"We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover what is sacred."…Jack Kornfield

As a practicing Tibetan Buddhist I see the word "realm" as a metaphor for the self. We are each a separate world waiting to form a relationship with other separate worlds. Sentient beings like you and me can, with deep intention and a certain kind of discipline, connect ourselves like the children's puzzle of dot to dot, and from this construct create a unity that could be world changing. Dot to dot, or individual to individual, we can create a world which becomes a new realm in which peace and justice and respect and altruism fill the streets and our communities.

I set my own standard for what came next in my blogging career over a year ago when I represented my 3-4 year old self as having lived through a life-directing experience that taught me the meaning of the aphorism, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I chose those pithy words to be my recipe for the rest of my life. I was at a developmental stage in growing up human which WebMD describes in this manner:

Cognitive development- A child this age makes great strides in being able to think and reason. In these years, children learn their letters, counting, and colors. Their play becomes more creative as they learn to imagine.

Emotional and social development- Between the ages of 2 and 5, children gradually learn how to manage their feelings. They begin to feel ashamed or guilty when they do something wrong. By age 5, friends become important.

I was no different than any other 2-5 year old evolving child. Like each of us I was progressing at my own individual pace, through the grace of my ripening karma, and the influence of the circumstances, including the visions of the various adults, and any other children who were interacting with my developing persona during that part of my life and continuing in that mode of cognitive development and emotional and social development until this very day.

If you are reading this, thanks. I've been absent for a long time. My cover story to myself and others was that I was waiting for the right words to present themselves before I could once again write with diligence. It was at that time the only way I had found to explain the months and months that went by while I still didn't produce a complete blog piece. Believe me I wrote and wrote, most of the time in a flooding burst of the energy that presents itself when I am being the most authentic. It is my personal quest in this life time to be authentic and, in my experience then of my writing persona, I was not able to hold onto her authentic writing energy long enough to finish any one piece.

The truth is I was not taking my own best advice, the advice that I give out to all clients coming to us because they are stressed out or because they are not being creative anymore or because their concentration has become like that of a flea and they can't finish anything that they start to do, and they've lost the muse, or old rockin' chairs got them, or they're just recovering from an accident and/or a critical or very pesky illness, or whatever. I'll bet the condition that I'm describing is not unfamiliar to most of you.

To get back to my own best advice: when a person is stressed out enough to consult with a stress consultant, that is the time for them to give themselves a break around the subject, needs, and nurturing of their creative impulses. I go so far as to say that I believe one cannot be optimally creative while they are stressed out. I believe they can try to escape the redundancy of their over-weaning stressors only when they can give themselves the antidote of kindness, which we all seem to need during challenging times, and to do this successfully for oneself is virtually impossible.

The coaching Wonder Woman and I provide for stressed out people is not only about active listening, or exercises, or whatever 'doingness' we can coach them to practice. What we've discovered to be the most effective healing device is to be kind. Kindness, in my opinion, has to also be given in order for a complete healing from loss of creative abilities to take place . Giving them the example of compassion for themselves first, and then for others, we demonstrate that antidote by being kind, and caring, and patient.

In my life, since the end of November 2006, Wonder Woman and I first both had pneumonia. Next our beloved cat Zoey was diagnosed with cancer. Then we both got the flu. Then Zoey died. Then Wonder Woman was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then Wonder Woman had a mastectomy. Then there was chemo. Now there is a peaceful hiatus. All is well with Wonder Woman right now.

She had been one beautiful bald woman and her current Joan of Arc look shows her as the warrior she truly is. I was too stressed out to be able to be maintain my creative ability to write. I was unable to take my own best advice during this stressful period of our lives. I had to shut my mind's search for the reason that I couldn't finish anything I tried to write, and more than that I had to be kind to myself because I was failing to deliver on the promise I would make to myself every morning. Each day I would come to my keyboard 'determined' not to procrastinate, and in all these months I have watched myself become the mother of procrastination.

I was, however, being creative in the death of my cat, and the healing of my spouse. I sought out the company and support of others. I was a committed listener to all the healers that came on the scene and was another set of eyes and ears to keep all the facts together for Wonder Woman. We both did all the exercises and practices that we would have instructed clients about. We actively each walked the walk and talked the talk, and often with each other. Together we enjoyed our mutual deepening evolution into compassion, we acquired wisdom together about healing, and healing energy, and the reality that can become whole with conscious kindness.

I wanted to say all this without being preachy, or boring, or as if I had this whole trip together in some egotistical way. I do know in my heart of hearts I am in the sacred place deep inside of me (yet very close to the surface) where I can tame my mind enough for it to fall silent. Then I can bring the full force of the rest of me 'out'.

When that happens I experience a surge of energy that feels wonderful and transforms my ability to be able to take positive action. For at least a mote in time there is silence, and within that silence bliss, and from that bliss the energy to keep moving, and to be still at the same time.

I feel like my feet are growing from my soles deep into the ground. I am as if a tree, rooted, at the bottom and still swaying with the breeze in my top most branches, strong and self sustaining, and in this silent space I am timeless and giant.

I am committed to holding all of my emotions, thoughts and feelings in this manner, a manner that accepts impermanence and even celebrates that condition of life. What else can open the way to the next wonders? Death or dropping away of the old as it ripens happens as if they are the seasons of nature, old leaves making way for new sprouts.

As leaves change without the tree doing anything but standing there waiting for the seasons and the nature of things, I am content these days to live in a state that is tree-like.

There is much to tell about this year. I feel released again in my story telling realm. Take this as a fair warning: I am baaack!

This time around I will not only tell tales from my childhood but I will take the risk of expressing, as directly as the creativity will allow me, some of the observations of life that are current for me. I have the intention to make waves. I want to make a difference in this lifetime for all sentient beings. This is my individual quest. I will start this quest at the beginning, coming from the evolution of our species, in the way life first appears for us all when we are still impressionable, innocent, eager to please, eager to 'grow up' children. The example of the adults in our lives is paramount. These, the oldest kids on the block, are the ones we are determined to play with.

On the cover of Newsweek Magazine on January 22, 2007 was a photograph of a beautiful little boy from Iraq. He is of an indeterminate age, maybe 4, 5, 6, or 7. He is full faced, and he cradles against his cheek, a real gun.

He rests this automatic weapon on his face, between his sensuous mouth and deep, poetic, huge brown almost black eyes. His hands are tiny, and the skin looks baby soft and smooth, and the legend with the picture is…

"A child holds a weapon in a Baghdad protest, December 2006." Above his perfect little round head are the following words:

"How Daily Bloodshed, Deepening Hatreds, and the American Occupation May Turn Iraq's Children Into The Next Jihadists"

The image that this magazine cover projects is not one I want in my world. As a woman, as an elder, as a mother, as a grandmother, as a Blogger, as a teacher, as a Jew, as a Buddhist, as a pacifist and as a sentient being I would not be the hero I am determined to be in this lifetime if I didn't do anything about this!

I believe that little kids are gathering knowledge about the world around them like absorbent sponges from day one, even whilst still in utero.

Little kids are small, but their feelings are the same size as grown up people's feelings.

Little kids can tell when big people are lying to them.

And it hurts…

ALSO:

Little kids can tell when big people are happy and when they are sad.

Little kids can tell when grown ups are scared, and when they are being scary because they're scared.

And it destroys trust every time they perceive a lie that you tell them…

And little kids can really know these things and remember them from before they can really talk about them...

ALSO:

Little kids are not only aware of what facial expressions and body language is about; they are also very sensitive to the tones of people's voices, and what some of those tones mean. It's from first mimicking those tones that they practice and begin to say words.

They are very aware of anger and of threats to their existence. They can hear when grown ups are not being straight with them. Little kids are born with an already developed sense of right and wrong; and they are prone, in the beginning of their lives, to want to be ethical, and virtuous.

And these states have got to be nourished from the very beginning. Like milk and other essential foods that are necessary for strong bones and healthy bodies, the lessons of kindness have to be offered as though they were food in order to grow the well-being of the minds of little children, as well as the strength and good health of their bodies. Humans of all ages learn these lessons mostly by experiencing them. Kindness and caring, as an example from others in their lives, become a part of what is their native realm starting right there at home, right there in their neighborhoods, right there in their communities and beyond.

Neighborhoods that won't suddenly explode all around them.

Neighborhoods that only require children to be children and not gun carrying soldiers.

I am the electric Mama E an almost 72 year-old shaped first by living through all the history that I have observed and then formed by our electronic/digital life and I am planning to take full advantage of the opportunity of the internet to rock and roll. I will not reinvent the wheel. Instead, I will find ways to make contributions to the movements that exist already; the ones that are meant to call people back to the natural state of innocence and wonder and opportunity that comes with being born as a human child.

I want to create my part of an already growing connection of people in my network and other people's networks to put it all together and get it all set so that children, their parents, their aunties, their uncles and cousins, and teachers and friends, and brothers and sisters, and neighbors and email pen pals, and pets, and all sentient beings get the deep nurturing that comes from actions of kindness; the sort of selfless kindness that permits the creative juices to flow to the full capacity we each can handle and as a means to connect people dot to dot where you sometimes need to stay still, perhaps as still as a tree in order to see clearly how to expand our numbers one at a time into a unified picture so that together we create a new realm that we can collectively support.

Please join me in this endeavor.

This poem was written by a 5 year old. To me it is proof positive of the wisdom being that every child carries with him.

FLOWERS GO AROUND

Once upon a time

There was a human

And in that human

Was a heart

And in that heart

was a spirit

And in that spirit

was a spirit heart

And in that spirit heart

There was a human

By Patrick Elmore at age 5

Let us be flowers together.