Meditation

Hustling haste. Onward to the next. Gerbil wheel of a modern human civilized life. To think we made technology to make life easier and yet it was become more diluted and stressful as a result. Ding. Buzz. Ching. Chime. Beep.

A constant alarm taking attention. The most valuable currency is our attention.

So what’s stealing it?

Sometimes the external world distracts, other times it’s our own thoughts. But the quality of focus to our inner and outer worlds dictates the quality of life.

Meditation as silence.

As dance in forest.

As walk in desert.

As eye gazing.

As vocalizing singular tones.

As dipping into a gentle stream.

As with barefoot on dirt.

As observing the heartbeat

yours and others.

Observing the migratory birds.

Imagining the perspective of the moon looking down.

And a beetle looking up.

The winds of time.

Past and future.

Presented now.

And now.

And now…

Love Without Attachment

Now as for the “Love” word….

I Love many things. I Love my family, my friends, my life. I Love food and clean water. I Love my musical instruments. I love dance and art and poetry. I Love Nature and animals and trees and mushrooms and rain and moss and soil. Quite frankly, I Love everything. Now does this dilute the potency of the word “Love”?

Please read an article I wrote about Love here: https://josephrastovich.com/2018/06/true-love-and-the-many-different-forms-of-love/

I think the key is to Love without attachment. For many people the word Love has many attachments. 
Whatever happens between us — whether we stay friends, live in different countries, or even drop out of communication — I will always Love you.
A Love without opposite.
A Love without a reason.
A Love with a capital “L”.
A Love without attachment and expectations.
The same Love I have for the song of birds and colors of a sunset. 

Love is undefinable. But let me try…
Love is an appreciation and adoration for the beauty, magic and nourishment of something. I Love therefore I care. Love is humble. Love is free. Love is warmth. Love is gentleness. Love is levity. Love is awe. Love is comfort. Love is acceptance. Love is with an open hand. Love is turning towards. Love is listening. Love is compassion. Love is resonance, attunement and connection. 

The Spirituality Of Digging Roots

Walking down an animal path from which there are no signs or parking, I unexpectedly find myself in a field of diverse wildflowers. I know which one to look for … the pungent Sagittarian colored one. There were many to choose from, but when you are going to take life it is important to have discretion.

The first discretion is to make sure whatever you are taking is in abundance; which it certainly was here.

The second discretion is to never take the strongest, healthiest individual.

But the main thing is to spiritually ask for which plant to take. To be organically guided to the plant of which you are about to create relationship with.

Walking further and further, I finally see the one. It is glowing in the sunlight and was in abundance.

I knelt down to gently touch this plant … “is it ok if I take you?”

I feel that it is.

And with tentative tears, with my trowel I begin to carefully remove the top layer of grass and moss to replace when I am done. Then I dig through the precious fertile soil to volcanic rock. This beautiful plant is tenacious with it’s fleshy roots growing between the rocks and expanding these spaces over the course of decades.

Like an archaeologist carefully peeling back layers of time never seen with human eyes I slowly move the ancient rocks as I forage for roots.

As soon as I remove one rock, there is another. I use my fingers to trace the direction of roots and feel I am touching the muscles, veins and sinew of the Earth. As I go deeper, I pull the stones out of the cool soil as if delivering a baby from a womb. I can only place rocks gently after such an experience.

Finally I have retrieved all the medicinal aromatic roots with dirt embedded in fragrant sap on my hands. I smell just like the plant of which I was searching. Now before me is a hole just large enough for me with rocks stacked around the edges. I can sit in this cool nest of rock and dirt where there was once another being.

As I dig roots I am taken back to an embodied memory of what our ancestors did daily. I connect to the wisdom of plant medicine and nourishment derived from nature. My mind quiets and I am present with my environment as the crow teases me upward. Naturally I chew on the bitter root as I dig with its alkaloid medicine evident upon my tongue. My conscious perception begins to change. My movement slows down. My peripheral vision expands and colors brighten. The animals stare me in the eye. I see things for how they truly are. Things I don’t usually see. I became different after digging and eating the roots of our ancestors. The altered state of consciousness was heightened beyond placebo such that it made me wonder if I had poisoned myself; this was not a plant known to have any psychoactive properties. I quickly realized that when you put your hands in the Earth, you become attuned to the subtleties around and within. All elements of Nature will change your awareness if you allow it. The wind, rain, snow, lichen, moss, soil, rivers, smoke, trees, animals, insects, fungi and of course plants. We owe our life to these people.

Before I leave my rock nest, I tell the plant of which I dug and the Earth of which I dug from:

“soon, I too will return to the soil”.

Words cannot describe my connection with Nature.

When Evil Turns to Sacrilege

I woke up this morning to the continued sound of ecological destruction during a time of year when Nature is softest with infinite potential and hope. It pains me to see the steel tines of “progress” desecrate the ancient lands which have given life to countless generations of coyote, rabbits, ravens, snakes, lizards, quail, chuckars, yellow balsam root, sage, rabbitbrush. What was once curvaceous wild hills upon a dark sky is now terraced into submission and polluted with streetlights.

If you are going to pillage the Earth,

subdue it

control it

break it down

With iron tines of adapted war machines,

called backhoes, bulldozers and rock crushers

Then at least have the courtesy to do it at the high noon of summer

or the dead of winter.

Ravaging in the rain in early spring,

when birds sing their song of hope

where plants brighten with lushness

how flowers show their vulnerability

while soil opens with fertile receptivity,

Pain turns to torturous despair

as the ancestral lands give stillbirth

and the blood of terra erodes,

devoid of life.

The sacrilege of doing something more perverse than what is already evil.

The equivalent of killing somebody, but killing a pregnant woman.

Where evil turns to sacrilege.

“Overture” Film Review

 

A longer film by Dan Sachar, “Overture” is another melancholic story reminding us of profound archetypes.
Filmed in a post-apocalyptic world, a lone man tries to piece together a broken memory while doting over a delicate young tree in an otherwise inhospitable world. A mysterious woman who seems to have uncanny wisdom and compassion forces him to look at the past and accept what happened to humanity. The desertification of the city slowly expands into the remaining life of nature.
In the end he returns to source and the woman is what I assume as Nature herself.

Overture / אוברטורה from Dan Sachar on Vimeo.

“When It Will Be Silent” Short Film Review

 

A short film by Dan Sachar covering powerful archetypes which will bring tears to all but the coldest eyes.

Poetry could be described as art focusing on that which is not said. Or in other words “reading between the lines”.

This video perfectly fits that definition.

Filmed in sepia almost to the point of black and white. A dead landscape showing what is oil or blood dripping down a heart symbol drawn on a wall. Puddling near a dead bird with feathers being blown by the wind. A broken bridge. A man in a truck wearing a gas mask. Drudgingly digs a hole in the dust. He pulls out the body of a woman draped in white from the back of the truck wearing a wedding ring. Of skin blistered with chemical burns. The mask wearing man carries her down the valley of the broken bridge and into the hole he dug. He lays next to her and takes off his mask, looks at the corpse of the young woman and dies next to her from what we assume is a toxic air. The video ends with oil or blood dripping down a heart drawn on a limestone wall. Soberly melancholic as it brings up the ancient archetype of love, loss and grief with and an unspoken undertone of environmentalism. 

When it Will Be Silent (כשיהיה דומם) from Dan Sachar on Vimeo.

For The Familiar Singing Of Flighted Friends

 

For the familiar singing of flighted friends

For the caress of etheric invisible which blows during the equinox

For the soft sustenance, the stem cells beneath my feet

The rugged giants of compassion swaying gently with me

The cool blood of life dripping down and from the stones

The ancient faces of rocks, they are the bones

Standing silently on the edge

We are never alone

Circles and spirals

They are the cycles

Ebb and flow

To and fro

I am grateful.