Gratitude

Gratitude

I feel the one of the things we are not taught is the importance of being grateful. The thing is no one can teach someone to be grateful. Someone can talk about gratitude and show other ways they practice being grateful but "being grateful" is an emotional state of being. How to be an emotion, any emotion, is a very individual experience. We all feel our emotions in our own way. Even though we all can Love, we all Love from our past experiences, which is different from how anyone else has experienced life and Love.

Even in death we can be grateful. Anyone at a "Dead" show will see gratitude on levels our society can find appalling. People dancing and celebrating just the fact they are alive. Smiling, beaming, twirling with the good ol' Grateful Dead just giving us the space to be. Most concerts and shows I attend have this same flavor. A space to remember it is cool to be alive.

Life can be heavy. We forgot what we had at the show. We remember bills, dead lines, car repairs. How boring. The thing is just as Jah and Mah are with us at the show they are with us at the auto machinist, paid job, even the laundromat. We can find that space. As humans, we have been given this mind that attaches to things to the exclusion of all else. We define our state of being by what we are attached to in the moment. Car repair -downer-life sucks. Making Love- bonus- life is great. As humans we also have the ability, though rarely used, to see we are attached and make a conscious choice to be in whatever state we want to be in. This is not superhero stuff but it does take practice and self-love. If the car needs repairs so be it, why should it affect my day?  Why give my energy to something that is aggravating? When I realize I am being sucked in I ask myself "Do I want to feel pissed?’ maybe- maybe not but at that moment I can decide. And usually the more I am Loving Myself that day the less likely I am to pick being pissed because why would I want someone I love to be pissed?

I look to the Providers Mah, the feminine creative energy, and Jah the male protective energy of the universe when I want to say "Thank You.” Now everyone has to find their own path to what, who and why to be grateful. My experience is when I get attached to negativity I can rise above it by giving " Thanks and Praises to Jah/ Mah.” And really there is always more to be grateful for than not. Look around- feel around. The sun still rises; the Mother Earth has let mankind have another day upon her (which is an act of mercy if you look at how we treat her). We can laugh, sing and dance when we wish- what a blessing! It does not get better than that.

Jah/Mah be Praised!

A quick Video of our planting day Thank You's-

Copyright © 2014 by Joseph aka "hippyjo"

Tie Dye Farm Hello

Da Farm

We are starting a farm, "TIE DYE FARM" (Yippy) and I hope to be more active on the blog to keep everyone update to our happening. Check out our website -
http://tiedyefarm.org/

We also have a You Tube page just for fun-
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9p_QfjPHy43bR1jOLTWLJw

Hope you drop in and hang out on the web with us.

Copyright © 2014 by Joseph aka "hippyjo"

Slow Down

Slow Down

HippyJo has looked at Babylon and it has turned his stomach. This society is killing itself; which is not good, but worse, it is destroying it's home for our children and their children. Does any generation have the right to destroy the home of another? And the worst part of the destruction is that so few humans can have more, (more money, more cars, more homes, more sense of false control) than the rest of us.

Our Mother, what we choose to call Earth, is all we got. We are the only animal that wants to poop inside their homes. Sure bathrooms are nice and symbolically we are pooping on and in our home, the Mother. It is fear. We have always been afraid of nature. And why not? We are slower than most things that eat us, we do not see as well, we do not hear as well, we do not smell as well, we are weaker than most. This is only on the predictor side of things. We fear what we cannot control. We as a species are control freaks. Look at a wedding, if it rains everyone gets pissed off; it is the lack of control. We can't control winter cold, floods, huge winds, blistering heat, and too much or too little rain. With all this fear, in a very early stage of our evolution, we said "Screw it- we will control- we will over come-this bothersome planet" and we started doing things that other animals never did. We started wearing clothes, taming fire, inventing weapons. I do not think any of this happened with someone hanging out saying " I am afraid of the dark so let's build a fire". It is more like fire just happened and the humans felt more secure. This of course compared to today is minimal, but it was a start.

Just look around with the lenses of "How does this try to over come nature?" There are obvious ones like air conditioners, umbrellas, even shoes. Then there are ones that are a bit harder to see-like cars. We can travel at about 7 miles per hour if we are in good shape. That is the speed our bodies are built to go, the way the Mother evolved us to be. If you run into a wall going 7 MPH, you may get hurt, like a broken arm but not seriously and you will heal. Now you hit a wall going 55 MPH the only thing left for anyone to know whom you are would be your teeth. We live a 55 MPH life style in a 7 MPH world, it cannot be sustained. Yes we have over come what our Mother intended us to be and do, again. And the cost- stress and all the disease related to it, global warming, insanity, and dead planet where nothing can live. Do we really need to go 55? Do our great grand kids need us to go 55?

This is why we are trying to farm as much as possible with out the petro-related reality. If we can figure out how to be slow we will go a long way to stopping the killing of our Mother. We need a world where the reality that slower is better can be heard again. Would it not be great to have a boss come in the office one day, look around at productivity, shake his head with mild frustration, and then say to his employee's-"Slow down!! We are going too fast. It is killing you. Slow down!"

Copyright © 2014 by Joseph aka "hippyjo"

Change the World

I am not trying to change the world but God knows I would like to. I am not trying to be anything or anybody but me. It is hard to know what that is. Why blog? Well why not? Is there really any reason do anything but eat and shit, which are total one anyway. I do not particular like computers and I am the IT person at work, how does these thing happen? I have a lot of opinions and who doesn't? The only difference I claim is I see the opinions for the pile of crap that they are and do not care to get into a argument about them. In fact there is very little I am willing to fight over. Am I a whip, maybe, but no one would know but me. I have lived my life as my life meaning I do not follow directions or suggestions very well. I listen to my heart then find myself in trouble then listen to my reason and find myself in more trouble until I can compromise the two. Even Congress is placid compared to the head heart battle. As I progress in this journey you all will see I am of the earth and the major struggles of my life are between society and natural existence. Now I am not one of these environmentalist that thinks the earth would have been better if Homo Sapiens had never evolved but rather a voice of nature. Remember nature, no cute cuddle animals to save; the  reality of a wolf brutally taking down it lunch. But, and this is a big butt (Ha Ha-junior English- pun is the lowest form of humor) do so in balance. Can we achieve balance that isn't pretty? Who Knows, who really cares? Recently I was at a meeting about wood smoke and the havoc it causes and the possibility of banning it ( oh no here we go). I burn wood which I am sure I will talk about later. The slick chart said a 1/3 of the pollution comes from wood smoke, 1/3 comes from cars and 1/3 is other stuff like electric, dust and whatnot. Now this is just a small Valley in West Marin. Wood smoke is banned when the air is considered unsafely breath. On the other hand driving a car is never banned. When I pointed this out I, of coarse, I was laughed at. We as human have always needed to stay warm, fact. We as human alway needed to drive cars, false. Of course if we keep driving cars maybe there will be no need to stay warm as the planet will always be hotter and hotter. Better to be cold and feed society than to be warm off the PG&E grid. So cars are more important than natural instinct to stay warm with what nature give us, wood. Blah Blah Blah-First entry and I am already going off. Look out here comes common sense and reality.  You have been warned! 

Copyright © 2012 by Joseph aka "hippyjo"