2013 Behold the Sentience

As I contemplate the people, events, experiences and ideas of 2013 I would name this the year of Sentience. A year of recognizing something I never really believed in before, not really.

And now I know it to be true. I can feel it and that's why I use the world behold in my title.

1. “Thank you water for the bath.”

When the water drains from the bath Kate says “thank you water for the bath.”

It’s a direct result of a call from a friend and a July afternoon at the beach with a most extraordinary group of healers.

Included in this group of healers was Dr. Masaru Emoto, known best for his book "The Hidden Messages in Water."

Dr. Emoto used the Ho'oponopono blessing

Water, I am sorry.

Water, please forgive me.

Water, I love you.

Water, thank you.

And it is from this that we began to say as the water drains from the tub "Thank you water for the bath."

The blessings from the day of the Water Blessing at San Onofre stayed with us throughout the year. The teachers continued teaching and as I look back it has profoundly changed how I think about things and more importantly it has changed what I know to be true.

2. Recognizing Our Earth as a Sentient Being
At the Water Blessing was another healer named Ruben Saufkie. His message of unity was so powerful.

Following the Water Blessing I kept thinking about how disconnected many are and how people, myself included, don't think we matter in the large picture. We think we are too small. Then I found "The Blue Jewel."

You Matter.

That which you are matters.

It matters now.

It mattered before now.

It will matter more tomorrow.

3. Recognizing Our Fellow Sentient Beings
This year I attended the “Blessing of the Animals” put on by our Animal Ministries. It really moved me. The prayer Kathy Storey shared and the individual blessings of our pets by Toni Sparks were so real and true and full of love.

A most amazing example of sentience was found from another new friend from that Water Blessing. And I thank Gary Christmas for all the amazing shares of all the remarkable things going on in our world and beyond.


4. Grounding and Experiencing the Healing Properties of Our Earth
I’ve always giggled a little at the iconic treehugger but now I am ready to hug trees at will ... did you know it's great for your health?

My childhood friend Naisha Ahsian, director at Crystalis Institute, brought this amazingly interesting documentary called  "Grounded" to my attention. She always finds ultra groovy stuff and has a blend of cutting edge science and spirituality that I have come to adore.

Direct contact with the earth is a powerful healing modality. Walking barefoot at the beach is especially good for you as the salt water has conductive properties. So take off those rubber and plastic shoes and get grounded. We are going to be spending even more time outdoors and even more time playing in the dirt.

Even though the documentary is no longer posted at YouTube you can find more information here http://shiftfrequency.com/dr-mercola-documentary-grounded/.

It was truly a remarkable year and I thank all those who contributed to that remarkableness.

I thank my spiritual community for their love and support and I can't wait to see what this year brings.

Celebrating Our Sentient Beings

I am dedicating this blog to my dog. Happy Birthday to my Pretty.

I am also dedicating this blog to the people in my life who have shown me what it means to love a dog. You know who you are.

Happy Birthday Pretty. 11 Years of unconditional love, comic relief and companionship.

I found this letter written by Fiona Apple, a popular singer and song writer. She cancelled her performance tour to be with her dog. Get some tissues.

It's 6pm on Friday,and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later. Here's the thing.

I have a dog Janet, and she's been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then, an adult officially - and she was my child.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.

She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist. Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact.

We've lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it's always really been the two of us. She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.

 She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album. The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years.

She has Addison's Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

 Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.

She's my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.

 I can't come to South America. Not now.

When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference. She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore. I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.

 But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can't leave her now, please understand.

 If I go away again, I’m afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed. But this decision is instant. These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship. I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.

Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.

I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments. I need to do my damnedest to be there for that. Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known. When she dies.

 So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. 

And I am asking for your blessing.

 I'll be seeing you.

Love, Fiona

That's Love. Now excuse me ... I need to go hug my dog.

The Blue Jewel You Matter

"I am a Sentience, a sentience is that which knows and is, feels, speaks, thinks, cares and loves all at once. 
"I am the presence, soul, spirit, the encodement, the embodiment and purpose of this planet we call earth."
"I am Gaia, I am the planet, I am One with You."

And So It Is!