Matt Gallup's blog

     I had a relization about the retreat valley the other day.  I will preface this relization by telling you that I used to live in a commune.  I lived there for about three years and I visited other communes and met many "communards."  I know a little more then your average person about communities in America.  So when I looked out over the retreat valley the other day and counted twenty five individual homes in some state of construction, it hit me.  We are building a twenty five home retreat community and we are doing it in a little over a year.  This is unprecidented.   Usually, communities build slowly over decades or stay confined to a handfull of buildings.  What we are doing here at Diamond mountian has never happened in the communities movement in the States.  The homes will be available for others to do retreat in after the Great Retreat which makes it a real community, in my mind.  There will be no sole ownership of the structures.  They will belong to Diamond Mountain Retreat Valley.  With proper maintenence, they'll last hundreds of years.  Each building is solar powered, has it's own water tank, propane run kitchen.  There's solid adobe and earthbag structures and well built stick frame buildings.  It's intense. 

     The energy here is also intense.  We go through it all; great love and comradery, to confusion, to exhaustion and being totally fed up and overwhelmed.  We recall beautiful scripture. We tell sophmoric dirty jokes.  We say our teachers name and cry.  We gaze at the Milky Way more clear then anywhere else in the lower fourty eight. We tell dirty jokes about the stars in the Milky Way, belly laughing, pounding the ground, pulling ourselves into the weeds sobbing.  We dance like insane fools or we sit bored for hours.  We get so bored we meditate.  We make music amazing, terrible freestyle rap, good freestyle.  We drop albums.  The sun is killing us all day.  Bugs fight to enter our eyes and ears and drink our blood.  The sun is making us strong.  There's a fire in our bellies that we fill with thick soup and bread every night.  The sky is the ocean you can't describe.  We forget about the outside world then try to remember who we were.  The years are a blur. Last week is a blur.  Our teachers are everywhere even when they're not here.  This love works.  This love doesn't work.  We work so hard to hold the line but then cross it, naturally we cross it, then turn it into our Path.  What else can you do?  And where are you?  If you have any small desire to come here do it now.  You won't have another chance like this.  Let this place work on you. You may come and hate it but it works you in subtle ways.  I can't tell you how.  You have to want it. 

Johneo and I started the forms for John Brady's cabin this week.  His site is in the valley of ridiculus distance from everything else.  It is only accessable by serious four wheel drive machines.  Roads steep like the log ride at Great America.  His site sits in a valley totally surrounded by peaks.  He will be in an earthen nest for three years.  You cannot even see the Lama dome from his place.  He ground is wicked hard.  We'll be forming into solid kaliche.  So, dear readers, it's AS IF his home will rise from the mountain itself. 

     I take this dramatic tone because everything about the Brady Project is intense.  We've had to make use of Big Geoff's (supreme commander of the Highway Patrol and Protector diety of DMU retreat valley, owner of all machines large and hardcore) tricked out 4wheel monster jeep.  The jeep was made by post apocalyptic teenagers with vision and genius and beer.  There are THREE shifters.  There is a throttle ON the stick shift so when you are at a complete stop on a 90 Degree incline, you rev the gas up before you release the clutch and smoothly accelerate upwards.  The rear bumper of this unstoppable war goat is in actuallity a compressed air tank.  You flip a toggle on the dash and an air compressor comes on.  Deflated tires are not an issue for this thing.  The cab is open and the passengers are forced to inhale the petrol exhalations of the off road dinosaur they have climbed into.  A cloth cap over the roll bars protects you from the unrelenting radioactive warfare of the desert sun.  We piled over 500 lbs of portland cement into the back and it lost no power or traction.  We attached a trailer with hundreds of pounds of form wood, the jeep acted as if nothing was unusual.  I drive be-goggled and bandanade.  Myself, a dust covered deserado of construction and destruction of my self imposed limitations.  Johneo and I are the messagers of BADASS in the retreat valley when behind the wheel and headed to Master Brady's site.  Upon reflection, it's completely appropriate that Brady's site is blocked in by mountains on all sides.  If he wasn't thusly encased, the shere POWER of his meditation would ripple outwards to all the other retreat cabins and DESTROY the personal practice of every other retreatant.  Tantric visions of the highest secret that keeps itself secret would ripple out like the armagedon wave of enlightenment, puree-ing the minds of those not ready to walk where angles tred. A flying arm bar of bliss.  As it is, Earl B. is dangerously close to Big Daddy Brady.  Fortunately, there is an ancient rock outcropping that acts as fortress wall between the two cabins.  Only Earl's outdoor shower and toilet will face Brady head on.  Coco's site sits even closer to ground zero.  For her, there is no hope. She will face the power of his samadhi full on. 

     The ground is so hard at Brady's that the metal spikes holding the forms in place mearly sit in loose holes.  Joheo and I both sustained injuries from the maul as it bounced off the spike striking solid rock.  A fire ant crawled up my shoe and onto my leg.  Suddenly my upper thigh is on fire as organic acid sends panic through my body.  I hop around madly slapping my leg forgetting all Bodhisattva vows in an instant of primitive self preservation.  The injured ant falls from my pants.  I gently carry him over to his comrades.  He is curled in fetal position struggleing to regain cohesive movement.  His friends instantly grab him and carry him toward the nest.  I stand ashamed and remorseful.  An ant bite is enough to send me on a berserker killing spree.  John Brady's site has made clear the violence that lives in my heart. 

  The sun is setting, the forms are set for the first pour.  I should be doing Four Powers in four wheel drive to purify for the ant.  I am jack hammerd and sledge hammered out.  We pick up Earl and crew for the 15 min. drive out of the valley.  We are monkey wrenchers of the mind, our mental afflictions always close behind.  As Jeep monster pulls us over another peak I see the insane orange of Arizona dusk.  I taste kaliche dust, portland cement and exhaust.  There's a man out there who is still fighting.  He's turned the raw power of his mind and skill away from outward enemies, seven headed hydra, frakin smoke screen.  He's turned the guns inward for the real and final battle against the goliath of his own ignorance.  Somewhere out there, I know that Hayduke lives. 

     To all ya'll that are putting an earth floor in your cabin, much suffering went into it.  There was love as well but I've done four so far and each time, by the end of the day, I am hating it.  It's the tamping.  Tamping is tiring.  I will say this, though, about the suffering.  It gives one a great opportunity to really dedicate the effort.  With each TAMP I am TAMPING out my MOTHER loving OBSTA-FRIKIN-CALS to MED-i-FRIKIN-TATION!  Put some power behind the words or it's not as strong.  It reminds me of the first Bikram Yoga classes.  Ninety minuets of suffering.  Afterward, oh the bliss.  

   Don't get me wrong.  I love the feeling of a room with earth floors.  Good for meditation.  It's just some hard work.  I broke the tamper today as well.  Snapped the wooden handle, yo.  I was in the midst of some serious compaction of dirt when I came down at an odd angle.  We have two but the other one is small and puny.  I got grumpier and took it out on Johneo who for the rest of the day worked harder just to spite me.  He also tried to Judo throw me into the termite rock, made fun of my justified concern for the machinery, and drank all the water.  Oh, he'll get his, not to worry.  

Live from sugar mountain, Matt

     Today Johneo and I prepped Stephan and Jessica's Gompa for an earth floor.  We sifted dirt on site to get some real fine rock free material.  We hauled up termite rock.  We overcame broken down equipment.  We ended up haveing to do some picking inside the Gompa.  The floor was too high in some places.  For those who haven't used a pick-maddox (sp?), it's an easy thing to get over the thrill of using.  The ground was very hard and as I tried to drive my shovel into the little piles only to be stopped short by a hidden rock, I remembered the first time I felt joy while shoveling.    It was over a year ago here at DMU.  Doug was using me to build rock retaining walls for all the terraced earth around Michael Dunn's retreat cabin.  I loved that job.  The rocks around his site are top of the line.  Pink granites, grey granite, odd golden conlomerates, cherty flinty smokey greys, white marble like stones of all sizes.  A person would pay thousands of dollars in this sort of material anywhere else and I was having a ball stacking them.  The joy happened while I was moving a dirt pile from one place to another.  This happens a lot at the retreat valley.  The dirt was over the septic clean out.  So there I was, flinging shovel fulls of dirt over my head into a pile behind me.  I looked up into the sun and saw the dirt reflecting light as it flew.  It looked like water. or crystals.  It was so hot outside and the heat had been wroking me for most of the day.  But as I looked up into the particles flying over my head I started laughing.  It was so beautiful this dirt!  Each shovel full was a shot of bliss.  It got to be so intense I was at the edge of crying.  If only I could work like this all day.  What would that be like?  I remember thanking my teachers in my mind as I finally slowed down.  I was thanking them for this place and this opportunity to learn in so many different ways. 

     Before all the building started I was wishing for a way to contribute more to DMU.  I saw so many brilliant people around me who could teach asana, translate Tibetan or Sanskrit, computer wizes', dharma teachers, business professionals, chefs, performers, caretakers and the like.  So when the building started I felt that it was perfect for me.  Now I could really do karma yoga.  Now I could serve in a way I felt capable in.  As I worked I felt my intellectual studies suffer.  My meditation suffered.  I would close my eyes and after ten breaths start dreaming, morning or evening.  I couldn't remember what I had read in class or at home.  This was not good.  It was around this time that Geshe Lotar came to visit DMU.  Geshe Lotar took care of my Lama, Geshe Michael Roach, when he was living at the monestary in India.  The love and compassion and solidity coming off of him is amazing.  I could go on about him but I want to keep this entry succinct.  G.L. was holding a question answer session in the main temple at DMU one night.  Many people asked questions about three year retreat.  Each answer G.L. gave was so right on.  He kept inviting more questions.  I finally asked him about what had been troubling me.  I said "What can a student do who means well but can't seem to remember anything he is reading or learning.  What can he do to improve his memory."  As I said this I looked briefly at Lama Christie who was looking at me with so much love, like a mother.  And Mother-like Geshe Lotar gave me such a beautiful answer.  He gave me a long answer with several things to try.  He told me about a young monk who started out not being able to remember anything.  Over time and effort he overcame it and became a Geshe.  At one point he looked at me and said "As you work, with every stroke or movement, think to yourself "I am removeing obsticals.  I am removing impurities."  You will remove them this way."  I didn't tell him I was a worker. He just knew it.  There is a quality I have felt in great Lamas that have spoken to me.  I can only describe it as something like Real Honesty.  I can feel that they are incapable of lying and the things they say are so true it shakes you deep inside.  And the automatic response in my body is that of trust.  It's an exchange I've only had with great teachers.  Geshe Lotar is like this for me.  Ever since that night I try to remember to take his advice to my daily work.  I am always digging, shoveling, trowling stucco, hammering, cutting, lifting, moving all day.  I feel that if I could make each movement a prayer (I am removing obsticals, I am removing impurities) and do it all day, at the end of a few weeks I would see massive results.  As it is, I do it a little each day.  I have seen a little change.  The amount of which is equal to the effort I put into the practice.  Perfect, eh?  It's only me and my untapped potential out there building your cabin.  May I make it perfect.  MahaSuka!

     The second coat of exterior stucco is done on Stephan and Jessica's cabin.  Johneo, Vira and I knocked it out in three days.  Jarret gave Vira the download on how to mix portland and sand using the inner body as a guide.  No joke.  Jarret feels the mix, pays attention to it like it was alive.  This is a quality of Jarret I love, he pays attention to you and then responds to your needs.   His love is sweet and remarkable like that.  He is that way with everyone and, it seems, everything.  Stephan and Jessica have what we call a "Doug Veenhof Special".  It's two buildings connected by a covered breezeway.  One building is bed, bath, and kitchen plus electrical room.  The other building is a gompa (meditation place).  The design is a lot like what I imagine being in Dougs head is like; utilitarian, elegant, sensitive to the environment, and very comfortable.  Good to meditate in.  They are beautiful little homes that should require little to no matienence.  There are three "Specials" already up on the land and one "half stack" with another comeing.  Half Stacks are just the main building without the gompa.  Perfect for one person. 

     I just got back from a little party for a new member of the community, Kim.  She took Refuge vows tonight with Ven. Nyingpo (Never leave us!) and Mercedes (Ditto!).  For those that don't know, Refuge vows are basically vows that say "I'm never going to give up on this Path."  They are kick ass vows for people who are sick of the suffering they see in their own mind and world. 

     The party was very sweet, the cake estatic and chocolate, the music bumping (Fugees, The Roots, mid 90's rap).  I got to talk to some of my friends about the important things in their lives.  People are trying to love, trying to open up.  People are being pushed to open, some gently and some more fiercely.  What I was left with at the end of the night was something about time.  We don't have time to live with our hearts closed.  Not even in small ways.  We have dedicated our lives to spiritual warfare and we don't have time to coast with a closed down heart.  We have to know when we are coasting and stop ourselves.  When the energy of life flows through an open heart you can tell.  You can tell because an open hearted person is moving.  Creativity flows out of them.  There is a hum around them, a field of sorts.  You want to be around them.  And we don't have time to not be one of these people.  We can't let our love sleep.  Shake it up, come at it from a new direction.  Make decisions based on this highest thing.  I think this is why the Lama's are building a Kali shrine on the three year retreat land.  She can shake you up if you are shutting down and unaware of it.  She's the crazy Ma of "any means necesary" to help you.  She's the slap your hand away from the hot oven top burner Ma. She's the jerk you back onto the side walk to pull you away from the car you didn't see coming Ma.  She'll yell at you when you are fooling yourself and it's hurting you.  Like most mothers, she loves you more then you do and see's the greatness you can achieve that you don't think you can.  I think that's why she's in the retreat valley. 

     I feel a subtle exhaustion from the workers up at DMU.  We are getting tired.  My crew is trying to keep a steady pace that allows us to rest.  Many of us have been at it for over a year now.  Some longer.  We have four short months to go.  The amount of work to get done is worrisome. The people who have worked in the trades before can't see how we can finish in time.  Good thing there's not many of us.  If you can, come on out and lend a hand.

Peace to all you out there, Love eachother

     For the last few blogs I sit down at don't have any idea what to say the the urge to communicate is very strong.  I wish you could see my life. This white walled house.  The king cat I serve raw meat and walk on a leash.  I live in a town that is half dead.  The main street is lined with gutted and deteriorated motels, gas stations, bars, eateries and the like.  Almost every block has abandoned homes.  The town itself is sandwiched between a rail road and a four lane interstate, a economic conveyor belt between Tucson and El Paso.  It is, surprisingly, the most peaceful town I've ever lived in.  For me, peaceful in a graveyard sort of way.  The peace forces contemplations of impermanence.  Uncomfortable reviews of one's life.  A blank movie screen on which to project insecurities and failures, if you're prone to that sort of thing.  This quality also makes the good times with the sangha more-gooder.  I sort of cringe today when I think "I am doing spiritual work here."  Today I want to call it Life work.  I started this study with my Lamas thinking of it as spiritual work.  Now I see that all aspects of life are spiritual work.  Life is spirit.  I'm being taught to live fully.  That's a heavily loaded sentence.  The Lamas, the techings, and the lineage flesh out that sentence.  They flesh it out for me until I can finish it for myself.  It's like when a parent takes the training wheels off of their childs bike.  Mom or Dad (or both) will hold onto their baby and the handle bars and RUN! to get the momentum up.  The momentum is scary and exhilerating for the new rider.  But the speed creates a stability in the contraption and the body.  I remember doing this.  I could feel how it worked. "I can do this!"  Then there is some falling over, some pain.  And the parents help us again and again until we don't need them to do it.  We find the parent with in ourselves and then the real adventures begin.  Bicycling or self searching. 

     I want to end by thanking Darren Rhodes, the tenacious D,  for his "Daily D" emails and thank Bliss for compiling them into book form.  They have got my wheels turning in the last two days in a different way.  I need the words of great teachers in my mind all the time.  Love love love

     Second coat of plaster is now done on Vira and Rene's cabin.  Only took three days.  We are unstoppable.  My arms are stiff and swollen with, dare I dream, new muscle.  At thirty four I am finally getting what I wanted so badly at eighteen, some muscles.  During the downpour we cleaned up the inside of Vira's cabin.  Johnneo put nails in the studs so we could hang our "bags" (tool belts) off the floor.  I then proceeded to label the studs with our personal initials in red construction crayon.  Then I put up curtains and a throw rug.  "There", I said with satisfaction, "That's better."  We are stucco cowboys.  Our legend resounds off the walls of the retreat valley.  We know no fear.  

     I've just realized that all the building is just a back drop for people to do more serious practice on themselves.  We're pushing ourselves to complete the building before the deadline and this is pushing up all our issues.  We only have a limited time with our friends.  It's good to be out here with all of them. We do our best to support each other.  I now have a friend who is holding me accountable for my meditations by text messaging me every day and asking if I have done it.  I admit that it is working.  Small things are happening that are helping me.  I get a letter in the mail, then another, then a care package from my mother.  All this the morning after I had been feeling lonely (common theme for me out here) and was about to get into some serious mopeing around but stopped my self saying, "No.  You're going to be all right.  Everything is actually all right."  Then it was all right and three people reached out to me.  The message for me is to do my practice and be grateful and to send people love through the mail. Bless the postal service.  We're so lucky to have it.  It's a beautiful thing in this country.

     I wonder how the rest of the country is doing.  This area is such an island unto itself and so cut off.  But what an island.  The sky puts on a show every evening here.  Lightening comes out of blue clouds.  You can see the rain run in sheets ten miles away.  The sun shoots laser beams across the horizon.  I see square clouds and disc clouds.  Black dot clouds mixed in with pure white dream clouds.  We're in monsoon season right now.  The grass is growing like it thinks it's in Indiana.  Strange plants are coming up that were long dormant.   Each downpour is of epic proportions.  It's the sort of storm you want to go crazy in.  Rip your shirt off and run straight into, shrieking at God, on fire because you finally can have your showdown with the father who gives no answers that you can hear.  Now he's going to give you some answers.  "Is that all you got!?" you scream with Lt. Dan like insanity.  Lightening splits a cactus in half.  "Ha!, You missed!!!" I've never done this but at the right moment I think it could yield something powerful (don't worry Mom).  This land is extreme.  Gila monsters move slowly across the road.  Cows get killed in flash floods and left on the side of the road to be food for coyote and buzzard.  The poor cows, better to die free on the range.  The Cows!  I went to a cowboy museum and there were many wonderful old photos of people of another time.  There were also pictures that were just documenting cow torture.  I'm so sorry.  We've lost our minds and do terrible things to you cow.  Anyone who spends time looking into how we slaughter you knows deep down it is a sick thing we're created. It's too much, it's wrong.   It's an old habit in this world, but we can make new habits.  

      Johneo and I finished the first two levels of Rene and Vira's earth floor in their Gompa building.  It feels great in there and I'm so happy building meditation spaces for people. But after mixing so many wheel barrows full of earth, Johneo said "This is the last time we do this.  Next time we use the cement mixer."  Of course, how perfect.  That's what they're made for.  After three days of tedious manual labor, Johny and I would exclaim at random moments, "No one can work like we do! Nah-Naaah-NahNah!" We had to do this, you see, or we'd fall to the ground in exhaustion.  But it's not true. Bert can work harder then we do.  Bert is the man.  A sudden downpour forced us inside the building for five min.  Both of us laid down and instantly fell asleep.  I awoke with a start not realizing I had fallen asleep.  Best five min. nap ever.  

    I remember when I first heard about blogging.  One of my friends was keeping a blog and I was like "What do you put in it?"  She said she put what ever she was thinking of.  I thought that was the most boring thing I had ever heard.  So if you're reading this I thank you and I also rejoice that I didn't plant so many anti-blog seeds that no one reads this thing.  Not too long ago, the only people that got widely published were people that were actually good writers.  The internet gives voice to so many people now.  It's good. It breaks down the barriers between people.  It shows me that I'm not different from most people.  We're not all great writers but we have great stories.  

     So much is happening on and around DMU right now.  But it's all in the realm of interpersonal relationships so I ain't gonna talk about it.  It's private, yo.  I will say that it is an honor to be around people working hard to get clear with their loved ones.  Working on opening the heart.  Reading my older blogs I see I'm always talking about this.  Heart opening.  It's the most interesting thing for me right now.  It sort of trumps other topics for me, really.  It influences my view on all other things.  What does it matter what I think of this thing or that if my heart is closed?  It would be the opinion of someone who's not all there or just running off mental afflictions.  I think that is why we often get the best advice from our mothers and fathers.  Yes, they know us pretty well.  But they love us more than anyone else in the world, even ourselves.  They know how to love us.  Why does Grandma's cooking taste so good?  Okay, yes, she has been making this dish for longer then I've been alive.  But her love for me is huge and it goes into the food.  I've been getting this love and food teaching from the kitchen yurt diners lately.  Anne and Suzy have been cooking for us.  It's always simple but it's been blowing my mind.  I think they must love us.

    Today I got to see Alisha and her baby, Priya.  I asked if I could smell Priya's little fuzzy baby head.  Alisha's like "Yeah, you can even kiss her."  Oh, it was bliss, pure bliss.  Just kissing the babies precious little head.  Then Priya looked up at me and into my eyes.  Held my eyes for a long time.  I get high just thinking about it.  Baby Priya is so present and open.  Being close to her is refreshing. It makes me swoon a little.  I don't have children but I really get how they become everything to the parents.  I really get how people become parents and their love grows.  They stop thinking only of themselves and expand "me" to the new baby.  Now, two people are "me".  Maybe one 'me' needs burped and the one 'me' needs a nap, but both are "me".  You know, I used to smoke to get high.  But I think baby Priya's smell is better. I could have saved a lot of trouble if I would have just done baby bong hits when I wanted to get high.  There were plenty of babies around.   

      The gnats are out at DMU.  They bit Johneo so badly that his eyelids look puffy and swollen.  The bites ich most at night when the immune system is weakest, I hear.  So we wake up iching.  We worked six hours today and it felt like nine.  I nice rain storm broke up the afternoon.  Johneo and I retreated into the house and slowly started using the wooden wall framing and construction scraps as percussion instruments.  It was rocking for about five min.  Johneo used to be in STOMP so, needless to say, the man has skills.  As the day wore on and my mind deteriorated, we started singing that Junstin Timberlake song  "I'm bringing sexy back." or whatever it's called.  The lyrics are like "I'm bringing sexy back, you people don't know how to act....I'll let you whip me if I misbehave, take it to the bridge..etc."  We kept changing them until it was:  "I'm moving termite rock, groovy soup knees grable gripple splack...I'll make spagetti if we go on a date...we'll play scrabble till it's really late...take it to the bridge"

    I'd say that Diamond Mountain is the sixth community I've been a part of in 15 years.  By community I just mean; the group of people I live and work with.  My college years were a community.  Living in Carbondale CO in the mountains was a great community.  Then there was the commune Twin Oaks followed by a short time in Charlottesville VA.  Brooklyn, New York, was an amazing and intense community.  The thing I was thinking about all these places was how similar they were to each other.  Each one had its core group and also had people that stayed for a short time but were greatly influential.  I've seen seemingly solid couples break up with grace and with high drama.  I've seen babies come and act as a glue for couples or as the catalyst for a break up.  Some death.  Lot's of gossip and also helpful advices, parties, laughter, fights, boundary crossing, love, magic.  All the normal community stuff.  What is new to me about DMU is not the daily interplay of individuals and work projects.  The people are amazing and many of us occasionally do have a good world view and take responsibility for what we see in our world.  What is new for me is seeing what happens when the community has a single goal that they believe in.                                                                                           For the last three years I've been amazed to witness the meetings and reports of people that are running projects all over the country and the world.  All at a volunteer level.  No money being made.  Of course some money is made at yoga classes, trainings and such.  It amounts to travel costs usually.  I remember some classes where a returning yoga teacher would hand their teacher an envelope and say something like, "Please take it.  We had a big turn out in L.A."  Then a couple of classes later the teacher will be handing back these same envelopes to the people who were trying to give them money, en mass.  It was hysterical.  Everyone was letting go of any money they could and it was all coming back to them.  Now with the retreat valley being built I'm really seeing what is different about DMU as a community.  There's probably a core group of about one hundred and fifty people.  Together they are building, what I think, is the premier deep retreat center in America.  I want to say "the world" but I haven't done any research to back it up.  I counted Seventeen homes at some stage of construction the other day.  All will be off-grid solar homes with five hundred gallon water tanks, septic, all the fixings.  There are straw bale homes, earth bag homes, one concrete walled home, and standard stick frame construction.          I look back on the other communities I was a part of and wonder now what we could have achieved if we were all focused on one thing.  Wether on purpose or not, our teachers at DMU have shown us how to really work with others.  I think it must be part of the lineage.  Before you can really learn to love others you at least have to know how to work with them.  And do it for little or no money because you will get no money for learning how to love.  Which is the most important thing you can do with this life you are living.  The deeper you dig into love, you find secrets to living.  It's good to have a teacher to show you where to look.  The teacher could be your child, your parents, your partner, or your Lama, or the person that annoys you the most.  It gets real interesting when you combine two or more of these.  

      My back is a little bad lately so I took a short day on the mountain.  As the sun was going down in Bowie not much was happening.  A teenage girl rode a small ATV around town.  Giant trucks drove slowly up and down the street blaring joyful Mexican "um-pa" music.  The sky did it's usual "holy frakking crimoney on the half shell that's amazing" sunset.  The cat whined for food, the neighbor puppy went crazy for attention, the neighbor cat whined for food, more dogs barking.                                 As I was watering the garden in the back yard I had a small "ah-ha" moment.  If you were to ask any of the three year retreat participants why they were going into retreat, part of their response would have something to do with wanting to be able to really help other people.  But what I realized today is that another part of this huge retreat valley project is focused on the people in this lineage in particular.  We are making our spiritual practice the most important and all consuming part of our lives.  We are turning it into the most important thing so we'll actually do it.  Personally, I need something this big to help me.  I need to build a small suburb in the middle of the god forsaken desert to drill it into my head that "Yes, this is important to do.  Retreat is important to do."  I need this retreat valley as a reminder, a twenty two home (and counting) physical reminder, to do my practice.  It's brilliant, really.  How do you get people to do their practice?  Have them build a small town in the desert together that is dedicated to the practice.  And then, when their retreat is done, have them give the house away for others to do retreat in.  Any retreat from any tradition or no tradition.   I remember a scene in the movie "Ghandi".  I'll paraphrase it here and forgive me for any mistakes.  My brain is like a collendar.  Hindus and Muslims had been killing each other for weeks in this huge city.  Ghandi-ji had went on a hunger strike to show his opposition to the violence.  Time went by, the city was burning, Ghandi-ji was getting very weak, close to death maybe.  Suddenly, several Hindu men come into his bedroom.  They are carrying swords.  The man in front lays his swords down at Ghandi's feet and says something like "I have enough death on my head, I will not be responsible for your death.  Now eat something!  I am already going to hell.  I have killed Muslims, I killed a child!  I will go to hell but you must live!"  The man is yelling and half crazy.  Then Ghandi-ji says (beautiful Ghandi-ji!) "I know a way out of hell.  You must find a Muslim child who's parents have been killed.  You must adopt that child as your own.  But you must be sure to raise that child in your home as a Muslim."  Perfect.  The Hindu man collapses sobbing at Ghandi's bed.                                          If we weren't giving away the cabins after the three year retreat and opening them to anyone who wants to do any sort of retreat, I don't think this whole project would be as powerful as it is.  The logic is beautiful and backwards: If you want the traditions of your lineage to flourish, make a place where all other lineages can also flourish.  If someone blows up a building in your country, go build them a new building in their country for free.  If there is violence in your outer world, root it out in your inner world.  I love this.  I'm not yet able to do these big acts of truth but they are in my mind.  Of course, building a house is not as radical as raising a child from another culture but it got me thinking.