Recent Blog Entries

     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.  

      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.  

It's 105 degrees out.  Everyday.  Now humid too with the monsoons.  

Perfect time for insulating the house...

so the question arises...  do I go with the short sleeves and shorts and deal with the itch?

Or with the long sleeves and the sweat?

day 1 - itch

day 2 - sweat

Day 3 ???