What My Eyes could Read, Part 1

For what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?

(Luke 9:25) 

Sunday, December 26, 2004, Ellensburg, WA

            “Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?” Our pastor opened his sermon with this question and then followed it with another: “Did you ask God for any character gifts?”  If we had not, he encouraged us to do so in place of a New Year’s resolution.  I knew exactly the one: “a quiet and gentle spirit,” a quality I had come across earlier in the year in 1 Pet 3:4.  Between my anxiety, insecurity, insomnia, Irish red-headed temperament, and post-partum depression, I was far from having a “quiet and gentle spirit.”  Both a new mom and a new college instructor, my juggling act overwhelmed me with anxiety.  My husband tried to help, but he worked long hours.  With no energy, I needed us both to do what I could: limit the words and maximize the understanding. 

“I can’t read your mind,” he complained. 

“You don’t have to read my mind.  Just read my eyes!” 

“You’re an English teacher.  Can’t you speak English?” 

No, I’m spent.  Can’t you just read my eyes?  And speak with yours too?

Before the sermon was over, I had resolved to pray every day of 2005 for a quiet and gentle spirit – something I sure did not have at that time.  Nor had I had it growing up in San Jose, California, where we moved from New York state when I was five.

Late 1970s, San Jose, CA

A song had come out about San Jose less than a decade before we arrived.  But the song described a town I have never known.  “LA is a great big freeway,” begins the song; then it shifts to San Jose: “You can really breathe in San Jose.”  Really?  Perhaps in 1968, when the song first came out, you could.  But by the late 1970s, everything had changed.  San Jose was the most important city giving birth to an up and coming, thrilling new world, soon to be known as Silicon Valley.  Dad had arrived in time to be among the first of the “Yuppies,” Young Urban Professionals.  They were young, brilliant, well-educated, and handed a career and a salary previous generations had known only through sweat, years, and seniority.  Dad moved us into a wealthy section of San Jose to work as a computer engineer at the new national headquarters of the especially high tech, high powered company of the 1970s, IBM.  He had caught the American Dream. 

            And I was miserable.  Maybe I was a “poor little rich kid” with a huge three story house and lots of stuff, but few friends, busy parents, and no siblings, except for the little brother who other people called “imaginary.”  We were all “latch-key” kids in my town, like the Peanuts’ kids who live in a world of few adults who speak in muffled mumbles.  In that world, you’d better make friends, or you’d be like me, a bewildered stray.  Small and shy, I was ridiculed at school, mocked for not cursing, last picked for PE, and teased for my red hair and freckled face.

            My teachers observed me in a world of my own.  I wasn’t reading, talking, or following directions.  In kindergarten, this was accepted.  Colin, my brother other people called imaginary, sometimes joined me in my kindergarten classroom, especially if I went into the kitchen room, our favorite spot.  My teacher had the classroom set up with different spaces: a large carpeted area where we all sat down for the ABCs and a full class story, read by the teacher; a project area with long tables for arts and crafts; a math center with another long table for instruction and activities with numbers; the “kitchen” room in the corner with a play stove, fridge, and other toys where Colin liked to join me; and a reading space in the corner, but I didn’t go there much because I couldn’t read.  Even though I didn’t make friends in kindergarten or connect with my teacher, I tolerated kindergarten, in thanks to the kitchen room and Colin’s company.

            That changed in first grade.  By this time, I was expected to do that mysterious activity other people could do: read.  Colin had stopped coming to visit me at school, I had no kitchen room, and I was overwhelmed with many kids in a classroom so small.  I tested smart, baffling my teachers.  But, thankfully, it wasn’t just that I wasn’t reading or following directions, I also wasn’t talking – and that was my first grade teacher’s in to get me into speech therapy.  I loved my speech therapist, a kindly gentleman with graying hair, glasses, a warm voice, and eyes that peered into mine with a sparkle of tenderness.  The other three kids in my speech therapy class smiled, chuckled, had wide eyes, and, like me, were hesitant to speak, had to work at it.  We liked each other, trusted each other, and never mocked each other.  Without speech therapy, I’m not sure how I would have survived first grade.  The funny thing is it wasn’t speech therapy I needed; it was the therapist and the other kids in the class.  I started following directions, I started talking, and the following year, I started reading.  I had to take summer school after first grade to avoid repeating it.  But, in thanks to speech therapy, I did not flunk first grade.  It worked.  But no one knew why.  No one could offer an accurate diagnosis of my condition: culture shock.

February 2005, Ellensburg, WA

Two months after I began praying for a quiet and gentle spirit, a member of our church came to the podium and announced a three week mission trip he was hosting to Venezuela.  Little did I know that this mission trip would answer my prayer for a quiet and gentle spirit by taking me down memory lane to my early childhood in São Paulo, Brazil.  Although I had been born in New York state, and we moved to San Jose from there, New York was also not the place I knew.  The one I knew was where we had lived when I was one year to four years old: São Paulo, Brazil.  My parents had both spent their youth there and had both attended the American São Paulo Graded School.  Fluent in Portuguese and a Computer Engineer, Dad accepted an opportunity to teach Computer Design at the University of São Paulo.

The host of the mission trip to Venezuela announced that he had already recruited a number of teammates and was inviting more.  He also had a special request: a fourth interpreter.  The team was going to serve in four churches, needed four interpreters, and had only three.  I had taken five years of Spanish, had studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, and felt it burning within me to be that fourth interpreter.  But nine years had passed since I had studied Spanish.  Could I do it? I shared with the mission trip host that I’d pray about it.  Two weeks later, I asked him if a fourth interpreter had been found; he said no and would I do it?  Yes.  With three months to regain my Spanish, I set myself on a crash course with my old Spanish textbooks and a set of children’s books in Spanish that I had already read in English.

May, 2005, Valencia, Venezuela

            As it turned out, what really broke the language barrier while I was serving as an interpreter was not my study of Spanish, but my mystical bond with my Venezuelan teammates, especially Daniel the young pastor and team leader and his main elder, Samuel.  When language was a barrier, our eyes filled in the rest.  We could read each other’s eyes.

            My North American teammates, on the other hand, could not get on the same page with either our Venezuelan teammates, or with me.  When one of our Venezuelan hosts apologized for forgetting an essential dish to complement the meal, one North American partner said to me, “Tell him it was better he didn’t bring it.  There was a lot of food.”  I knew what a South American would hear from those words: “the food was no good.”  So I had to cover her tracks and translate, “Thank you, but don’t worry.”  

Meanwhile, the North American leader had much he wished to say.  He often approached me with yet another conversational topic to raise with our Venezuelan teammates.  I could see their discreet head shakes and their eyes just slightly cast down, conveying the message Ahora, no.  Not now.  So I mimicked their cues to my North American leader, who responded by repeating what he wished for me to translate.  Clearly, subtlety was not working.  I tried a different tact: an ever so slight lift of my finger toward my mouth, hoping he might catch a “shhh” signal.  No.  He repeated yet again what he wished for me to translate.  This, unfortunately, made me lose my South American subtlety and brought forth, instead, the Irish in me.  It’s a tendency I have to this day: if subtlety doesn’t work, my Irish self takes over, and I overcompensate.  I gave him a glare and a reprimand: “Not.  Now.”

            That evening, he reprimanded me: “Respect your elders.”  I apologized, explaining that I had “translation overload.”  I’m not fluent in Spanish.  Could he let me rest a little more?  Thankfully, he agreed and began to reduce his requests.  But he never learned what “translation overload” really meant: if the words had to issue forth from my mouth, I wanted them neither insensitive, nor ill-timed.  I was in a Catch-22.  Do I “respect” my North American leaders by revealing their insensitivity or do I remain sensitive to our South American partners? 

            Lying in bed that night, I started to recall similar misunderstandings throughout my life.  South American subtlety is not easily replicated in North America.  Despite my mom’s time in Brazil, subtlety has never worked with her.  Nor has subtlety worked with my husband.  Nor, of course, did it work in speedy Silicon Valley. I was beginning to see why I had been so out of place in San Jose and why, throughout life, a “quiet and gentle spirit” had so evaded me.
            The contrast between my Venezuelan partners reading my eyes with my North American partners who could not follow my words was only just the start to that quiet and gentle spirit that had so evaded me.  What spoke even more deeply were the sights, sounds, and tastes that ushered in what I began to call the cascada de recuerdos, the waterfall of memories.

      ~ End of Part 1.  To be continued . . . 
© by karina, 2020.  Please use with permission or a citation. 

Continue to Part 2

Cocoons and Koans through the Pandemic

            As noted in TheWay of Zen through the Pandemic, my perspective on our moment is unique.  For one, it fits into the consciousness shift I’ve been mulling over.  Realize we are offered many “shifts” or “cocoons” for metamorphosis, not just one; however, this moment when each of us is in our own cocoon is special.

            Our pandemic did not begin easy for me, but now with my family all safely at home, I’ve been calling my own time in it “Zen-ing,” apt not only for my solitary meditation, but also for what the Zen masters often did: puzzle over a koan.  Our pandemic is a koan within a koan within a koan, and the deeper we enter into each koan, the more koans we discover.

            Meanwhile, our pandemic may be collective, but our experience with it is not.  This morning, I made a momentary hop onto social media to post this:

I introduced it with this: “What’s more is that each hurricane also looks and feels different and is stirred up by a different cause.”

The purpose of this post is not to explore the storms, but before I continue, I wish to affirm that we each have one or more, to varying degrees, and the source of our own storm may come directly from the pandemic or indirectly from the collective response to it.  Among the many koans of our pandemic is this one: the storm many people are facing is creating a different storm for many others.  Consider, for example, those who, even before the pandemic, were already victims of domestic violence.  While we may practice our freedom of speech to our authorities, I hope we can free our fellow citizens to face their own storm in their own way.

            The meme that opens this post is now going viral for two reasons: (1) our planet is in a collective cocoon moment right now and (2) it expresses the emerging value of evolution and transcendence.  The butterfly is encouraging the caterpillar to become like him.

The storm we are each in, whatever it may be for each of us, is the Test of the Cocoon.  Cocoons are hardly secure; they’re like crucibles.  For the creature that begins as a caterpillar and finishes as a butterfly, the creature’s greatest moment of suffering and his greatest test is in the cocoon.  His greatest triumph is also when he emerges as a butterfly.

            Tragically, some are likely to get pounded by the cocoon and emerge as very wounded caterpillars, very understandably so.  How might each of us emerge?  Will we come out triumphant as butterflies?

            We can consider our transition from Pisces to Aquarius as a framework for this metamorphosis, and those of you who are drawn to the shift of the Ages are welcome to read it this way.  If you are not, simply take these as metaphors and as a framework to consider our evolving paradigms.  I’m using the Ages not only because many are witnessing this transition, but also because their symbols are so fitting to describe the distinctions of our current, older consciousness with the emerging one, led by the remarkable discoveries of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics.

            Let’s start with Pisces and its symbol:

            Notice we have a perfect duality: two fish swimming against each other in the turbulence of water.  Conflict.  In every spiritual tradition, water represents danger, emotion, and turbulence.  When you add two fish swimming against each other in that turbulence, you have the scariest Age of them all. 

This is why in Pisces, we “focus on the family” and vow to our partners to stay together “till death do us part.”  In Pisces, the only way we humans can survive is to establish ourselves into a stable home.  Pisces is so turbulent that some cannot even do this; however, many can at least survive their incarnation into Pisces if, at least, they can establish stability for themselves in their home.  Most people, therefore, when they are pre-planning their lives in that pre-incarnation time (see Michael Newton), will plan into their lives the chance to meet their “truest love” in their youth, ensuring they marry the “right” “one.”  And in Pisces, a single “right” “one” is possible.  In Aquarius, an Age that values evolution and movement from caterpillars to butterflies, just one “right one” will be unlikely.  There may instead be one “right one” for each phase between cocoons.  But that’s for another post.

For now, we’ll return to the Pandemic and move to our Piscean Posterchild, Dr. Fauci.  Fauci wins this prize not because his face coincidentally looks like a fish, but because of his sober authority look: “I’ve got this.  Listen to me.”  Notice how he cocks his head up, and his eyes, serious and direct; his jaws, firm and set; and his fixed head and face, stoic, rarely moving – an ideal Piscean authority figure.  In Pisces, this is exactly what draws us to an authority; we trust unwavering stoicism because we think that will help us survive our turbulence.

He also holds the skill to both terrify us and comfort us at once.  In Pisces, we are drawn to terror, but we long for comfort.  And he does both: his somber, serious summaries are complemented with his comforting words that if we follow his advice, we’ll make it through.

Finally, notice how he exudes scientific authority with his numbers and his expertise, while presenting an objective middle ground.  “Perhaps if . . .” he’ll begin, giving us a glimmer of hope; “however, . . .” he’ll continue with his cautious warning. 

Fauci’s seeming objectivity gives us a koan within a koan.  Catch what he does not include: (a) critical advice for what we need to do to boost our immune system and (b) a genuine scientific interpretation of the data.  Regarding our immune system, I not only marveled about this omission of health authorities in my first pandemic post, I cited five journal articles pointing to the very well-established science of the most critical factors to boost our immune system: positive mental health, lowstress, exercise, sunshine, and, also from the sun, Vitamin D.  The experts the media is citing, led by our Piscean Posterchild, are not only not telling us the most important things we can do to protect ourselves against a virus, they are encouraging the systematic removal of these very essentials. 

A genuine scientific examination of the data would admit the full picture and any critical context, such as the country with the highest mortality rate from the plain old common flu, at an astonishing 9%: Italy.  We don’t hear that; we just hear “we’d better not go the way of Italy” in this pandemic.  We also don’t hear that the percentage of severe cases among “confirmed cases” is a scientifically invalid number.  Confirmed cases need tests; tests are in short supply; tests are being rationed for sicker people; therefore, the percentage of severe cases among those “confirmed” is bloated.  The experts all know the number is invalid, and they admit it when they’re pressed on it, but they don’t say so in their speeches.

Quite a few objective physicians are speaking of the full picture, but the media is not quoting them; in fact some physicians with strong credentials with evident objectivity get censored (when so much blatant, unsubstantiated reported remains available).  [Update on 5/22: 600 doctors have sent a letter to Pres. Trump to report the lockdown is causing a more severe health crisis than the virus itself.]  Still, part of the cocoon’s purpose is to give us a koan to shake us up, to think fresh and outside the box, and prepare us for metamorphosis.  Therefore, a few oddities to the official story are necessary, including – how dare I?! – an analysis of Fauci.  Friends, Fauci is just a koan within a koan within a koan.  That’s all.  And if we’re going to emerge as butterflies, we need to contemplate some koans.

            Now let’s say we collectively do this and enter into Aquarius about a century early.  How might we, in our new consciousness, respond to our next pandemic?  Good news, friends: in Aquarius, we will not be freaking out. 

Let’s now examine the symbol for Aquarius.

            Aquarius is the “Water-bearer” and it is an Age of Air.  In light of Pisces, two fish swimming in the turbulence of water against each other, consider the power of the Water-bearer Air sign.  The Water-bearer is not driven by fear within the turbulence of water.  Instead, he wields power over water.  The story of Jesus walking on water is a perfect image of Aquarius.  He represents Christ consciousness of Aquarius serving Pisces at the start of the Age of Pisces – and, therefore, amusingly, he often asks aloud, “How long must I put up with this generation?"

            For the past year, I’ve been mulling over a great many distinctions between the current consciousness and the coming one, and everything is implicated.  Once we shift, so our will our educational systems, our political systems, our religious systems, our families and relationships, and, most certainly, our sciences.  For the health sciences, consider this distinction:

            Pisces: Everything is matter.  Matter is fixed.  Our health is determined by our genes, and these are fixed.  Sickness is determined by bacteria and viruses, and these are also fixed.  Therefore, even the well-established science of our immune system is left unspoken during a health crisis in a Piscean paradigm.

            Aquarius: Everything is energy.  Energy moves, evolves, and transforms.  Our health is determined by a combination of energetic forces in and around our bodies. Everything that enters into or touches our body, and even our very genes themselves, are malleable. Therefore, the already well-established science of our immune system is embraced and, during a health crisis, at the forefront of every dialogue.  (Of course, discussion of what to do on behalf of those without strong immune systems will also be discussed, but, importantly, methods to boost our immune systems will be key in a more holistic, complete set of discussions and decision-making policies.)

            This “Aquarian” way of scientific thinking is led by the twin yet competing disciplines of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics, sciences a century old, but too weird, too un-Piscean, for our textbooks.  However, some sciences are building upon these, such as the newest science of health, Epigenetics. (If you’re ambitious and would like to better understand it, review the explanation by the British Society for Cell Biology).

            So what might a more Aquarian doctor say about this virus and pandemic?  My own go-to is one of the leading forerunners of Epigentics, Dr. Bruce Lipton (CurriculumVitae).  While at Stanford University in the 1980s and ‘90s, Dr. Lipton fell upon an astounding discovery: our genes can be flipped on or off by our cell membrane.  For a brief explanation, review paragraphs 9-12 of this Independent article.  Or, in a video from years ago, watch Dr. Lipton explain how viruses work and how to keep yourself healthy.

            Just like the quantum sciences that led to its development, Epigenetics will likely will not take off until Aquarius, since it challenges the material paradigm of Pisces.  However, in the emerging consciousness, any science that acknowledges that everything is energy will be embraced. 

As we close, we’ll reaffirm that we are in the crucible of the cocoon right now, and for many, a hurricane rages all around with no clear path for how to make it out safely.  Once emergence does happen, much time will be necessary for many to discover a new life.  May we each persevere through our individual cocoons in strength, health, and hope. May our time at home, away from the World’s Materialism, be like the cocoon we need to give us the chance to reflect, learn, self-empower, contemplate some koans, think for ourselves, and emerge out of our cocoons into flight as butterflies.

Other pandemic posts:

Whispers of Mystery through the Pandmic
The Way of Zen through the Pandemic

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.

Introducing "Just like Eve," Karina's Spiritual Quest Novel

Breaking from its traditional non-fiction format, whispers of mystery is currently following Karina’s fictional novel, Just like Eve. Karina began the themes explored here in 2008, in a non-fiction book she titled The Feminine Mystery, alluding to Betty Frieden’s 1963 classic, The Feminine Mystique, which explores what Frieden calls “the problem that has no name” -- a problem Karina believes is Eve’s second curse to desire her (earthly) man, not sexually, but as a completion to her.  As she kept discovering more and more, she realized her discoveries were too controversial for non-fiction, and decided to clothe her message in fiction. For years, she tried many storylines and faced much writer’s block. In late 2017, she birthed Just like Eve, mixing the main storyline with a backdrop she could write about with her own sport of tennis.

Storyline: Heroine Jasmine, 32, is judged several times in life for being "just like Eve," first in 5th grade for asking off-limits questions, like why Noah let God drown the world. Now she's judged again with the same "just like Eve" line. She and 30 year old Davie are both married to others, are USTA mixed doubles partners, attend the same church for which Davie is the youth pastor, fall for one another, briefly act upon it, and seek accountability from the church leadership. It backfires. The church can't handle it. Jasmine is kicked out of church, thought to be a temptress. But was she? And what about Eve? And what might Eve really stand for? Jasmine is on a quest . . .

Among her discoveries for humans in general are these: (a) Eve risked her life for something that could potentially build her character and was later encouraged (Heb. 5:14); (b) this choice opened her eyes, but brought her suffering; hence the Tree from which she ate could be called "The Tree of Duality" -- it brought suffering, but a move forward; and  (c) this duality brought the Illusion of Separation.  To transcend this Illusion of Separation is the true Human Quest.

Among her discoveries for women are these: (a) the word translated into English as "helper" in Gen 2:18 is the Hebrew word ezer, and a more accurate translation of ezer is Lifesaver; the patriarchal translators did not wish to call woman a "lifesaver" for the man; (b) Eve was cursed not only for childbearing, but also to "desire her man" (Gen 3:16); that's a desire literally for her earthly man, not for sex, but for the man himself to complete her; and (c) most chilling of all, Eve was also cursed to "be ruled by him" (Gen 3:16); yes, how many pastors admit a curse to Eve is that her man would "rule over" her?  And Jasmine kept making discoveries

Click to start Just like Eve at the beginning

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.

The Way of Zen through the Pandemic

A week ago, I shared with my social media friends my choice to couple "stay at home" with a social media fast.  Of course, I am still here blogging, and I'll keep doing so through this pandemic.  My own perspectives on the pandemic differ from just about everyone I know.  Most are in fear over the health crisis; I am not.  Some are cynically critical of the media's narrative; I agree, but see a higher purpose. Some are afraid of its apocalyptic overtones; I am not. Some are scorning the president; some are praising him.  I am doing neither at this time; he's trying to look at the bigger picture, but, as always, he remains entirely incompetent for his position.  Some are hanging on the words of a traditional health expert who happens to be in an important position right now, Dr. Fauci; I do not; I listen to Dr. Bruce Lipton and others with a newer, more holistic approach to health.  (These two medical researchers will be discussed in my next post.)  Finally, most are distressed for what the future holds after this pandemic has passed; for those of us willing to learn from it, I am hopeful.

For now, enjoy the tidbit I shared with my social media friends and the Way of Zen poem to complement it:

"A post is circulating that Christianity isn't able right now to speak to the pandemic; I disagree. However, eastern spiritual wisdom really does. I was led to Lao Tsu and others in the second half of 2019, possibly in preparation for this moment. After the work the Spirit led me into last week, I am really ready now to soak in "stay at home" with inspiring texts, my own writing, and bonding with my family. So I will complement that with a social media break for a while. . . .  Something beautiful will come out of our current hardship, my friends, as we enter our hiding places, reflect on what really matters, discover how important our relationships are, and learn to build a better planet. Meanwhile, to all and to your health, strength, and peace."

Other Pandemic Posts:
Whispers of Mystery through the Pandemic

Cocoons and Koans