 
# Weaver Wisdom

## A Practical Guide to Wholistic Living

### By Lady Li Andre

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Lady Li Andre

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## Table of Contents

Introduction

Universal Concepts and Imagery

Tree Energy

The Valley of Life

The Perfect Match

Teach Your Children Well

Weaving a Personal Tapestry

Radio Waves

Conscious Living - A Weaver's Life for Me

## Forethought

"I don't have all the answers but I've got my share of questions.

If I don't follow blindly doesn't mean that I've lost my way.

Because I'm still on a Journey, headed down the road less traveled.

You know we're all going to get there in our own time and way."

Bill Miller from _The Vision_

## Introduction

I do not consider myself to be an expert on anything. I'm a student of science, history, and mythology. I'm an observer of human psychology and sociology. I'm a firm believer in Logic and Reason. I am an explorer and adventurer on the greatest Journey - Life.

I am a Weaver. Sometimes I weave for others in the form of stories. Most of the time, I weave for myself. I've spent a lifetime learning how to weave - not a physical fabric but one of Energy.

As I look at the world today and see the violence and disharmony, I know that I must pass on what I have learned to other students and fellow travelers on the Journey. Weaver Wisdom is not a religion but a philosophy for living. It's not based on mythology but on science and observation.

This wisdom is not meant to be the absolute definitive answer but a platform on which others can begin their own Journeys by asking questions. I always ask questions. I test and experiment with possible solutions, looking for the most probable answers. If something changes, I reexamine the variables.

I'm a student of other philosophies from many other cultures. I've studied Zen and Taoism from the Eastern Philosophies, Native American Medicine Wheel teachings from North America, and explored the hidden principles in many aboriginal cultures from around the globe.

I'm an observer of natural philosophy. I pay attention to the world revolving around me and how all of the pieces fit together. I can see the cracks forming in the intricate web that interconnects all living and nonliving things on this planet. Those cracks have been caused by careless humans who aren't paying attention. The time has come for the few who are still paying attention to step forward.

It's time to end the reliance on mythology and take responsibility for our actions. It's time to become good stewards of our planet and protect all of the life forms we share it with. Weaver Wisdom is a call to action - a call to pay attention.

I live by three simple ideals: Do no harm to myself; Do no harm to others; Do the least amount of harm to the world around me. Throughout this book I'll provide many examples of these three ideals and how they function. I encourage others to adopt these three simple ideals. If all people in the world followed them, the violence would end and harmony could be restored. That is my greatest hope - peace on earth.

As a mother and a grandmother, I can only hope that someday future generations will not have to face the frightening future that we are seeing ahead of us. Now is the time to stop hiding behind closed eyes. Now is the time to stand together and weave a future of hope for following generations.

This work is not connected with any known mythology - religious or otherwise. It is not intended to be used in a religious way. It is free and should never be bought or sold. Its sole purpose is for the enlightenment of the reader. Let there be no fear, shame, or guilt ever connected with this work.

* * *

## Universal Concepts and Imagery

I was walking down a beach one day with a couple I'd just met and I'd told them that I'd do my best to answer all their questions. The man immediately asked, "So, what's the meaning of life?"

My fast answer, "42." That made them chuckle. Then I launched into a scientific explanation of genetic diversity \- the scientific "meaning of life." Living organisms endure environmental stress. Only those individuals best suited for the conditions survive to reproduce. The more diverse a gene pool is, the more likely that a species will survive an unexpected stress event.

That sufficed for the moment but I had the feeling that the couple was seriously looking for the real answers to that age old question. I eventually shared with them some of my deeper stories.

Humans have been asking these questions forever. Perhaps it's part of the human experience. Who are we? What are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? These are Universal Questions and they connect all humans through time and space to Universal Concepts.

All humans can relate to the Universal Concepts of birth and death, to fear, hunger, and pain. We have ideas of good and evil, happiness and sadness, and the ability to create and destroy. These Universal Concepts bind humanity into a whole that defines us as more than just a biological species.

From the earliest recorded writings, humans have sought to answer these questions in stories. In the oldest known story - the Epic of Gilgamesh - people created mythological explanations for the things they couldn't explain in any other way. These written stories were certainly based on much earlier oral traditions that probably date back to the origins of human language. Many of these stories have been part of religions for thousands of years.

These stories all struggled to answer the Universal Questions based on mythology. It wasn't until the Greeks began contemplating Logic that these questions moved away from mythical answers. Plato and Aristotle used observation of the natural world to begin the development of scientific theory. Their concepts were still widely accepted thousands of years after their deaths. Their Universal Concepts included theories of matter and energy, light and sound, and astronomy and earth science.

Isaac Newton revolutionized science with his theories concerning matter and energy. These theories are the foundation of physics today. Some of his most vital contributions are the Theory of Conservation of Matter and the Theory of Conservation of Energy as well as his work in explaining Entropy.

These theories also influence Weaver Wisdom so I will state them here for those who might not be familiar with them. The Theories of Conservation of both Matter and Energy state that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. They can only change form. The Theory of Entropy states that all forms of matter and energy degrade to lesser states unless energy is applied to the system.

For example, solar energy drives most of the physical systems on the surface of the earth. Vast amounts of solar energy pour into our atmosphere every minute. That energy drives the air circulation in the atmosphere and the water cycle of the hydrosphere. As that energy trickles down, heat is lost to the atmosphere which keeps our planet at a temperature that allows life to flourish. That energy is never destroyed. It keeps moving through the layers of Entropy until it gets released back into space. If it wasn't released, our planet would overheat and life would perish.

Basic scientific concepts are easy to illustrate because they can be supported by natural phenomena observable by most people. Some ideas are much harder to explain. How can a person explain feelings, thoughts, or emotions? These are internal processes that only individuals can truly experience. They are personal and unique to every individual. How can love be described? Is there a way to explain fear?

Weaver Wisdom uses imagery to explore these complex ideas. These images are based on scientific observations. For example, fear is the natural response to a stimulus that endangers a person. It has effects that can be measured. Heart rate and breathing increase and chemical stimulants are released by glands in the body. Those are the effects of fear.

But how does one explain the feeling of fear? If you've ever felt really afraid, you might describe it as a heaviness that is trying to crush you or bury you. It feels like sand filling in around you. This is an example of imagery. The emotion of fear is represented by sand suffocating you. Throughout this book I'll use sand as a metaphor for emotions in general.

Each image and metaphor will be explained. These are only the images that I use. You may discover images that make more sense to you personally. Adopt them and make those images your personal vision.

Weaver Wisdom tries to explain the often unexplainable Universal Questions and Concepts by providing images supported by scientific observation. I've found many people experience anger as they explore these ideas because it challenges some of the fundamental beliefs that many accept as real. Western cultures are heavily steeped in religious mythology and even individuals who claim they have no connection to a religious group are sometimes reluctant to explore these deeper Universal Concepts.

Many people never get to a point in their lives where they ask these deep questions, either because they have been force fed a set of cultural or traditional answers or because they have become so self-centered that their time-oriented busy lives are too noisy for their subconscious mind to question WHY. Others are simply too afraid to ask.

Our world has become incredibly complex in a fairly short period of time. One hundred years ago a person could learn all they needed to know in less than six years. Now it takes two or three times that long to even scratch the surface.

But have we lost touch with the knowledge that counts? Can you personally answer the questions, "Why am I here? Does it matter if I exist?"

I began asking these questions at an early age. Life had handed me a heavy load of challenges. As I stumbled along under that burden, I began asking questions and searching for answers. I looked into many religious Boxes but I discovered there were no answers there - only more questions. I avoided the addictive sand-traps, mostly because I was a loner and many sand-traps focus on the "in crowd."

I encountered alternative ideas from others who were also searching and weighed them carefully with what I had discovered. I embraced science and the scientific method, using it to test the ideas from both religious and alternative sources. I even discovered that not all science is science based. Its origins lay within Boxes - not reality.

I began to see reality. It was frightening. I've discovered that most people who don't accept reality make that choice because of how terrifying reality is. They would rather live in illusions than face the hard cold facts. But reality is solid. When tested, reality stands and the illusions fade away.

Facing reality allows a person to answer those basic questions of why am I here and do I personally matter. Everyone will have their own unique answer to the first question. The second answer should be an affirmative. Every life form has a purpose - whether it reaches that potential or not.

Weaver Wisdom is not the ultimate answer but the beginning of a question. It is an attempt to help every individual discover their own potential so that they can answer the question, "Why do I exist?" Each individual person needs to be willing to question what is real and true. Does it harm you? Does it harm others? Is it the least amount of damage we can do to the world we live in? These are the questions that we need to focus on most.

I ask that you open your mind to a broader perspective. If an idea sparks anger, explore it and pay attention to what is causing the anger. Consider the images I've chosen and don't be afraid to challenge old ideas. Anger comes from fear. We tend to become angry at things that we can't control. When you look closely at that anger, you may discover hidden pieces of reality.

Weaver Wisdom is not an attempt to tell you who you should be or what your personal purpose is. That is unique to every individual. This is a guide to open your mind to the possibilities before you and offer a starting point for your own personal journey of discovery. It is my hope that you will overcome fear and move toward reality. Let the Journey begin.

* * *

## Tree Energy

I'll admit it straight out - I'm a natural scientist. Most humans are from a very early age. All you have to do is watch a young child explore the world. Everything has to be touched, tasted, and tested. This is how we acquire the foundation of life knowledge.

I grew up in a time and place where I was given the freedom to run and explore the natural world. I feel very fortunate, especially when I see the way most children are contained today. Their parents are afraid - of germs, of natural disasters, and of social dangers - in a way that my parents never even considered. I grew up surrounded by farms - dirt and germs, big animals, vast forests, and fast flowing rivers. Then add to that heavy machinery, multi-story haylofts, and a host of other potentially deadly threats. I survived.

The natural world was my playground and my laboratory. I loved the forest. I had a particular fondness for a certain grove of trees - an island of green on a hill surrounded by cornfields. At the very center of this grove was an ancient oak that had probably been a sapling before Christopher Columbus had been born.

I was fearless in this tree. I knew every branch all the way to the top. It provided cool leafy shade in the hot summer and buckets of acorns in the fall. In winter, it was a rattling ghost but in spring, it burst out with fresh new shoots and buds to renew the green crown. I knew and loved this tree.

During my twelfth year, we had a powerful summer storm that spun up a tornado. The funnel bounced across the countryside, sparing some but devastating others. After it passed, I ran to the remains of the forest grove. In the carnage were the twisted remains of my beloved tree. It had been stripped of green and split at the base. Its life energy was gone.

A local farmer came and cut it up. Most of the branches went to firewood but the big trunk was slabbed. He made a table from it. I remember sitting at that table, running my hands across the polished surface, counting hundreds of rings of growth. It was a beautiful history of that hilltop forest. But the tree would grow no more.

Living around farms, death was not new to me. I'd helped with the fall butchering as long as I could remember. I knew where the food on our table came from - most of it, less than a mile away. But the loss of my favorite tree was different. It was a pivotal moment in my life, perhaps my first moment of true awareness.

My parents were devout members of a religious Box. As a kid, I had followed along, doing what was expected, because I was told to or else. The Sunday after the storm, I gathered with all the other kids my age and the teacher asked us who we wanted to pray for that week. When my turn came, I said, "My tree."

The kid next to me turned and stared for a moment before telling me that I couldn't pray for a tree. It didn't have a soul. I told him he was wrong. The teacher took his side of the argument. This was the beginning of my Journey.

I knew the tree had a soul because it had been alive before the storm and now it was dead. When things died, their souls went away. That's what we had been taught. The teacher tried to tell me that only people had souls. That moment changed my life forever. Somewhere inside, even though I "was just a kid," I knew she was wrong. It made me start to question a whole lot of other things that I'd been taught in that Box.

As I grew older and studied higher levels of science, I was introduced to the concepts of matter and energy and the Laws of their Conservation. Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. They can only change form. The equation always has to be in balance.

By this time, I had a new favorite tree. It was an old mulberry that must have been planted by a settler a long time before I was born. These trees weren't native to the area. I took my new knowledge of matter and energy and climbed to the top of the tree. It was solid. The wood was packed with precisely ordered molecules. It was matter. But the tree was also absorbing energy in the form of sunlight. It used that energy to drive a complex series of chemical and physical processes that allowed for growth to occur. The tree replaced leaves each spring, made fruit each summer, and added a growth ring each year. It was alive. Like all living things, it had the ability to restructure energy to sustain its own life processes and create new units of itself in the form of seeds.

Trees have cells in their green leaves call chloroplasts that have the ability to absorb carbon dioxide and water, use sunlight to break these compounds apart, and reassemble them into simple sugars and oxygen. Simple sugars are chemical energy. The process of photosynthesis uses energy from the sun and alters that energy into a different form that can be used by the tree for growth, maintenance, and reproduction. This energy is more complex than solar energy. Living things have the ability to create higher forms of energy from simpler ones. This is reversed entropy.

My father had an extensive woodpile not far from the tree. It held six to ten cords of wood, depending on the time of year. It had to be restacked when the wood shrank as it dried. It was one of my chores. I also had to keep the wood box by the fireplace filled.

This was dead wood. It couldn't grow or make seeds. But it still held some energy within the matter because it could be burned. Wood contains potential energy stored in the form of carbon, which is why it will burn if you set it on fire. However, it no longer has the ability to oppose entropy. Wood will eventually break down under the forces of rot. Fire is the result of reduction in the presence of oxygen. The remaining stored energy in the matter is released. All that remains after the fire is ash - pure matter. Perhaps that is why many cultures choose cremation. There is a primal need to release the last of the energy from the dearly departed. Ashes to ashes.

Scientists once believed in spontaneous generation - the creation of living things from non-living materials. After numerous experiments, they realized this was not possible. No matter how hard scientists try, they can not animate life in the lab. Frankenstein exists only in fiction.

Life can only come from life. Just as the separate units of matter and energy can't be created, neither can the combined force we call life. The energy within living matter sustains life. If living matter loses that energy, death occurs. Death is the permanent separation of matter and energy.

All living things are a juxtaposition of matter and energy that are inextricably connected in precise patterns. Today, scientists are able to calculate these patterns and create genome maps for individual species.

Life can be defined as matter infused with natural energy that has the ability to grow, maintain its structure against the force of entropy, and reproduce additional units like itself that are also composites of matter and energy. Living things are capable of reversed entropy in their ability to change simple forms of energy into more complex ones.

Living things have a definite life history. All living things of a given species follow the same general life history. They are formed from a parent cell, grow, create offspring, and usually die. A human has a different life history than a tree. A tree is different from a butterfly. Each species has its own pattern of life.

A great deal of mythology has been invented to explain human life history. Science has struggled to get past that mythology to arrive at the current understanding of the evolution of life on earth. Humans are just a microscopic moment in time compared to all of the species that have existed before us.

Like all other living things, we are matter infused with energy. We maintain our physical matter by consuming energy in the form of food. But we possess more than just metabolic energy. Humans have a capacity to form thoughts and have emotions and feelings. This form of energy falls under the realm of psychology.

Psychology deals with the human mind, memory, and emotions. For over one hundred years, psychologists have struggled to define a series of stages that all humans experience as they grow from infants to adults. There has been much controversy in these definitions due to religious beliefs or cultural differences. Researchers argue over nature vs. nurture and struggle to define the role of the unconscious. Terms like id, ego, and superego have been created in an attempt to explain these various stages.

Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written on this topic. How ironic that much of human thought has been recorded on paper, which comes from trees that spent centuries growing, just like the ideas written on their remains.

* * *

## The Valley of Life

All living things have a basic pattern of development. This pattern comes from the blueprint encoded in DNA. Beyond that genetic blueprint is either an encoded set of instincts or a social structure that influences each individual species.

The vast majority of living things on our planet survive on instinct alone. All plants and most animal species - any living thing that consumes something beyond sunlight - have basic instincts that allow each organism its best chance at survival. If there is an abrupt environmental change, these species are more likely to go extinct.

A handful of animal species have developed social structures that include guided parenting and social correction. This allows for learned behavior to pass from one generation to the next, increasing the likelihood of species survival in the event of abrupt change.

Humans are one of those species. Compared to others, we have the longest parent-child relationship that usually spans almost two decades, if not more. We have predictable patterns of development after birth, no matter what culture we come from. They are encoded into our biology.

We are born flexible, a necessity of the process that allows us to exit the womb. We go through physical stages of growth and development from sitting up, to crawling, to walking. We also go through emotional stages of development from crying for our needs, to being able to talk and explain our needs, to providing for our own needs. We have an intellectual development that begins with recognizing our care-givers and gradually moves toward independence. Although often misunderstood, we also have a spiritual development. This isn't the religious kind but a recognition of our place within a greater whole.

### Physical Mud

You could think of human development in terms of a mountain valley. In the center of this valley is a large pool of mud. This mud represents the physical challenges of early childhood.

Infants are born totally dependant on the adults that surround them. They are at the mercy of physical Mud. A baby must learn to lift its head, push off from the floor, struggle to hands and knees, and eventually rise to a standing position. It's very much like a person who falls into a muddy pool.

The formative years are ones of struggle - against gravity and limitations of size, endurance, and control. If you've ever seen a tired child in a crowded store break down and have a tantrum, you will understand the image of someone pounding their fists against the mud that seems to be sucking them down. Understanding physical Mud can help parents understand their children and aid those who don't have children of their own in appreciating the challenges of helping children through these difficult years.

Children spend a lot of time developing physical muscle control, which eventually allows them to move forward toward the edge of the Mud. Around the mud pit is a sandy plain that covers the floor of the valley. Sand represents emotion. As children develop, they begin to express more complex emotions. Very young children learn emotions from the adults around them. They imitate facial expressions and sounds. Young children are rewarded for positive displays such as smiling or laughing but they are punished for negative displays such as yelling, screaming, or crying.

The first needs of an infant are physical. They need food, care, and security. As children begin to move toward the emotional Sands, they begin picking up learned behaviors that they see around them - and imitating them. I still remember the first scowl on my grand daughter's face! Her aunt had discovered the mess she'd made on the kitchen floor. When I laughed at the expression, my daughter got even angrier and my grand daughter imitated that expression, too!

Very young children really don't have any emotional control. They have basic needs. The most common phrase of a young child is, "I want." As they move toward the Sand and begin crawling out of the Mud, they begin to develop a sense of self. They realize that they are still covered with Mud. This leads to the Stomping Years.

In our house, it was "Stomp, stomp, slam!" The stomp of feet down the hall and the slam of the door was usually followed by the new battle cry of, "It's not fair!" So many parents that I've talked to over the years have repeated similar events that this pattern could be considered a Human Universal!

These intermediate stomping years often begin around age 8 and continue into the teens. If they go much beyond that, it just becomes annoying for everyone around that individual!

### Emotional Sand

Once a child stomps most of the Mud off, they move out onto the Emotional Plains. These plains look flat and easy to negotiate to inexperienced eyes but if you've ever tried to walk on dry sand, you know how challenging it really is. The sand seems to shift under your feet, providing little traction. It's tiring and it takes a lot of energy. When the sand gets into our shoes, we get blisters. And when someone throws it at us, it stings our eyes.

Sand is hard to carry. It gets heavy and so do emotions. Emotions come in two basic types - internal emotions like hunger and sadness and external emotions like anger and fear. Internal emotions are general ones that we can physically do something about. If we feel hunger, we eat. If we feel sad, we find a way to cheer ourselves. External emotions are those we feel towards or about another person or event. Some external emotions are caused by people or events around us. Fear, guilt, and shame are good examples of this type.

Anger is a very dangerous emotional Sand. When we get angry, we start throwing Sand around at others. It can hurt them and often makes them cry. Anger Sand builds up quickly within a person like rising water behind a dam. When that dam breaks, the water does devastating damage downstream. When anger builds up, it can be just as damaging to everyone around the angry person. The most dangerous form of anger Sand can lead to physical violence, which harms others around the angry person.

Fear Sand is very heavy. When we're buried in fear, it's hard to breathe and if we're buried deep enough, hard to move. Think of a deer in headlights! Uncontrolled fear can prevent us from thinking clearly.

Guilt and shame are closely related. Guilt Sand is something we carry around while shame is something we throw at others. They often go hand in hand. How many times has someone said to you, "Shame on you!" It makes you feel guilty.

Humans tend to use guilt and shame as corrective control methods. It is not only ineffective but it can cause more problems than it solves. Shame often comes in the form of anger in retaliation. If a person acts incorrectly, others, responding out of anger, retaliate by shaming that person. Shame and blame go together.

Guilt Sand is closely connected to fear. People who carry a heavy load of guilt are often fearful of even more retaliation. The current legal system in the US is heavily steeped in shame and guilt Sand. For the perceived safety of our society, the controlling powers dump shame on the accused to make them feel guilty in an attempt to change their behavior.

The system isn't looking at the cause of the behavior, only at the effects. In the process, they dump even more Sand on an already buried individual. This compounds the problem. The more Sand a person carries, the more they struggle under the load, and the more reactive the release can be. This tends to create repeat offenders.

It also has a secondary effect in today's society. Even after these individuals have "served their time," the controlling powers sprinkle fear Sand ahead of them with words like "felon" added to their record. This makes it even harder for these individuals to survive in an acceptable way. They often flounder under the weight and return to bad behaviors that hurt themselves and others.

An improved system would treat each offence as a unique situation and examine the causes behind the inappropriate behavior. Instead of focusing on retaliation and guilt, the system could look at ways to correct the problems at the root of the cause. That might include education or job skills training. The community could be encouraged to help recovering offenders rather than shun them. By breaking the chain reaction there would be fewer repeat offenders.

Our society as a whole has become focused on emotions. All you have to do is watch a set of television commercials to see this. Food ads tempt us to eat foods that may not be the best for us. A host of items, from clothing to cars, are displayed as things everyone should desire and want, even if we don't really need them. Advertisers play on our emotions to create consumers who want things that we truly don't need.

While most stumble onward across the Emotional Plains, some tumble into Emotional Sand-traps. There are many different forms that range from mild time-draining escapism like video games to more serious ones like drug addiction. The more serious the Sand-trap, the more likely that it will have physical Mud at the bottom.

People end up in emotional Sand-traps when the weight of emotional Sand they are carrying begins to suck them down. It goes under the physiological label of stress. Consider the industrial definition of the word. In that situation, stress is defined as the amount of external pressure a given substance can tolerate before deformation occurs. People who are under stress too long become depressed.

When we are constantly surrounded by the pressure of emotional Sand, it begins to deform us. If we don't release the pressure in a safe way, permanent damage can occur. This damage gets labeled hypertension and leads to endless physical issues like high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

There are far too many unhealthy ways that people seek to reduce the weight of the emotional Sand. Some are easy to recognize, like alcohol and drug abuse. If a person slides too deeply into these addictive Sand-traps, they get sucked into the Mud, which will eventually crush and kill them.

Addictive substances are dangerous Sand-traps that cause harm to a person and possibly others around them. A substance that impairs the function of the brain does damage to the body. Impairment of mental judgment can do harm to others, especially if a motor vehicle is involved.

Other Sand-traps are harder to recognize. Self-loathing and self-centering are two opposite extremes but both can be very dangerous. Self-loathing has a hidden Mud pit at the bottom called suicide. Self-loathing sometimes begins when we compare ourselves to some social standard of physiology. Look again at advertisements. What do the people look like? Most have specific body shapes. In Western society, men are muscular and women are slender. If we get too focused on our inability to look like the socially accepted norm, we move toward self-loathing.

Self-loathing can also come from carrying too much guilt Sand. When a person feels guilty and doesn't have the ability to dump the Sand, the weight of it begins to exert stress. If enough stress is applied, the individual begins to feel low self-esteem, which leads to self-loathing.

Self-centering is like walking around surrounded by a ring of mirrors. A self-centered person is so focused on themselves that they have no idea what's going on around them. It can also lead to reckless behavior, which can be dangerous because they aren't paying attention. The self-centered person bulldozes Sand around themselves in all directions and is oblivious to their own actions.

The other danger often encountered on the emotional plain is a Box. This image comes from a lecture I heard once that was given by a veteran Detroit firefighter. He arrived with his unit to the scene of a fully-engulfed house. The parents were frantic because their five-year-old daughter was still inside. The fire crew quickly slipped into air tanks and began to search the building but all too soon they were ordered out because the roof was collapsing. They later found her in the ashes. She had been inside a cardboard box in her closet and no one had thought to look there. Her mother burst into tears when she heard the news. The box had been her daughter's safety place during storms because she couldn't see the lightening from inside the box.

Boxes make us feel safe. They provide walls that keep us from seeing the things we fear. But they also hide reality from us. The girl was too afraid of the fire to come out of the box and that is where she died.

Boxes are social organizations that attempt to control a population through a system of beliefs and moral judgments. Many Boxes proclaim that their box is the only "True Box." Everyone else outside that Box is doomed. This heavy emotional Sand is dispensed in weekly doses to ensure that everyone in the Box is covered with it. The Boxes are filled with guilt and shame and layered with fear about the world beyond the walls of the Box.

I grew up in such a Box. It takes courage to escape them because everyone around you is so firmly entrenched in the beliefs that they hold you back. They claim to be "afraid for your eternal soul." It's just another layer of Guilt Sand and the weight is often enough to keep many inside the Box.

Some of the Sand-traps and Boxes have sand sharks connected to them - individuals who encourage an overloaded person to "escape" the pressures of life or hide from reality. These people are experts at reading others. Some are even trained to do it. They play on our weaknesses, figuring out what we fear most and adding new layers of fear to drive us in the direction of their Sand-trap or Box.

Conscious sand sharks are very dangerous because they have discovered the power of being at the center of attention. They have large circles of people around them who they control with compliments for "good" behavior and complaints for "bad."

There are also unconscious sand-sharks who "feed" off of our emotions. They might be family members, friends, or co-workers. We can recognize them because we feel exhausted after being around them. Unconscious sharks are "needy" people. They may feel lonely and are often unconnected to life. They just need our presence, or our help, or a quick errand, which turns into many more. Watch out for the line, "I know you're busy but ..." Their needs are more important than ours.

Sharks of either kind have sharp teeth. Their favorite weapon is guilt Sand. If we don't meet their needs or expectations, they will lay it on thick. To feel more powerful, they make others around them feel insignificant.

When we discover sharks in our lives, we have to pay attention. Real sharks have modified teeth for scales. If you pet them from nose to tail, it won't hurt you. The same is true of sand sharks. We have to learn how to co-exist with the unavoidable ones like family members and coworkers. Learn what sets them off and avoid those situations. "Pet" them gently!

### The Wall of Intellect

There is more to existence than the Emotional Plain. The sad truth is that many today can't seem to find it. Our society revolves around the wants and perceived needs of commercialism. Just pay attention to what television commercials are really saying! They use emotional hooks as a marketing device to convince us that we need the product they are trying to sell. They want us to believe that our lives would be deficient without their product or service.

Beyond the Sands of the Emotional Plain is the Wall. A few find the Wall by design while others simply run into it by accident, head on when they least expect it. The Wall is hard, cold Logic. It's solid, like rock.

Climbing the Wall is challenging, especially if we are burdened with a heavy load of Sand. Climbing takes focus. We have to pay attention to detail and make good conscious choices.

The people around us may start adding Sand to our load as we begin climbing because it takes our focus away from them. They retaliate with guilt Sand. "You never have time for me anymore." Or fear Sand. "What if you don't find what you're looking for?" The greatest challenge in climbing the Wall is learning how to dump Sand.

I had known the Wall was there for a very long time before I finally started climbing. I was fortunate to have a conscious guide early in my childhood who prepared me for the encounter. It took an act of devastation to move me onto the Wall. This seems to be a common pattern.

I've found some people will stand and bang their head against the Wall for a long time because they are afraid to climb it. A few will struggle upward but many of those slide back into the Sand. There seems to be a common battle cry among this group of head bangers and sliders, "Why me?"

How sad that it takes an act of destruction to draw most people to the Wall. For me, it was the death of my husband, which left me alone with four children to raise, bills to pay, and a whole host of other issues to deal with. I discovered Pity Sand. It's hard to shake off and dangerous stuff - sticky and sweet. When the dust settles and we have to tackle the big challenges, that sweetness turns sour. Those who pity us fade into the background when we really need help.

Many of us who find the Wall carry a heavy load of Sand from our trek across the Emotional Plain. When we first encounter the Wall of hard, cold Logic, it seems an impassable obstacle. Our first task is to dump the Sand we carry. We do a lot of crying. Have you ever noticed the little grains of sand in the corners of your eyes after a good cry? It takes a lot of tears to get rid of the Sand that way.

The best way is to just let it go. We have to face ourselves in the mirror and realize that there is no reason to carry guilt and we have nothing to be ashamed of. We have to let go of our fear. I know how hard this is! Fear tends to find us at the worst possible moments - on dark nights when we feel completely alone. There's no one to call and the world seems to be bent on drowning us.

Just breathe. I've found this to be the most effective method of dumping Sand. Envision the Sand within you. Picture it in your hand. When you breathe out, blow the Sand away. I use this technique a lot. It also brings fresh oxygen into our brain, which allows us to think clearly, focus, and pay attention.

When we pay attention we can take control of our lives and make better choices. Every moment of every day we are making choices, most without even realizing it. The average person makes thousands of subconscious choices on a daily basis. Because these choices have been repeated so often, they have become routine. When we stop paying attention to what we are doing and slip into the routine, we can get into trouble!

While learning to be a river guide, I had a more experienced guide give me some very good advice. "Learn the river but never expect it to be the same river twice." We have a tendency to fall into comfortable patterns and designated routes. We don't pay as close attention to these routes because they have become familiar. This is where we get in trouble when something unexpected changes.

Running a river is a lot like climbing the Wall. Even little things - a slight change in temperature or a shift of the wind - can alter the current. The water looks yielding but trust me, it's not! If you hit it, it feels solid, and it's cold! This is a definite wake-up call.

Like running a river, climbing the Wall is challenging. We have to pay attention to details and make calculated choices. We also have to be responsible for the choices we make. As my instructor told me, when you make a choice, stick with it. If you try to change course midstream, you're sure to take a spill. Make a choice then see it through. Own it.

The Wall is reality. There are no IFs, MAYBEs, MIGHT-HAVE-BEENs, or SHOULD-HAVE-BEENs. There is only WHAT IS and WHAT IS NOT. The Wall is very black and white. We can't ALMOST be on the Wall. We're either there or we're not.

Because it is reality, it's also testable. This isn't something we "just have to believe." Reality is a repeatable function of an observable set of events. Gravity is reality. No matter how many times you let a heavy object go, it will always fall to the ground.

I once had someone ask me what caused the tides of the ocean. I explained the gravitational effects of the moon and sun on the hydrogen-bonded water molecules. He asked me how I knew it was true. Did I just believe it because I had read it in a book? I told him that I spent a lot of time on the coast and I saw for myself the connection between the moon and the ocean. It was observable and predictable.

When we become experienced climbers, we begin to predict what is coming because we are paying attention to the larger patterns around us. We begin to realize that everything is interconnected. What we do and the choices we make affect everything around us.

Climbing the wall puts us in control of our own lives. We make out own conscious decisions and take responsibility for our choices. There are times when things happen around us that we have no control over. Natural disasters or other people's decisions can turn our lives upside down. Our choice then is how we respond to that event. Some get angry and throw Sand while others bang their head on the Wall and cry, "Why me?" Neither of these things will do anyone any good.

As climbers, we accept what we have no control over. This isn't "giving up." This is calmly paying attention to what's going on around us so that we can get out of the way of danger and help others do the same to the best of our ability.

I know the helplessness that I felt when my husband died unexpectedly. There was nothing I could do about his death - he was gone. I had to pick up the shattered pieces of my life and move forward. There was no way to change the event. This is accepting WHAT IS. Others around me were angry and throwing Sand in every direction. All I could do was keep breathing.

I've been through natural disasters - storms and earthquakes. These things are way beyond our control. The important thing is to let go of fear. Fear is a useful tool as it heightens our senses but if we don't let it go, it will shut us down. We need to pay attention so we can make good choices that keep us safe.

### The Snowfields of the Soul

After you have reached a certain point on the Wall you begin to realize that there are Snowfields above you. These Snowfields are the realm of Spirituality. This is not a religious kind but an awareness of your personal energy and its connection to the greater Universe.

The word "Universe" is a useful way of describing EVERYTHING. The prefix "uni-" means "one" and the base word "verse" refers to going around or circling. Consider a conversation. It's two or more people sending words around to each other. To reverse is to turn around and come back. So the Universe is the "one circle" that holds all others. Everything - all matter and energy within the Universe - is ultimately interconnected within the circle like a giant spider web.

At the top of the Wall is a ledge that represents full consciousness. Once we are completely aware we can turn and contemplate how we relate to the rest of the Universe. We begin to see the threads that bind everything together and how our personal threads weave into the greater Tapestry of the Universe. This can be a dangerous experience!

Mountain climbers wear special eye protection to prevent snow-blindness when they venture into the highest elevations. They also have to pay attention to their breathing because the air is less dense. At the highest elevations they even carry oxygen with them.

When we venture into the Snowfields, we need to do so carefully. It takes concentration not to get lost. Snow doesn't show corners very well. It's challenging in a way that is different from climbing the Wall. It requires a different level of concentration and awareness.

Just as very few real mountain climbers ever summit, few Wall climbers venture into the Snowfields of the Soul. Even the most experienced never spend much time there. This is a place for short term contemplation. We only go there when our attention and focus are not needed for other things.

The rest of the time we have to keep our focus on the Wall. Most of the world we exist in is stuck on the Valley floor. As others find the Wall, either with our help or by running head on into it, they need our encouragement and support to climb. It is the responsibility of the accomplished Wall climber to aid others in their struggle to ascend the Wall and become confident, complete individuals.

* * *

## The Perfect Match

I met a couple not long ago that was celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary. One of their great grand daughters had just become engaged. She asked the elderly matriarch the secret to staying married for so many years. Her answer, "Be there for each other."

This is such powerful advice! My grandmother taught me a symbol when I was very young. She drew a circle on the ground and made a symbol like a compass rose within it. She told me, "Focus your mind with the yellow morning sun in the east. Work with your body in the black rich earth during the day when the rains come from the south. Share your emotions with your love ones when the red sun sets in the west. Restore your soul as the tiny white stars circle the night sky in the north."

On top of that symbol she layered the number 4: beginning in the east, to the west, to the north, to the south. This is the pattern for developing a lasting relationship "4 each other."

### A Meeting of Minds

I was helping a friend get ready for her wedding when her younger sister asked how she knew that her husband-to-be was "the one." My friend told her sister, "We always know what each other is thinking. It's like we're one person in two separate bodies."

I thought that was an excellent definition for the meeting of minds that is essential for any couple trying to survive today. My friend and her partner had known each other for several years before they began dating. They had a firm foundational friendship and trusted each other. They also had the most important skill in any kind of relationship - communication.

Whenever I hear someone say, "My partner doesn't understand me," the first thing I ask is, "Have you talked to your partner about the issue?" No one is psychic. Some may be good at reading body language and other cues but no one can truly know the thoughts of another - unless that person shares them.

If a couple is on the Emotional Plain, this can be stressful! Fear is the biggest Sand in any kind of relationship. To develop trust, a couple must dump the fear Sand that stands between them. If that fear Sand builds up, misunderstandings, resentment, offence, and anger result.

A lasting relationship begins mind to mind. Each person lets go of fear to develop the threads of trust that will bind their minds together. Words are powerful bits of energy. They can build or they can destroy. Pay attention to how you use them. We should never be afraid to tell our partner what we are thinking but that means that we must trust our partner not to be offended by what we say.

Good communication is a two-way street. There has to be trust both ways from both the speaker and the listener. As we get to know our partner, we develop that trust. Trust is like a delicate bridge that must be strengthened on a daily basis. The greatest danger to that bridge is emotional Sand.

I'm pretty good at spotting couples who have emotional Sand blocking the bridge of communication. They don't make eye contact, their body language is stiff, especially toward each other, and their words are tight. Anger and resentment have built up between them, preventing them from clearing the Sand off the bridge. I like the expression, "Clearing the air." That's a good way to put it. When Sand gets in the way, we have to "clear the air" between our partner and ourselves.

### Sweethearts

When our minds are connected with our partner's, our hearts follow. Our society today uses the word "love" too much and often in the wrong way. I don't like that word anymore. It has been abused and has lost its meaning. People use the word "love" to mean other things that they really don't want to admit.

"I love pizza!" This is gluttony - the desire for food. "I love your car!" This is envy - the desire to have what someone else has. "I want to make love to you!" This is sexual desire. The word "love" covers the meaning of desire.

Consider the commercial holiday of Valentine's Day, which is supposed to celebrate love. Almost 200 million roses are grown - and cut - for this day alone. The other common gift of candy offers a temporary moment of sugary pleasure but no real food value. The red, heart-shaped trinkets and treats of the holiday are as transient as the emotion it celebrates.

The heart is responsible for the circulation of blood in our bodies. Blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all the cells of our body and carries away wastes. The heart responds to chemical stimulants released by our brains and endocrine system. When a couple nurtures their hearts, they not only have a healthy relationship, but they have healthy bodies.

You may have heard the phrase, "Two hearts beat as one." The heart responds to our emotions, which are caused by our brains responding to stimuli and releasing stimulants into our blood. When a couple's emotions are in sync, their heartbeats often match.

A friend challenged me one day because I always talk about the dangers of Emotional Sand. Emotions are temporary. We don't feel them all the time. Emotions are caused by a stimulus \- either an exterior event or an internal thought - that produces a reaction within us. When we touch our partner or think of them, the stimulus produces a reaction within us. Endorphins are released into our blood stream that speed up our hearts and pump more blood through our bodies. We usually look flushed and it causes increased sensitivity to our bodies, which often leads to arousal.

Most people aren't conscious of this. The emotion of "love" is a temporary event, just like any other emotion. I have to keep from laughing when I hear a young person complain that their partner doesn't love them anymore. Consider what that emotion does - increases heart rate and adds stimulants to the body. We physically can't love all the time. It isn't healthy for our bodies.

This is why I don't tell my partner "I love you," but instead, "My heart to your heart." This symbolizes the touch of our bodies that we share because we trust each other. When we hold each other our hearts align. We can feel each other's heartbeat. We are capable of moving beyond the personal space boundaries that casual friends have. Our hearts touch.

### Soul Mates

Many cultures believe that the soul is centered behind the belly button. It's a beautiful concept as the navel was our connection to our mother before birth. She shared her body and soul with us through the umbilical cord.

This is the same region in our bodies where the diaphragm is located. I had a music teacher that used to tell us, "Sing from the soul." What a powerful statement! Music is self-generated energy capable of expressing so many different thoughts and emotions.

Our soul is our personal energy. It is the life force within us. When we are "soul to soul" with our partner, we begin to weave the threads of our energy patterns together. This is the real bond that links a couple. It is true intimacy.

This is where the feeling of oneness really begins. When a couple has a firm foundation in communication and trusts each other enough to move beyond the personal space boundary, their souls come in contact and begin to weave a delicate fabric of threads that will eventually become a solid tapestry that will stand the test of time.

When a couple first begins weaving together, the threads have to stretch. This stretching process is critical. Even the tightest bound soul mates can't always be together physically. But those first few weeks, months, sometimes even years, can be painful. That's part of stretching.

Consider what it takes to physically stretch your muscles. When you first begin exercising, you are often sore afterwards. You have stretched your muscles and they need to build more material to compensate for that new stretch. It takes time to develop flexibility.

A solid relationship is the same way. When a couple begins weaving their souls, the initial periods of separation can feel intense. We call each other and want to see each other a great deal. As the soul fabric develops flexibility, we get a little more comfortable with the periods of time that require us to be apart.

The tighter the weave of joined souls, the less room there is for Sand. If Emotional Sand gets into a relationship, it weakens the fabric. This is why it's essential for partners to be both climbers and weavers. Sand can destroy a soul tapestry if the weight becomes too great. Both partners need to know how to shake excess Sand out of the fabric.

### Out of Body Experience

When partners have strong soul weaving skills, their physical contact becomes more intense. It moves beyond physical into a spiritual experience. There is no way to describe this feeling using words. It goes beyond the concepts that are capable of being expressed in English. All I can tell you is that it feels like an out of body experience.

It is so much more than sex. It is a total feeling that can only be felt and not explained. It's like being at the center of your own personal class five hurricane. Everything is swirling around you and your partner but you are both suspended together in the eye.

At this point of a relationship, partners are "Body to Body." The division between our own body and that of our partner's fades away. It takes a great deal of trust to give ourselves completely to another. It's as though we step out of our skin and exist in a bubble with our partner for that moment in time.

We obviously can't stay there forever. Those moments are the flashes of electricity that sparkle through our joined tapestry. They are like metallic threads woven through a fabric for accent. Too much and it overpowers the design. Those moments are special - sacred.

### Integration

Just as the number 4 is made by a series of lines, a relationship is built in steps that leads to a complete form. The lines alone have no meaning. It's not until we see the completed structure made by the lines that we can recognize what it is.

The challenge of any relationship is balance. A relationship is a work in progress. It's a journey not a destination. There is no stopping point. If a relationship falls apart, threads are torn and both partners are tattered.

To maintain a healthy relationship, we must make a conscious commitment to good communication, trust, thoughtful weaving, and well-balanced highlights. This is a purposeful action, one that takes commitment and dedication. Weaving all of the elements together takes a lifetime.

Every relationship has challenges. There are outside forces that shift the currents around us. We have to flex and bend with our partner to survive. Always remember that communication is the foundation. Without a firm foundation, even the best made structure will collapse. Nurture that foundation on a daily basis. Build trust between your hearts. Avoid the heavy Sands of anger. Nothing destroys threads faster than anger Sand.

When we give ourselves freely and completely to another person, we are making a commitment to that individual to be trust-worthy and honest. We need to be good climbing partners, helping each other overcome obstacles and catching each other when we fall. Being able to forgive mistakes and move beyond them is probably one of the most important skills in any sustaining relationship.

Everyone slides sometimes. Partners accept this and do their best to mitigate the avalanche. They catch their sliding partner and anchor in, grabbing the Wall, and holding on for both. If our threads are strong, we can overcome any challenge.

One of the more difficult moments in anyone's life is the loss of a life partner. When a partner dies, it's as though half of our own threads are suddenly gone. I've been there. I know this from experience. Our souls are left tattered with threads dangling around us. We feel ourselves falling.

The choice is hard but we must grab the Wall and hang on. Dropping into the Sand will do us no good. We have no choice but to accept that our partner is gone. That is reality. It's hard and cold. That's the nature of the Wall. The only choice we truly have is how we respond to that event. Grabbing onto the Wall with our tattered threads is painful. Climbing alone when we have climbed with another is hard.

Some choose not to take another partner. When a person has been weaving with another for a very long time, their souls are so deeply connected that they can still feel the soul of their partner and choose not to weave with another. This is personal choice.

Others realize that they still have a long life journey ahead. They struggle to find another who is willing to climb with them and make the commitment to weave. It's never the same. Parts of our souls are gone and we can never weave with those threads again. We have to make the conscious choice to weave with new threads. Weaving is a risk that we choose to accept rather than climb alone.

* * *

## Teach Your Children Well

Extending our weave to create a new soul is a serious undertaking. Most parents today don't seem to realize this. This is the damage done by the Sands of the Emotional Plain. It blinds us to the reality of the seriousness of this undertaking. When the physical act of sex leads to the creation of a new soul without conscious thought, that new soul is in jeopardy.

An activist asked if I was pro-choice. By the comments on her shirt, I already knew her opinion. I asked her a very powerful question. How does the unborn child get to make a choice? This upset her and she launched into an emotional essay on the tragedy of a mother forced to give birth to an unwanted child. The true tragedy is that the unwanted child was created in the first place.

Life is special. It is a juxtaposition between matter and energy that can only occur within something already alive. The original seeds of life for our own planet likely came here as microscopic organisms trapped in the ice of a comet. It is life's unique ability to combat the forces of entropy and expand upward in complexity that makes it so special. The human genome is a product of billions of years of evolution. Millions of alterations have occurred between our current genetic signature and the original material that seeded our world.

The creation of a new soul should never be taken lightly or without conscious thought. It is a life changing event for the mother. She spends nine months giving of her body and soul to this effort. The new soul that is created is similar to both mother and father but also unique. The parents provide the genetic weft and the mother specifically provides the original physical weft that this child will begin weaving on.

As parents we are responsible for this new soul until it is capable of being responsible for itself. Humans have one of the longest "childhood" phases of all animal species. Childhood is defined as the period from birth to sexual maturity, which averages between 12 and 16 years. Young children are completely dependant on care for at least half of that time. It would be unthinkable to leave a child of six alone.

This has to do with cognitive maturity. A child who hasn't reached this stage of development doesn't have the ability to see that their actions have effects that could jeopardize their safety. Young children are too busy fighting the Mud to pay attention beyond their own limited view. This is why most states have a law that set the age for "latch-key kids" at age eight. Most children have reached a basic sense of self by that age.

It's important, as a parent, to understand the development stages that a child goes through, not just the physical ones, but also the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual ones. Most people today are familiar with the physical development stages. We know that infants can't walk or talk when they are born. They are physically incapable of supporting themselves in any way.

### The First Year

The first few hours of an infant's life after birth are critical. The baby has spent nine months in a specialized environment that was designed to protect and nurture that growing life form. Birth is a shocking experience! They are forced from the warm, comforting safety of the womb, with Mother's heartbeat echoing all around them, into a cold world filled with bright light, loud sounds, strange smells, and a host of new sensations. Sensory overload can drive a newborn into a screaming fit.

What every infant needs at birth is warmth, quiet, and the comforting touch of Mother holding that baby close to her heart. Every newborn knows the sound of their mother's voice and heartbeat. These first few hours are critical to making the initial adjustment into a new world as a separate being. The reassurance from Mother is vital. I've seen the difference in my own children from those born in a hospital under stressful conditions to the two born at home under very different conditions. Even as adults, these differences are still apparent!

This is also the critical time for Father because he has been a distant figment for the unborn. The infant hopefully knows Father's voice and maybe even his touch from the outside but now is the time for Father to become part of the primary support system for this new life that he helped create.

Touch is important. I still remember the wonderful nurse in the hospital who taught me how to give my middle daughter a massage. There had been complications with her birth and she was forced to stay in an incubator. This was challenging for both of us. All I could do was put my hands through two round openings. The nurse attached a heart monitor to me that was fed into a speaker that my daughter could hear. These were a couple of the hardest of days of my life! I spent those first few days with my hands in a plastic box, holding my newborn as best I could. I was beyond relief when she was finally able to come out.

The first few days of any infant's life should be spent in the arms of Mother and Father. Forget all the fancy baby equipment that came as shower gifts. These first few days are critical bonding days that form the emotional fibers that will follow this child through the rest of their lives. Babies sleep best with their head resting on Mother's breast. Father needs to be there to not only help Mother but also to make that critical bond with baby.

It's tempting to want to show off the baby to everyone but that should wait at least a week, with the exception of close family. Grandparents and siblings, who are part of this baby's world, should meet and greet this new soul, especially if they will play a role in the baby's development.

For young siblings, this can be challenging! This new baby is taking the focus of Mother and Father away! It's important for them to be prepared for this event. They should be involved with the prebirth activities as much as possible. They need to feel important as "older" siblings. They are protectors of a new baby who is younger and unable to care for itself. By being given this role, they will better adapt to the shift of attention.

The first month of an infant's life is spent getting the kinks worked out of all the physical systems that will support that new person for the rest of their lives. Body temperature, pulse rate, and breathing all fluctuate during this time as a baby's metabolic systems learn to cope with environmental conditions. The best thing for baby during this first month is attentive parents who anticipate baby's other needs.

Newborns cry because they have no other way to express themselves. I still feel the tightness when I hear a newborn cry, even though it has been many years since I nursed my own children. I'm a firm believer that breast milk is the best milk if Mother is healthy. No matter how good science gets, natural mother's milk can't be improved on.

By keeping baby fed and clean, baby is less likely to fuss, especially when kept close to the heart. The worst piece of advice I've ever heard given is "put the baby down and let it cry." NEVER! I don't know who originally came up with that idea but it's wrong! The unborn is accustomed to being held in the warm embrace of the womb with Mother's heartbeat all around. Once born, the next best thing is Mother's arms holding that baby to her breast where baby can feel and hear her heartbeat.

By the second month, the infant usually has most of the bodily systems under control and begins to experiment with large muscle control. Thrusting of arms and legs and attempts to raise the head build muscle control and strength. These movements are important. They shouldn't be hampered by tightly fitted clothing. There is a time and place for swaddling but not all the time. Baby needs the freedom to exercise these important muscle groups.

At six months, most babies are able to hold their heads up, sit up with help, reach for things, and push against weight placed on the bottoms of their feet. Don't take this lightly! That's a lot of muscle development in a very short period of time! This is their battle against the Mud and it's exhausting. It can be frustrating if they are not supported by caregivers. I can tell just by looking at a six month old how well their early care has been. The well tended six month old is smiling and attentive.

After six months, most babies begin to really take an interest in the world around them, far more than before this time. They want to reach out and touch everything. This is the challenge for caregivers. Babies need safe environments to be able to explore the world. They need attentive guides to encourage them to pay attention to safe things and keep them from dangerous things.

Babies have no ability to judge safe from dangerous, nor should they be expected to. This is the responsibility of the caregiver. While the best person for this job is Mother, it's often someone else today. The next best person would be Grandmother. Her knowledge and experience are valuable. If care of baby must be from someone outside the family, it is Mother's responsibility to carefully choose the person who she will trust with her infant.

From six months to a year most babies go from stationary to mobile, either crawling or walking by age one. Once they gain this independence, they also gain their first threads of self-awareness. I was fortunate to be able to watch my grand daughter during this critical stage of her life. At times it was almost comical. She would crawl away and then look back to see what we would do. She learned that smiles meant she could keep going but a waving finger meant she had to stop.

Babies begin learning language before they are born. Their hearing develops while they are still in the womb and voices, especially Mother's voice, penetrate the membranes that separate baby from the outside world. After birth, air is introduced to baby's vocal chords. They have no control over the sound they make at first. Within the first six months, however, they learn to imitate facial expressions and basic sounds. The most important thing a caregiver can do is hold the baby while they talk to it. Babies learn by imitation. They need to experience not only the sound but also the visual cues of mouth shape and the vibrations that are felt when a baby is held while being talked to. It's not uncommon for a baby to reach out tiny fingers and place them on a mouth or face. This tactile experience adds to the information they are processing about the sounds they are hearing.

Babies, especially during the first year and well into the second, put everything in their mouths. The mouth is very tactile. Babies rely on taste and smell far more than adults do. This is why a caregiver has to be attentive. Children under the age of two should NEVER be left alone. Anything possibly within reach of tiny fingers has to be consciously placed there by the caregiver. Babies shouldn't be left in "baby gear" like swings or bouncers without a caregiver present. These are wonderful tools for freeing up the hands for other chores but can become dangerous if you turn your back to them. These should be tools for baby, not for the caregiver. Swings provide a feeling of motion that mimics the feeling of being in the womb while Mother is walking. Bouncers allow for large muscle development. But they should never be used as a place to "dump" the baby so chores can be completed.

Babies are a full-time commitment, especially as they become mobile! After my first two children, I realized that babies need to sleep with Mother for the first six months at least and then near her until at least two years, if not longer. This can be challenging for a couple if they are not both committed to their child.

Fathers often feel "left out" when baby takes the full focus of Mother. This is why it's critical that Father also become a primary caregiver. Father may not be able to feed baby at first but the contrast of Father's strong supportive hands gives baby a well-rounded feeling of security.

Fathers do need to remember that babies are fragile! They aren't footballs to be tossed or swung around. I went to school with a young lady who had to wear a neck brace for her whole life because her father had tossed her into the air and caught her. She had been a giggling happy child, giddy at the feeling of free flight until one day, she wasn't laughing anymore because it hurt. Several of her neck vertebrae had been fractured and healed wrong. Young bones can take a lot of stress but these are growing bones that need to be protected from abrupt changes in gravity and inertia.

By the age of two, baby is beginning to develop a greater sense of self. This leads to what many call the "terrible twos." Two year olds have become independently active and mobile. They have usually developed the muscle control and strength to run. Because of this, it can be challenging for the caregiver. We are often exhausted by the end of the day. Two year olds seem to have an unending supply of energy.

I have discovered the secret to this special year is paying attention to baby's particular patterns. Sleep patterns need to be regulated so that baby is getting ample amounts for that growing body. To balance that, there needs to be plenty of interactive learning opportunities and safe physical challenges to keep baby stimulated.

The second year is usually the greatest time of advancement for baby. Their language goes from only a handful of words to over several hundred. They begin to form sentences and understand the meaning of what they are saying. They begin to experiment with emotions. Because babies learn by imitation, they need this period of experimentation to discover if they understand the rules.

This is also a frustrating time for baby and caregiver alike. Two year olds want to see and do everything. Most have no concept of personal safety and this gives caregivers gray hair! The best thing that a caregiver can do is consciously plan for ways to engage baby's natural curiosity and need to explore in a safe way. It's those moments when we stop paying attention that baby will get into trouble.

Do not retaliate and take out your anger at your own lack of attention on baby! Accept that the average two year old is designed to test their own limits. This is natural. As caregivers we have to direct this natural urge in a positive way, for our sanity and baby's safety. Provide a safe environment and use positive reinforcement to encourage baby to become a happy independent child.

### Toddlers

By the time a child reaches the age of three, they have developed the foundations of their personality as well as large muscle control. They have learned the basics of communication and are beginning to develop a defined sense of self. For some children, their main word is often, "Mine!" They have begun to differentiate matter into groups of things, although their classification is greatly simplified. My grand daughter grew up with a cat in the house and for some time, every animal was "cat."

Toddlers need carefully guided expansion into the world around them. Most have lost the need to put everything in their mouth but this has been replaced with the need to touch everything with their hands. Caregivers have a tendency to overuse the word, "No." The best alternative I've heard to date is, "Not for baby." The child wasn't quite three years of age yet but was reaching for something on the ground. The caregiver firmly said, "Not for baby," and the child immediately withdrew her hand and looked up at her caregiver for guidance. What a beautiful moment!

What came next was even more important. Instead of scowling and scolding, the caregiver picked up the child and found a better thing for that child to focus on. Toddlers are little scientists in training. They are desperate to understand the world around them. As caregivers, we need to understand this and provide as many safe opportunities as possible. By creating a positive environment for learning, we are inspiring a lifelong love of the process.

Create a safe environment at home for toddlers by putting things you don't want your child to touch out of sight. Toddlers have no cognitive ability, no matter how much a parent wants them to. They have no concept of right or wrong, nor can they have at this age. Children learn by imitation. It is the responsibility of the caregiver to set a good example. If a caregiver is cranky and yells at other people around them, there's a good chance that the children in their care will do the same.

Caregivers must pay attention to the limitations of young children. Toddlers need more sleep than adults do. They still sleep an average of ten to twelve hours a day. Providing that necessary rest time at regular intervals is vital. The brain processes a lot of information while we sleep. Toddlers are inputting vast quantities of information every day. They need that sleep time to adequately process all that new information.

Caregivers must also be responsible for the amount of information a toddler is exposed to. There are now cable stations that are totally programmed for children under the age of five! Not only does this over-stimulate their visual cortex because of the bright screen, but it provides unconnected information. I've seem caregivers plop a child into a bouncer in front of a television and walk away to do chores. This removes the important connection between child and caregiver in the learning process as well as over-stimulating the nervous system. The child has no connection to the information that is provided. Useful learning can only happen when a caregiver relates something new to what the child already knows. Television is not a good substitute.

I learned never to take my toddlers shopping. Many frustrated parents can relate to the scene in the grocery store where the toddler has reached their limit and throws a tantrum. The caregiver looks worn and frustrated and often reacts in a negative way toward that child, which only makes the situation worse. That child is suffering from sensory overload.

If we really want to understand how a young child struggles with sensory overload, we have to get down on our hands and knees and look around. Everything looms above us. It's like walking through the rainforest with tall trees surrounding us. It quickly becomes overwhelming. Marketing specialists take advantage of this viewpoint when it comes to the placement of colorful boxes of breakfast cereal and toys aimed at young children. These items are often located on the lowest shelves. This is a toddler's visual range - our knee level.

The world adults operate in is designed for average people of around five feet in height. To a young child, everything is out of reach. They spend most of their time looking up at everything. It's no wonder that they constantly want to be picked up because that's where the interesting things are.

Caregivers need to pay attention to this when planning outings for toddlers. Begin with something already familiar to the child and gently expand that horizon, letting the child take the lead. Positive reassurance is always better than punishment. Don't set a child up for failure! Pay attention to the things that draw the child's attention and find positive ways for that child to learn about that item. If the caregiver plans a trip to a park that has a pond, the caregiver should bring a picture book that includes a pond. Once the story is shared, the caregiver can then carefully guide the toddler in experiencing the pond environment safely.

### To School or Not To School - That is the Question

There is a raging debate that has been going on for decades over the value of "formal" education. Some children begin preschool as early as age three. This is fine as long as the primary caregiver is involved with the process. Family Learning Co-ops are an excellent way of expanding a toddler's world in a safe way.

By the time a child reaches the age of five, the age at which traditional education usually begins, they may be ready to move beyond the circle of familiarity that the caregiver has created. It must be remembered that each child is an individual who will develop socially and cognitively at their own pace. This isn't something that should be decided by a government agency.

If a primary caregiver has done a good job, the emerging child already has a firm foundation of language and learning skills. The caregiver must then make the choice of passing the responsibility on to another person or retaining that responsibility until the child is ready for a wider experience.

Some children are ready and excited about kindergarten. If a child is confident and secure, going to kindergarten can be a wonderful experience under a good teacher. The caregiver must still pay attention! Watch for any indications of stress in the child. Many times children don't know how to communicate stress. It is the responsibility of the primary caregivers to watch out for symptoms and help the child express the causes of the stress. By catching these issues early, major problems can be avoided that could hamper the child later.

Adults tend to forget how difficult it is to learn to exist beyond the familiar circle of Family. The well-adjusted child has a positive self-image and confidence that radiates from them. They seem to glow. They have bright, curious expressions and eager voices. If this changes, something is wrong and the caregivers must immediately assess the problem. It's not something that we should "let the kid work out." They don't have the mental cognition to do that yet.

I worked as a temporary teacher's aid and rotated among many different schools and classrooms. I could see the difference between the first-graders and the third-graders. Something drastic was happening between those critical years. The second graders seemed to bend in either direction. The first graders were happy and eager but the third graders were dragging and reluctant. This wasn't just in one school. This was happening throughout the district. What was happening to these bright, potential children?

This is the failure of structured formal education. It attempts to provide a uniform education for all students - in the same way at the same time. There are often up to thirty children in a classroom with one teacher and one or two aids. Not only does the system expect all children to be capable of learning the same concepts in the same way at the same rate, but it expects children to all be at the same cognitive level. It doesn't work that way.

The unfortunate fact is that most children don't have positive responsible caregivers. They have over-stressed parents who are struggling to survive in an economically challenged world. Many parents today had no positive upbringing of their own so they don't have the skills necessary to pull their own children out of the Mud gently, get them through the stomping years, and guide them across the Sand. Too many children today are thought of as "a burden."

I ran into a schoolmate from high school one day who told me that life had been great until she'd had kids. I felt sorry for her but even more sorry for her children! How can children be expected to be "achievers" if their parents don't have a positive influence in their lives?

Many parents today are choosing alternative methods of education - from charter schools to homeschooling. This allows the caregiver to continue providing positive educational moments for their child while allowing for that child to expand outward into the world at their own pace. The best possible situation is to find a group of like-minded individuals to share this adventure. It eliminates the issue of "no social contact" that many traditional educators complain about and provides children greater opportunities to explore with peers in a safe, guided way.

All of my children have been homeschooled at some level before making their own decision to move into other programs. By the time they made that choice, they had developed their own cognitive abilities and were conscious of the choice they were making.

### Discipline

The other challenging question is discipline. I was standing in line at the grocery store the other day when a woman in front of me slapped her daughter's hand as she was reaching for some candy on the rack that enclosed those waiting to checkout. I realize stores do this on purpose. They put sugary foods that aren't good for us within arms reach in a place where we have to stand and wait. It's a psychological trial. Children have no ability at all to make a good judgment. The mother's angry reaction was aimed in the wrong direction! She retaliated at her toddler's natural curiosity instead of the store's inconsiderate placement of that merchandise.

Parents who discipline their children out of anger or fear are doing serious and possibly permanent damage to their child's developing sense of self. A child has a very limited view of right and wrong. Cognitive behavior usually doesn't develop until the age of eight. But what of children younger than age eight? Should they be held responsible for their actions? This is a challenging debate! Can a person who isn't cognitive be held accountable? From my observations, most parents believe that even very young children should somehow be able to control themselves. This is actually the responsibility of the caregiver.

Yelling at a child or physically hurting that child, be it a slap or a spanking, will not help that child in any way. Instead, it is more likely that the child will turn that aggression on others. A child who is physically punished is more likely to hit another child for a perceived wrong. Children learn by imitation! This can get carried to extremes as children move into the stomping years. They become aggressive and destructive. They learn how to hurt others and create fear, which gives them a feeling of control. But this isn't a child who will be able to live well in a social situation.

Prevention is worth a pound of cure! A child should never be purposefully physically hurt by a caregiver of any type - parent or teacher. Caregivers must let go of that anger! It should never be passed on to a child - not by voice or touch. If we can let go of our anger and frustration in view of our children, they are more likely to be able to do the same.

### The Stomping Years

By far the most challenging years for both children and their caregivers are the stomping years. All children need to go through some stomping. It's a necessary part of development. The challenge for the caregiver is to make it a positive experience.

The stomping years include the period of time when a child realizes they are a unique individual with the ability to make their own decisions to the time when they are fully capable of doing so. We call the beginning of this stage cognitive emergence. It usually begins about age eight but on rare occasions, as early as age six. By the mid-teens they have hopefully reached cognitive maturity but I've seen it go into mid-twenties, and in a few cases, well beyond that.

It was my middle child that taught me the importance of the first two years of positive care-giving on the affect of the stomping years. Of all of my children, she was the only one to have both parents during that critical time. She taught me how to be a good caregiver as she had a tendency for SIDS. She never slept alone for the first year of her life. She was almost always either in my arms or her father's. The stomping years for her were barely noticeable. She had very few tantrums and did very little stomping.

Her other siblings, on the other hand, made up for it. I still have a door in my house that is ninety percent duct tape. I gave up replacing it after the third door. They don't make them like they used to.

One way to help children through the stomping years is to give them a positive way to express the frustration that comes naturally with this process. Divert all that energy into something creative like art, music, or dance. I used to tell my children, when nothing else was working, to run around the outside of the house a few times. This not only gave them much needed exercise and increased oxygen but it spared wear and tear on the inside of the house.

Caregivers need to be patient with children in the stomping years and anticipate their need to express frustration in a world beyond their control. As cognitive adults, we can sometimes see the reasons for events we can't control but children have a difficult time with this. When things don't work the way they expect or decisions from distant others change planned events, they need a safe way to express their emotions.

There's a lot of energy within the emotions of a child, hence the stomping. They feel cheated by the world around them because they are "small" and cry out, "It's not fair." They generally don't deal well with change, especially abrupt change that directly affects them. As a rule, children are challenged by time. "Are we there yet?" I'm sure that's almost a universal phrase. They exist in the "now" and have difficulty waiting for future events.

They also don't like to admit their limitations. I once saw a good example of this at the county fair. A younger sibling was two inches too short to go on one of the rides that his older siblings were riding. He stomped off the platform proclaiming the battle cry of stompers everywhere, "It's not fair!"

This struggle toward cognitive maturity can create stress within families as the caregivers struggle to help the stomper move beyond that frustration. Younger siblings may imitate this behavior, compounding it. Older siblings, not wanting to admit their own stomping years, may belittle their younger sibling. This occasionally makes the caregivers call for a "time out." Children are sent to different corners of the house to let the Sand settle.

Sometimes caregivers can catch this before it becomes a full blown shouting match and move the energy in a more positive direction. I used to keep a box of old, lost socks stuffed with "dead" socks - those with holes. When things began going down hill, I'd pull out the sock box and instigate a game of sock ball. The stuffed socks were light enough that no one got hurt and it allowed some of the frustration to move toward fun. Laughter levels the playing field.

### Tweens

Once a child moves past puberty, they begin to undergo extensive changes - not just physically, but on all levels. They enter a zone between childhood and adult. Most are now as tall as adults and many want to imitate adults. These are the "nail-biter" years for caregivers. We carry around a special corner of worry Sand for our tweens.

Tweens are expanding their horizons, beginning to move toward independence. This stretches the threads between them and their caregivers. If the bonds have been well-woven, this process is much easier. Trust is one of the most important threads a caregiver and tween can have.

This period is also much easier if a tween is done with the stomping years and has reached a level of cognitive maturity. Our current age of technology can either hinder or help this process. World-wide instant access to information and communication has its benefits but it can also be a distraction. Video games have been the biggest issue in my family, especially the violent ones.

We tend to forget that technology is just a tool. Like any tool, it can be used or abused. Sometimes that's a very fine line. When we are nailing something and hit our thumb, we have to curb the impulse to use that hammer to damage other things around us while we deal with the physical pain! Technology is a lot like a hammer. It can be useful for obtaining information and keeping us connected with friends and family but it can also become a serious distraction and can even become dangerous.

Most people today know the dangers of texting while driving. For Tweens, the temptation to keep in touch may exceed their limited control. The challenge as caregiver is to first provide a good example and second to support positive behavior. Offer alternatives to negative situations. If tweens are constantly texting, maybe they need to physically come together for awhile in one place. Offer this as a solution.

My children have always brought their friends over and I've always welcomed them to our home. We've had many pizza nights that either moved towards games or a movie. Their friends sometimes seem amazed. Their parents would never do something like that! But as a positive caregiver, I wanted my children to be able to spend time with their friends - in person - not just over the phone. Face to face communication is far better than face to phone. To this day, my home is still a gathering place. At least I always know where my children are and I can participate in their activities with them.

Tweens are moving toward a critical moment in their lives - the moment of separation from their caregivers. Many would like to think that moment comes much earlier but in reality, caregivers are often supporting young adult children for an extended period of time. It's the curse of today's economic reality. Parents must be able to continue to support their children far beyond what the previous generation needed to.

For the tweens of this generation, who are more connected to the global realities of climate change, political unrest, and financial instability, these can be terrifying years. As I neared my high school graduation, I had no real idea what was going on in the world outside my own community. I was politically ignorant. My own parents had done a poor job in preparing me for financial independence and I struggled to keep my life balanced.

I've learned a great deal since then and began working with my own children at a very early age to help them understand budgets and expenses. They watched me pay bills and balance the checkbook. Homeschooling has its benefits. Not only was I doing my financial work but my kids were getting a practical math lesson.

Tweens also have to cope with emotional and physical relationships beyond their own family. I'll repeat myself again - children learn by example! If we have stable positive relationships with our partners, it's far more likely that our children will follow in that direction. I have always encouraged my children to bring their "potential partners" home. I have no delusions. I was young once and I'm quite familiar with what goes on between tweens. I'd much rather provide good guidance to them rather than have them experiment on their own.

My oldest daughter came back home after living on her own for almost a decade. She had developed a very negative outlook on relationships because of her own circumstances. She was shocked at my seeming "openness" to the physical display of affection between her younger siblings and their partners. I see absolutely nothing wrong with the gentle displays of affection that my children show toward their partners. I see this as a positive affirmation that I brought them through the challenging years of childhood, and despite my own hardships, they have become healthy and loving adults.

The truest test of any parent is to be able to acknowledge that their child is an adult and capable of making their own decisions. We have to have the ability to let our threads stretch to allow our children to grow into their own separate tapestries. We are all part of a massive tapestry that extends into the mists of the past. Our children are the next row of independent yet connected layers of this eternal tapestry.

* * *

## Weaving a Personal Tapestry

Everyone has their own tapestry, whether they realize it or not. It's like gravity. It affects us regardless of whether we understand the physics of it or believe it exists. Our tapestry began at the moment a small half cell from our father encountered a much larger half cell within our mother. Two independent and unique strands of DNA were woven into a completely new pattern that had never existed before. With the exception of identical twins, even siblings from the same parents have different DNA. Our DNA is our biological fingerprint. It's also part of our weft.

In weaving, the weft is a parallel set of long strands that are strung on the loom. The weft acts as the foundation for the fabric. The threads that intertwine within the weft are called the weave. The weave becomes the pattern that we see when we look at a piece of cloth.

The Universe lays down new weft around us every moment of our lives. Each breath we take, each beat of our heart, is a new moment of existence. Events, both directly visible to us and indirectly distant from us, have the potential to affect our weft. The farther an event occurs from our view of existence, the less likely we are to relate that event to what's happening around us.

For example, there is a weather pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that occurs in the southern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean basin. Fluctuations in this weather pattern affect temperature and precipitation around the globe. Someone on the other side of the planet may be dealing with drought or flood because of a weather pattern they will never see or may not even know exists. All they know is that their lives are potentially in jeopardy because the weather isn't "normal."

Weaving is an image for decision making. Every event that occurs around us influences the decisions we make. Some decisions are so small that we don't even recognize them as decisions. Some are handled by our biological systems at a level that most people aren't aware of. Many people today are so "busy" that they aren't paying attention to many of the decisions they are making. When we fall into routines and methods, we aren't paying attention.

This was brought home to me not long ago when I ended up in a traffic jam. Everyone on the road was probably there because this was the way they always got where they were going. I hadn't paid attention to the signs that warned of road construction. Had I been paying attention, I would have chosen a different route. This is the danger of falling into routines!

Weaving should be a conscious action. When we weave consciously, the pattern is visible and the fabric of our tapestry is straight and even. When we aren't paying attention, we have a tendency to mess things up. The less we are paying attention the greater the risk for a serious mishap.

I ended up in the middle of a car accident once. It was a series of events that seemed to happen all around me all at the same time. It began with one over-tired person on a rain-slick interstate who made a bad choice. His small car hydroplaned right in front of a semi truck. In the dark and rain, it was hard to tell what was happening. Fortunately, I had been paying attention. When the truck, which was right beside me, began to shake, I took my foot off the gas. Before I fully realized what was happening, I had what looked like half a car suddenly in the lane in front of me. There was a cement wall on one side of me and a very large truck struggling to stop on the other. Because I was paying attention, I was able to judge the space between the truck and the broken car and slid between them with minor damage. I then carefully pulled off the road and went to help the other people who had not been so fortunate. The person behind me had not been paying attention and had slammed on the brakes and hit the wall. Fortunately, no one had been seriously hurt. Even the driver of the crunched up car had walked away.

When we go through life without paying attention, we are accidents waiting to happen. The Universe is constantly shifting and changing around us in response to the laws of physics, the interactions of a multitude of earth systems, and the decisions of other people near and far. When we are caught up in a situation caused by forces beyond our control, we can only mitigate the end results with careful and conscious decisions of our own.

I live and work in a tsunami hazard zone. I spend a lot of time teaching others about the necessity of paying attention to the conditions around them so that in the event of a shift of earth plates while they are visiting, they will be prepared and know what to do. Over the years, I have been met by varying degrees of skepticism, to those who want to know the odds of it happening while they are there, to those who simply don't want to know that it could happen at all.

I call this collective bunch the ostriches. I don't know what myth inspired the idea that an ostrich hides its head in the sand when it's frightened but the image seems to have stuck. The real ostriches that I've met are fearless birds, more than capable of inflicting serious damage to humans who aren't paying attention! But the image of the ostrich with his head in the sand seems to be universal - so be it.

People "ostriches" don't want to know about the dangers around them. They are reactive people rather than proactive people. The reaction varies from anger, to self-pity, to despair. The cry of the "ostrich" is, "Oh, woe is me!" It reminds me of the old donkey in Winnie the Pooh who always complains when his house of sticks is blown over by the wind or washed away by the rains. "Ostriches" don't want to know the truth because if they did they would have to be responsible for their actions.

Conscious decision making leads to responsible living. As my river guide instructor told me, when you make a decision about the course ahead, own it. Take responsibility for the choices you make.

People sometimes ask me why I choose to live and work in a place if I know that it's potentially dangerous. There really is no true "safe" place on the planet. No matter where you choose to live, there are potential storms, earthquakes, fires, or floods. But knowing and understanding the potential dangers provides us the choice of how we prepare for those possibilities. If you live in an area where there are frequent tornadoes, having a basement is a really good choice! Personally, I moved away from that area of the country because I weighed the cost of having to rebuild. The month after I moved, a tornado went through the county and did a devastating amount of damage. I don't regret that decision at all.

There are always things that are going to be beyond our control. The weft sometimes brings us to a crossroad where we must choose to continue or make a major turn in our lives. These crossroads are caused by life changes and powerful events. The death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or a natural disaster forces us to make major changes to our lives. This is where people most often encounter the Wall. They either stand there banging their heads, push away and sink into the sand, or learn to climb.

As we climb, we take conscious control over the weaving of our tapestry. We begin seeing the connections to every choice we make and paying attention to the results. This is positive reinforcement. When we pay attention and see what results our actions have, we are more likely to continue weaving consciously.

Our tapestry is our soul. It is woven on the loom of our body. Keeping our loom in good condition is vital to weaving a solid tapestry. This is part of making good decisions. We have to pay attention to our bodies - feeding them good food, giving them healthy exercise, and providing moments of rest - all in equal and measured quantities.

When I first learned about the life habits of sea otters, I found they were very well balanced creatures. They spend eight hours a day feeding, eight hours a day grooming, and eight hours a day sleeping. That works well if you're a sea otter. But people aren't marine mammals. We live in complex social structures of our own creation. We have to be economically balanced, socially balanced, and physically balanced. That translates to eight hours a day working, eight hours a day balancing our personal needs with those of family and friends, and eight hours a day sleeping. Well, we have at least one thing in common with sea otters.

The word "work" is often translated as "earning money." I think that definition is neither accurate nor fair to many people. In physics, "work" is defined as the expenditure of energy to cause change. A caregiver extends large amounts of energy in raising children and keeping a household functioning but never earns money. A friend once complained to me that he worked all day to earn money so that his wife could spend it. I asked him if all the bills were paid, food was on the table, and everyone in his household had adequate clothing on their bodies. He said yes to all of these. I told him his wife was working just as hard as he was to ensure the money he made was well used to meet the needs of the family.

There are many kinds of work that we do in our lives. Only a fraction of it earns a pay check. When we work to help friends or family, doing chores, tending children, or just being there for someone in need, we don't expect monetary return. But this is very important work. This is weaving work - weaving our threads within those of our family, friends, and community.

I do many voluntary jobs within my community and beyond. As a volunteer, I don't expect payment for my services but I know that my services are needed and important to those who I work for. This is work from the heart. It is a gift that we give to others in need. It is important weaving that stretches our souls and teaches them flexibility. The work may be challenging and emotionally charged but it is worth the energy to see the change that I make in other people's lives.

One of the most difficult jobs I have ever had was in a nursing home. I was paid as a nurse's aid to assist residents with their needs of daily living. This is an emotionally challenging as well as physically demanding job. I was fairly young at the time, struggling with the needs of my own family, trying to make ends meet. When I began working there, I was lost in my own sorrow Sand. One elderly woman changed my world forever and I'm an indebted to her soul to this day.

She was almost 100 years old and had outlived three husbands and all seven of her children. Her body was thin and frail but her mind was sharper than most adults I'd met in my lifetime. I still remember the feathery light touch of her fingers as she rested her hand on mine and asked me why I grieved. I was surprised. I'd been doing my best to hide my own feelings behind the professional "mask" that I wore at work.

Over the three months that I knew her, she gently unwound the pain that had wrapped around my soul and taught me how to breathe again. She reminded me of my own grandmother, who had passed away when I was only six. She had a light in her soul that was so powerful that it affected all who knew her. Even though her focus was different than my grandmother's, her words of wisdom echoed in my mind and drew out the fragments, slowly piecing them back together.

On a cold night in February, as I was making my rounds, she called me to her bedside and told me it was time for her to go. I was confused. I knew she didn't suffer from dementia as other patients did. I asked her what she meant. She told me her body felt too heavy for her soul and that it was time for her soul to let go. I tried to reassure her but she took my hand in hers and told me not to cry for her. She had walked this world for almost a century. She'd given all that she could to it and now she was done. She patted my hand and told me I still had a long journey to make. Then she sighed and drifted off to sleep.

I was in a different wing at the time the monitor alarm went off. I couldn't see a board to tell which monitor it was but it was as though I felt her soul pass me in the hall as I ran to the nearest station. I knew it was hers before I even looked at the alarm panel. She had simply stopped breathing in her sleep and her tired system shut down. Her loom collapsed and set her tapestry free.

* * *

## Radio Waves

I worked at a commercial radio station for a few years as a late night DJ. In the wee hours of the morning I'd often get calls from lonely people who just needed to hear another real human voice. I'd occasionally get a caller who'd talk longer than a music set. I'd tell the caller to hold on while I did the commercial break. I'd put on half of my head set and rest the phone receiver over my shoulder while I talked. Sometimes the caller would turn up the volume on their radio so they could tell when the commercial break was over. I could hear my own voice coming over their radio. When I stopped to think about it, the fact that I could hear myself with only a slight fraction of delay was astonishing.

As a radio DJ, I had to know how the signal got from the station to the listeners in case of a failure somewhere. My voice went into the system through a microphone and into an amplifier. From there it went by a T1 line to a microwave tower and was transmitted to a different antenna where it was converted to radio waves that went out in all directions from that tower. Those waves were intercepted by a listener's radio system and turned into sound that they could hear. Then add the fact that I was listening to it second hand over a phone connection! I only perceived the slightest amount of delay. All the tonal infections of my voice came through.

This is probably one of the most amazing chains of energy conversions I've ever experienced. The energy began in my mind and was transmitted into sound by my vocal cords, which carried that energy signature as sound waves. The microphone picked up those sound waves and converted them into small electrical vibrations. The amplifier turned those into an electrical current, which was turned into a digital signal that traveled through a special telephone line to a microwave tower about 50 miles north of the studio. The digital signal was then converted into microwaves and sent in a tight beam to a radio receiver almost 70 miles away to the south west. There it was converted to radio waves that rippled outward from the tower in all directions.

If a listener had their radio tuned to the frequency of our station, their radio would convert those radio waves into small electrical impulses that would make a speaker pulse to create sound waves in the air around the listener. Their ears would channel those waves into the ear drum, which vibrated against specialized nerves that sent a bioelectric impulse to the brain. Chemical energy in the brain was used to decode that signal and the listener heard what I was saying.

As for me on my end of the phone, there was an additional conversion of the sound waves from the listener's radio to the microphone in the listener's phone receiver that converted the sound back into electrical current, transmitted that through the phone lines to my phone where a speaker converted it back into sound waves that my ears heard. And all of that occurred in less than a second. Part of me is thinking, "Technology is really amazing!" But the other part of me is reeling from the sheer number of times that the energy pattern of my thoughts was converted without losing anything.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form. If the energy is in a specific pattern, that pattern is preserved through the change, just as the tone of my voice was unaltered in spite of the numerous conversions it went through.

There is one particular song that I always pause and listen to when it comes on the radio. Whenever I hear it, I'm transported back to a particular place and time. I can feel the texture of the fabric I was sitting on and the sticky heat of the day, smell the propane cook stone and food that was being prepared, and the taste of what I had been snacking on as I waited for dinner. This all happened many years ago but just hearing that song triggers this very powerful memory.

Memories are stored in our brains as chemical energy. Neurologists now know that memories aren't just stored in one location but in multiple places throughout our brain. If part of a brain is damaged, other parts of the brain may be able to rebuild lost portions of memory.

As my favorite grade school teacher taught me, memories can be improved by linking them to things we already know. Every time we remember something - pull it back out and examine it \- it strengthens the connection to that memory. If we can connect additional layers of input, such as touch, taste, sound, and smell to a sight, that memory becomes even more powerful.

One requirement for our science class was to learn the names of the basic bones of the body. At first the task seemed daunting but the teacher suggested we stand in front of a mirror and touch that bone on our own body as we said the name. She also used a sing-song tone as she named each bone and we copied that sound. To this day, I can still pull the names of those bones from memory and feel the location of each bone.

There has been a great deal of research into memory because of the challenges faced by stroke patients. A stroke causes damage to brain tissue, which can not only impair motor function, but has a serious affect on memory. Any kind of traumatic brain injury has the potential to interfere with a person's ability to function. Yet much about the human brain is still a mystery.

We store not only our memories but every facet of our personality in our brain. It is the origin of our thoughts, dreams, feelings, and intuition. Our brains allow us to be creative problem solvers if we pay attention and focus our concentration. Our brains are the center of our intellect.

They are also the storehouse of our souls. A soul is the sum of all the energy of a living organism. That energy flows through every cell of a body. The brain controls the flow of this energy and stores endless amounts of memories in the form of chemical energy. As we weave consciously, we strengthen the fibers of our souls. We learn to connect current events to past ones and learn from each experience. We build a complex pattern within our souls every time we interconnect new information to old. The more interconnected our souls are, the stronger the weave of our tapestry.

The looms of our bodies are not designed to exist forever. We consume matter and energy in the form of food, water, and air. That matter and energy are moved through our body by the circulatory system, which replenishes our cells with nutrients and removes waste products. The heart is the pump of this system. The average person replaces most of the cells of their body about every three to five years. There are two important exceptions \- brain cells and heart cells.

These cells are designed to last for a lifetime. When these systems fail, our lives are over. Medical doctors attempt to extend this time by surgical techniques but it's only a temporary fix. The human body has an expiration date. Once it passes that date, the energy of the soul can no longer remain attached to the matter of the body. The loom collapses and the tapestry is free.

Energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed - they can only change form. Our souls are composed of energy patterns that we spend a lifetime weaving. If our tapestry is well-woven, the conversion process will not damage our soul. The matter of our bodies begins to break down without the energy of our souls to maintain it. It will change form rapidly and deteriorate back into basic matter. Entropy takes over.

I've watched this process occur on dead organisms that wash onto the beach. The decaying matter feeds many other organisms from the larger scavengers like eagles and bears to the microscopic ones that live in the sand. Over the course of several months, all that will remain are the bones. Eventually the pounding surf will break those down into grains of sand.

But what of the souls of these creatures? They once had energy bound to the matter of their bodies just as we do. Their energy has moved beyond the realm of this existence. Humans can't see this energy. We can't really see energy at all. We can only experience the effects of energy.

We see because of chemical reactions to energy in the cones and rods of our eyes. We hear because tiny nerves in our inner ears react to vibrations caused by sound waves around us. We smell and taste because microscopic particles of substances cause chemical reactions on receptors in our nose and tongue. We feel because nerve endings in our skin react to contact with molecules outside our bodies.

All of these reactions are sent to our brain through our nervous system where they are decoded by a complex series of chemical and electrical processes. The most amazing part of this process is the electrical impulses that result from all of these inputs - our thoughts.

Humans have been thinking about thinking for thousands of years. Consider the Greek philosopher who is attributed to saying, "I think therefore I am." Our thoughts make us who we are. Memories are a collection of environmental conditions layered with our personal reaction to them. No two people have the same reactions, not even to the same events. Each person has a unique tapestry.

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## Conscious Living - A Weaver's Life for Me

What does it mean to live as a Weaver? It means to pay attention and make conscious choices. To do this to the best of our ability, we must be cognitive thinkers capable of separating emotions from events. In the process, we become better people, carrying less anger and acting more mature.

We learn to find the balance in our lives from all angles: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. We are capable of making decisions and taking responsibility for those choices. This takes a great deal of focus and a lot of energy. In the process, we also have to balance our needs with those of others around us and the world we live in.

### Do No Harm to Yourself

Conscious Living creates a respect for our own bodies. We recognize that our bodies are the looms on which we build our souls. This means we make the best choice possible on how we treat our bodies. We give them food that does the least amount of damage to them while promoting good health. We exercise our muscles to ensure bone strength. We don't allow toxins into our bodies that affect their organs or tissues. We get ample sleep to allow our bodies to mend from the rigors of daily living.

Weavers are also conscious of their own emotions. There's no way to live without emotions. They are a natural part of existence. We can pay attention to them and control them when the Sand threatens us. When we recognize an emotion that could do harm to ourselves or others, we let that emotion go. We don't carry fear, anger, guilt, or shame. When sadness comes our way, we breathe and accept what is beyond our control. We relish the joy and happiness in our lives and accept that these are small moments in time. No one can be happy or joyful continuously.

We recognize that even love is a temporary emotion and instead focus on weaving our souls with our partners, children, and community. Soul weaving is a conscious action that we do with open minds and open hearts. We recognize torn threads in our own tapestry and take the time to let old emotions go so that those threads can be rewoven and not hurt us anymore.

We stay focused on the Wall of Life. Logic allows us to control our own actions, be responsible for them, and accept what is beyond our control. We keep our thoughts positive. One of the most powerful personal tools that I've discovered is positive affirmation. I'm not sure where I picked it up over the years but it has helped me past some of the hardest moments of my life.

To use the Power Tool of positive affirmation, write down the statement on a piece of paper and put it where you will see it every day. If you are in great need of that statement, make multiple copies and stick them up everywhere! For example, when I first began thinking about publishing my writing, several close friends began heaping Sand on me, trying to discourage me. When I realized that I had started listening to them, I shook off that Sand and wrote a bunch of positive affirmations and plastered my home with them. My first book was well received and still has a devoted fan club. You need to believe in your own abilities, even when the people around you don't.

Weavers are also conscious of their own personal tapestries. When I chose the subtitle for this book, I had a fight with Spell-checker. I wanted the word "wholistic" but it kept complaining and trying to use the word "holistic." I purposefully changed the word - perhaps created a new word - because I wanted to write about wholeness, not holes! When we have holes in our tapestry, we aren't whole. When we weave consciously, our tapestry is tight and even. It is a firm fabric - a sustainable pattern of energy.

I had a man come to my door one day who ask me if I was "afraid for my soul." I told him I wasn't. I checked it for holes on a daily basis. He was Boxed and deeply entrenched with Sand. He tried to convince me that if I didn't come into his Box and receive "redemption" that my soul would be "eternally damned." I politely told him that I had crawled out of the Sandbox a long time ago and thanked him for his time. Sharks have sharp teeth and teeth for scales. I don't play with ones that are so buried in Sand that you can't see which way they are facing. We can't control the decisions of others.

When we weave consciously, our souls are whole. We accept that our energy will continue after it separates from the matter of our body and we don't need a Box to hide in. We let go of fear. This allows us to weave straight and true. Every choice we make is a new stitch. We accept our Tapestry, even the places where we faltered and the stitches are a little uneven. As we become accomplished Weavers, we can take quiet moments of contemplation to shake out the Sand and reweave the weak spots.

### Do No Harm to Others

Weaving with others can be frustrating because so many people today are lost on the Emotional Plain. It's important to recognize not only this frustration but also our own limitations. We can't control the decisions of others; we can only encourage them to pay attention. We can only do this if we are paying attention ourselves.

A little boy was imitating me one day at work, repeating everything I said and did. It seemed to amuse him and it taught me an important lesson - I sigh a lot. I tend to blow my frustration Sand away with my sighs. I realized the boy was testing my patience and I was obviously coming up short. I was tired and trying my hardest not to let his behavior bother me.

His repetitive behavior was like looking in a mirror. It allowed me to see myself from a different perspective. Mirrors can be useful tools that allow us to find issues before we "face the public."

I was fortunate in high school to have an excellent public speaking instructor. Instead of just giving us grades, he gave us positive criticism. He also gave me some important advice - know what you're going to say before you say it \- then just say it. He also recorded many of our speeches and played them back for us. The recording was like a mirror and gave us a true reflection of our presentation. It made me pay attention to what I sounded like to others.

When the boy mimicked my sighs, it was a call to pay attention. It made me realize that I wasn't giving him the focus that he needed. Once I paid attention to him and began purposefully playing the game, his behavior changed and we both went away better for the experience.

Being a conscious Weaver doesn't mean we will get along with everyone around us. It simply means that we are capable of acceptance. Logic allows us to control our own actions, be responsible for them, and accept what is beyond our control.

Words are powerful forms of energy and we need to pay attention to how we use them. They are Power Tools. Consider the chain of energy conversions. Words begin as chemical energy in our brains as thoughts. That energy is converted into bioelectrical energy that affects the muscles of our diaphragm, throat, and mouth, which convert the words into precise sound waves.

Those waves ripple outward all around us, and if other people are present, their ears capture the sound waves. The sounds are converted to bioelectrical impulses in their ears and sent to their brains where they interact with stored chemical energy to decode the words so their meaning can be understood.

Like any other kind of tool, words can be used in positive ways or negative ones. We can use them to encourage or we can throw Sand. Our word choice and the energy behind our words make a difference. Sometimes the way we say something is just as important as what we say. Our voices and tonal quality carry energy. Even if we can't understand the words we can hear emotion in the voice.

The written English language attempts to convey emotion using punctuation marks but there are only a couple to choose from. In our age of technology where people are more likely to text than to talk, additional symbols have been invented to convey emotional meaning. For example the symbol :-) is recognized as a smile, while :-o is recognized as surprise or shock, and ;-> is a laugh with a wink.

These symbols represent what can't be heard in a text message - the meaning behind the words. How much better is it to hear those words spoken, especially if the other person is right there with you?

The wrong words can harm another person but so can not saying anything at all. I watched a couple making a bad decision the other day. They were wearing flip-flops while trying to control a very large dog that was straining on a leash. They were headed for a steep stairway covered in sand that led down to the beach. It was a disaster waiting to happen. I caught up with them at the top of the stairs and pointed out the danger they were headed into. At first they were upset until they realized I was only concerned for their safety. The dog owners made a good choice and changed shoes before taking the dog down the stairs.

If we are paying attention, we can help others also pay attention and save them from harm. Doing no harm to others includes helping them do no harm to themselves. If we are afraid to tell our friends when they are making dangerous choices, we are doing them harm and not being responsible for our friends.

### Do the Least Amount of Harm to the Earth

We live in an age where the terms global climate change, ocean acidification, and carbon footprint have become common place. What does that tell us about our generation? I've met a few people who attempt to swing to the far side of this argument by being total vegetarians, riding only bikes or public transit, and living a very primitive life style. Unfortunately, that isn't going to work for everyone on the planet.

At the time of this writing, Earth's population is hovering somewhere around the 7 billion mark. We have over-taxed our small blue marble and done serious damage to many of the vital planetary systems in the process. With every failure of the System, our own planet is calling us to pay attention.

The majority of humanity has boxed itself into commercial oblivion. Economics drives every process and the fight for the "almighty dollar bill" is the most important item on the agenda.

How can a Weaver hope to exist in this mad rush to dominate the last drop of every resource on Earth? We made the best choices we can in each particular circumstance. I'm not vegan but I pay attention to the food I consume. I prefer to know where that food came from, regardless of whether it is animal, mineral, or vegetable. I'm not an organic "freak" and I don't insist on "free-range" foods.

Logic leads the way. With 7 billion people on the planet, we have to be responsible producers and consumers. Producing the most amount of healthy food in the least amount of space with the least amount of waste and harmful by-products is the most logical way to meet the needs of the population.

At one time in history, the average person ranged less than 100 miles from their place of birth. Today, many people travel all over the world. There are amazing benefits to being a world traveler. It's an education in first person unlike any experience a book or technology could supply. But with this travel comes the cost - not just in money but also in expended resources and harmful side effects. We have to be conscious of this and make good choices about where, when, and why we travel.

I work in a place far from major cities so I choose to live as close to my office as possible. When I do drive, I make the excursion worth it and get as much accomplished in one trip as possible. I keep my vehicle in good shape and pay attention to its performance. I drive safely and efficiently to waste as little fuel as possible. I weigh the value of each journey I make against the potential harm that I'm doing to the planet. This is being responsible.

There is nothing that we can do to change history. What is, IS. We accept the current state of affairs and work to improve the future by our actions now. I once had someone ask me if I believed NASA had really landed a man on the moon. I told that person I had no doubt in my mind that the event had occurred. Humanity had benefited from the knowledge gained from this endeavor in many aspects of our lives. As a salesman once told me, my cell phone has more power than the Apollo spacecraft and the new "smart" phones have more processing ability than the space shuttle.

Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. A "smart" phone is really only as smart as the person using it. It's a tool, like any other. We can use it for good purposes or bad. It's the choice of the human behind the tool that will inevitably make the difference.

As Weavers, we pay attention to what is going on around us, make the best choices we can, and own those decisions by being responsible for our choices. We do no harm to ourselves, do no harm to others, and do the least amount of harm to the world around us.

We stay in the present. The future is unpredictable - like echoes of what might happen based on predictions. But the future involves billions of different decisions. The only decision that we can control, is our own. We do our best to plan for the future. Because we are paying attention, we can shift quickly as the need arises.

I have done my best to prepare you for this Journey. This book is a work of Energy - a true E-book. It began with thought. I used physical energy to type it into a word processor that captured those thoughts in electrical form as potential bits of information. Those bits have undergone multiple exchanges between stored potential energy and active energy each time I worked with this document and saved it. Eventually, I sent it over a wi-fi connection to a distant place that I've never seen to another machine that prepared the document that you are reading.

When you downloaded this book, you moved the Energy forward through another series of transformations. As you have read this document, your eyes have converted the image - made of Energy - into another series of transformations. The cones and rods of your eyes changed the reflected light into neural impulses that were translated through a complex series of events in your mind so that not only could you decode the meaning of the words on your screen, but you could also process these concepts for your own mind to consider.

Now it's up to you what you will do with the Energy. This is my gift to you. This book is free and will always be so. May this Energy help you Weave your own Tapestry into a lasting fabric. Welcome to the Journey.

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