The chlorophyll molecule begat the retinol molecule and vision was born.

9. Culture is another means to carry forth wisdom and experience through time. Story telling, drawing, music, dance and writing are all means to convey information to future generations. And now we have ‘the cloud’.

10. The arrow of time travels in one direction in our world. For many generations humans believed that life unfolded in ever repeating cycles. Not so in the cosmos. Cycles may repeat, but they are never the same. This puts a lot more urgency in dealing with the present conditions.

11. Thomas was a cultural historian who saw history in geological terms. He described our historical moment as the termination of the Cenozoic era and the beginning of something new. The direction we go as a planet is being determined by choices humans make today.

12: What is the destiny of the human? To be determined.