Teen Meditation Retreat exemplifies the power of community

This week ends a week of Earthsong’s Teen Meditation Retreat, a gathering of kids from around the nation for the expansion of awareness and integrative healing.  During the week long retreat, teachers, leaders and volunteers lived in mindful meditation practicing and deepening their connection with the self and the world around through conscious relationship with every element of the day from the food eaten to the observing silence through each night and morning.  I am part of the caretaker community here at Earthsong Farm and Retreat Center and I have been involved in the grass roots evolution of the meditation project.  I have been very impressed and honored to serve these teens, who have chosen to put down the distractions our society offers them and get in tune with their inner self.  The opening and focus these teens show gives hope to a generation who has been victimized by a society who has given prescriptions instead of holistic opportunity.  Earthsong provides the space where these teens can focus and take responcibility for their wellbeing through the guidance of teachers using meditation and awareness techniques drawn from the world’s wisdom paths of yoga, meditation and holistic healing.  The week was culminated at dawn this morning with a traditional Lakota Native American Sweat Lodge Ceremony that served for physical, emotional and spiritual healing through sweating, praying and singing.  If the world is listening, truely pay attention to this sacred experience and learn more about what we offer because I truely believe this therapy will out perform any system that is offered today.  The healing and benefits are impossible to deny as you can see the growth that occured in all of us in this short time we spent together.  We pray you will see this as we all are suffering and seek the security and safety this type of community can provide!

Fast Feast:Discovering who we are by listening to what we are…

There are no substances on earth that can produce the insight that our own chemical wherehouse can’t achieve in more detail and without side effects.  what are we? who are we? these questions are probably equally ignored as their answers are sought for, and that is why i am writing about today’s self created fasting feast.  I call it a feast because it is a day where i consume tea, fruit and water like it is golden delicious!  If anyone is interested in fasting, but either scared, intimidated or feels no need but still enjoys the mind altering substances our society has to offer, listen to this.  Fasting connects us with a buzz that does not addict or put us down harshly, it cleanses and purifies our organs, it enables us to see and feel the energy of our body! Hey that is what we are, do you feel that sensation? listen to the pulse and rythym of your body as it has been given the break in work load.  it has time to party, to loosen up and feel! the energy of who we are will come alive! relax and give yourself some tea, juice, honey and water and go outside listen to the air through the trees and watch as your vision is brighter.

The birth of our own Bread

The birth of a new Intercell of the Ecological blueprint for telepathy! What am I talking about? The merging of logic and inuition is key in developing our latent spiritual gifts.  My philiosophy is that through our actions, we are constantly weaving a web! Some of us weave this web of technology and look at the internet and all we have done!  The only thing missing is the relationship with our very sustenance that gives us the strength to think about it!  That is why i am a farmer among my other modalities of expression.  This is a peice about my recent relationship with something we all love…our bread.  No one can say I don’t bring home the bread because i am literally bringing home a couple hundred pounds of wheat that i farmed myself.  Now the reason for growing my own grain is that now we are responcible and aware of what it takes to feed us.  Also it helps regulate our consumption.  It is very easy to consume a loaf of bread from the store every night of the week, but to go through your stock of wheat grain, grind, process and bake everyday will slow things down after one night of baking!  We will actually sprout our wheat and make a pan style pizza.  Here is the recipe!

For a 12 to 14 inch metal skillet

3 cups hard winter wheat berries- soak and rinse twice a day until tails develop about 1/8 inch long

grind in a food processor with just enough water for a smooth consistency

mash into oiled skillet up to one inch deep

bake at 200″ for thirty minutes to an hour…the idea is not to over cook and kill the enzematic activity in the sprouted bread.

add tomatoe sauce and your favorite pizza toppings

return to the oven for ten minutes

Injoy!

Now you may not think it is feasible to grow your own wheat, but if you want to get with the green and sustainable living culture, i will tell you how to get to the top and fast!  All of us have a yard that is at least a portion of an acre…ten feet by twenty will give you enough wheat to feed your self and family!  Besides what people may think is a beautiful yard, your wheat field is vibrant and not only beautiful through the season, it is entirely functional unlike your neighbors monocrop of constant death.  Plus you could get your neighbors to want to grow their own wheat also…think about it, who among you have consumed some form of wheat grass supplement in their smoothy…It can now be in your front or side or back yard!