Garden and Gratitude

Posted on December 4, 2016 by rick_ranum

I cleaned the garden today, getting it ready for winter. I’m hoping to get compost and more rock dust on it before Christmas. The freeze is coming soon now and most plants will succumb. If the freeze is hard and long, roots in pots may not survive. The garden and I both miss the longer days and the sun.

I transplanted lettuce into the tomato pots in the greenhouse, that’s the sign of an optimist I suppose. I just like to keep things alive, perhaps you do too. In gardens as in life there is the struggle to keep things going against the odds.

I’m often amazed how we as people don’t see opportunities that present themselves to us, later those opportunities may seem obvious, but at the time we can’t or won’t see them. A sage once said that everything we need to grow in awareness is always right there in front of us. And, I’m always interested in why we do or do not see , sense, or feel them. Why our actions sometimes seem at odds with our best interests.

Get a PHD in Psychology and discover you don’t have all the answers. We humans are very complex. Often times we are afraid of making mistakes. We surely are going to along the way. But is anything ever without an opportunity? I’d say everything is an opportunity for wisdom and compassion. No matter what, it is better to act, to keep moving, experimenting than to sit paralyzed. A mistake still has momentum and will self correct, and from another point of view, may simply be an experience we really need.

When we are very young there are the terrible twos. I think of that time as a time when we children discover we are not free. We are being told no and we don’t like it. We become oppositional. To a greater degree this fades as we grow up, but not always. Sometimes it continues into adulthood unabated, but arising from the unconscious mind.

This season has been unusual, unusual because many people I know had great stress, and some great physical trauma. I am grateful for my health and I send hope for theirs.

Well, I’m happy, I had a nice garden this year. Something’s grew really well, others didn’t, it’s always like that. A garden is a lot of work. We have a great farmer’s market close to us. I do my best with my garden, not everything gets attended to at just the right moment. But there is more good than not from working in a garden, so I do what I can.

I just dug up the beets. I brought the surviving herb pots into the greenhouse space and now comes the winter.

This beet I am holding is about four pounds and last night we ate some of it and it was good. How we feed the plants though getting nutrition in the soil can yield very nutritious food.

A tree trunk the size of a man grows from a blade as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small heap of earth.
Lao Tzu

Where Does The Time Go?

Posted on November 21, 2016 by rick_ranum

It is nearly Thanksgiving again. I have not added anything to this blog for months. And you know you know how that goes. A family member dies, a divorce happens, a job is lost, a big move happens, and the next thing you know your world is out of balance, a top wobbling. And, it is natural, natural to feel out of balance at times. Here is a partial table from Wikipedia with top ten experiences of stress statistically presented.

So, I have been affected for some time by some stressful situations. Its inevitable. And I know all experiences are an opportunity to gain wisdom, to express compassion, to be love.

Recently I read a scientific study that found that uncertainty is stressful, that it creates anxiety. They could have just asked most of us to know that is true. Given that uncertainty is prevalent in most historic times and places, it seems we have to take responsibility for our own interpretation of events. Shy of creating world peace, we don’t at present have much of a choice but to learn to respond peacefully to events we do not control.

I had lunch with a new friend. We met at a fundraiser and had the best time talking. We went to lunch last week and we both very much appreciate each other. Our overlap or common denominator is metaphysics. She gave me her October issue of Science of Mind magazine and in were these words beginning an article about Sainthood and Mother Teresa.

“Many years ago, a noted psychotherapist asked members of an audience, “If I squeeze an orange, what comes out of it?” After a few seconds someone shouted back an answer: “Orange juice!” The audience laughed. The psychotherapist smiled. “Yes,
he said. “Orange juice. Why? A few moments later another audience member answered, “Because that’s what’s inside the orange.”
“Yes,” said the psychotherapist “You don’t squeeze an orange and get apple juice. You squeeze an orange and you get orange juice because that’s what’s inside it. The juice is the orange’s essence.”
The psychotherapist then asked another question. “So what comes out of you when someone puts the squeeze on you? When someone is mean or disappoints you or slanders you? When you are in a crisis situation? When you see people suffering around you? What comes out of you.”

My new friend is ninety-six years old. She is writing a book about her life. I can’t wait to read it. She has quite a story to tell from what I have learned from her so far.

Goodbye Ruby

Posted on May 5, 2016 by rick_ranum

The unthinkable, the unbearable, the unfathomable, loss, something gone, not to return, a spirit set free of a body. My cat Ruby died today. The vet came. She said it was most likely kidney failure. I will bury her after a while, the vet said its best to wait a while. That makes sense to me, she’ll probably try a few times to get that body moving. I laid next to her as she passed and she summoned up faint purrs at the end. I am so blessed.

So I’m singing her a few songs as she lies in her bed in front of the window in my music room. And in a while, dusk, I will take her out to a spot by the pond that she loved. I am wrapping her in a fine towel and burying her between two large stones. I know she would approve.

We most all know loss, loss of a pet is different for me than the loss of people. Pets so embody unconditional love, and so, their loss is different. We usually don’t have grudges with our pets, things we could never forgive because it was so awful. No, we are pulled to be our best selves with our pets. We forgive, offer kindness as best we can, and we might at times wonder how they can be so kind and forgiving.

Loss

Posted on March 3, 2016 by rick_ranum

I was expecting to see a woman this week. Her sister had passed recently. I was expecting her call.

Yesterday two people called to say she had taken her life late Monday. We were to meet this week sometime when she would be in Olympia. We had talked for half an hour last Wednesday and life was difficult for her. Her bond with her sister was very strong. She had cared for her sister as her sister moved through last stages of cancer. Her loss was compounded by having to get back into the flow of commerce, find a job, make some money.

Most people who knew her considered her grief normal. I too felt she was grieving and would naturally emerge from that grief. Everyone will have a moment of wondering what if? What if I had called, or what if I had noticed, or what if I had reached out. This is normal and it is normal because the future is unknown. Consciousness is busily holding thoughts and feelings, busily creating the future moment by moment.

All souls are eternal, and lifetimes are but a blink of an eye in eternity. Lessons not worked through will be worked through later. It is a universe of eventually, eventually we grow into greater harmony. It is ultimately a cooperative universe.

She is close and she and I are going to collaborate on a creation that commemorates her life.If you wish to communicate with her, find quiet space, think of her,watch, listen, feel, she is close.

My sense is that she is now looking at the options she had that she didn’t see in her grief. She made a choice. Choice is that which makes us truly divine. With our ultimate return to oneness with the source, her choice is of no real importance in the scope of eternity. Still, now we process our loss and grief alone and together. Such are the effects of some transitions in life.

Blessings,

Rick

Queen of Rainbows: Flowering

Posted on January 1, 2016 by rick_ranum

Another year and time to draw a card with advice for the new year.

The Queen of Rainbows is like a fantastic plant that has reached the apex of its flowering and its colors. She is very sexual, very alive, and full of possibilities. She snaps her fingers to the music of love, and her zodiac necklace is placed in a way that Venus lies over her heart. The sleeves of her garment contain an abundance of seeds, and as the wind blows the seeds will be scattered to take root where they may. She is not concerned whether they land on the soil or on the rocks–she is just spreading them everywhere in sheer celebration of life and love. Flowers fall on her from above, in harmony with her own flowering, and the waters of emotion swirl playfully beneath the flower on which she sits.
You might feel like a garden of flowers right now, showered with blessings from everywhere. Welcome the bees, invite the birds to drink your nectar. Spread your joy around for all to share.

Zen wants you living, living in abundance, living in totality, living intensely–not at the minimum as Christianity wants you, but at the maximum, over-flowing.
Your life should reach to others. Your blissfulness, your benediction, your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed.
It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry–not only to the friends but to the strangers too. This is real compassion, this is real love: sharing your enlightenment, sharing your dance of the beyond.

The Swamp

Posted on November 30, 2015 by rick_ranum

I went off to the swamp on the southeast side of the property. Sometimes I just need a little adventure. So I took the camera, camera bag and tripod and set off into the domain of the beaver and other creatures. When you don’t maintain a road for years it tends to almost disappear. That would describe the state of the road leading to my ultimate destination, a little pond up the hill aways.

It is rather mystical, the forest, it seems empty but animal trails are everywhere and so too were the bones of a devoured creature. The bones lay in the shape of a x or a cross, depending on your point of view.

Up at the pond my suspicions were confirmed, beavers. Beavers were clogging the drainage points. I cleared one by hand hoping it was the one I wanted. Alas, I cleared the overflow drain pipe. I wonder if the beavers had it repaired by breakfast. They are quite amazing. On one hand they are the best flood controls you can have. On the other hand they can raise the winter water table significantly near their projects.

A Talk at Saint Martins

Posted on November 21, 2015 by rick_ranum

Today I spoke at a Psychology Class at Saint Martins College in Lacey Washington. The Professor, Thomas Woodruff prompted me to discuss regression therapies which can extend beyond this life and into past lives. I wouldn’t say the students were shocked, it was more like encountering a foreign philosophy. They were a delightful group composed mostly of Junior and Senior female students.

Garrison Keillor

Posted on November 21, 2015 by rick_ranum

I recently have been blessed to meet two exceptional men. Garrison Keillor (left) who could be the reincarnation of Mark Twain. He spins a tale, with wit, passion, sincerity, and joy. He is a pretty good singer too. He performed a one man show at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts and it was certainly one of the best I can remember. We are both from Minnesota and certainly share a group consciousness.

Charles Thomas Cayce

Posted on November 21, 2015 by rick_ranum

March 2014

I also was so fortunate to reconnect with Charles Thomas Cayce at a retreat recently. This is a truly delightful soul. He is the kind of person that encourages and influences everyone to be great. His grandfather was Edgar Cayce one of my most admired and respected people who have lived.

At the retreat Charles Thomas shared his research on a group of people who were told they would have the choice of not reincarnating after their current life. He researched the common life traits they shared with each other, and shared his research with us.

My time with Master TT Liang

Posted on November 21, 2015 by rick_ranum

A biography of Master T. T. Liang

“On the twenty-third day of the first moon in the year 1900, Liang Tung Tsai was born in Ningpo, Hopei Province, which is a small town on the shores of the Yellow Sea in eastern China. Master Liang lived to the venerable age of 102, passing away on August 17, 2002.

His father was a merchant, selling primarily sundries, and according to Liang was an extremely hard worker and devoted father. His mother was a devout lay Buddhist, who spent all her free time lecturing on Buddhism to children and helping monks acquire funds to build temples. Liang was born Jui Fu, and stylized his name when reaching adulthood as Tung Tsai. He had an older sister (deceased) and a younger brother, Jen Tieh, who is still living in California. Liang spent four years studying at Nankai University in Tienjin, where he received an M.A. in economics and then entered the British Maritime Customs Service at the age of 24. His rank increased quickly, and by the time he was 35 he held the highest position of any Chinese officer. Only one British officer was higher in rank than him. During his initial years with customs he spent a great deal of time in Amoy, which he remembers as being ideal in comparison to Shanghai, where he was sent after his promotion to the rank of Chief Tide Surveyor.

Liang served in many of the major cities along the eastern seaboard of China. When he was promoted to the rank of Chief Tide Surveyor he was in charge of all British controlled ports within their concession along China’s eastern seacoast, an enormous duty.

To continue reading this biography click here>

The story of my finding my way to the home of TT Liang in Saint Cloud Minnesota is on that is one that is inevitable once the company I worked for in Minneapolis decided to have me be the first representative in Saint Cloud. I was around 32 years of age at this time. When I was in my twenties in Cincinnati I studied Tai Chi at the Unitarian Church on Saturday mornings. The instructor was a very nice man in his forties, a Psychologist. I was a regular and enjoyed the group, the people in the group and Tai Chi.

After returning to Minneapolis I briefly studied with a man who lived in Saint Paul. I did not feel he was the teacher for me and I did not continue with him. When I arrived in Saint Cloud I quickly found a local health food store, a place to find nourishing food. On a bulletin board was a sheet of paper offering Tai Chi from TT. I took the number and soon called and soon found myself his student. My regular trips to Saint Cloud had a silver lining. TT was the real thing, a Chinese man who had taught and studied for five decades. A vital man with power, humor, and a zest for life in his mid 80’s.

It was because his daughter was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota Saint Cloud that TT and his wife had moved there, to be close to his daughter and her family.

How wonderful for me, for it was natural for me to be around him. This short, pudgy old man was the most powerful man I had ever met. His skill in all aspects of Tai Chi manifested as kindness, patience, humor, friendliness, and non-violence. He had come to this expression through many difficult life experiences which included torture at the hands of oppressors. He had held positions of responsibility and power when younger working for the British in mainland China.

There was a time when I took a weeks vacation and stayed in his basement bedroom for a week studying with him everyday. Tai Chi had saved his life, extended his life, and brought vibrancy into his body.

He loved to study the “Classics”, teach and paint.