Blog posts

Archives

Brother to the Trees

Multi-day Intensives

I want to begin with a practice, “Presenting Your Ego to a Tree.” which I learned in Mexico in 1996. I was there for three weeks of workshops based on the book The Teachings of Don Carlos, Practical Applications of the Work of Carlos Castaneda. It doesn’t have to be called “Presenting Your Ego to a Tree.” The first time I performed it I happened to be in a thick… Read More »


Finding Your Way — Part 1

The Many Faces of Heroic Journeys

Yeah, though I walk through the Valley of Death … Made a decision to turn my will and life over to a higher power … The way out is through…

To me, there’s a consistent message here.

The first dispatch comes from the 23rd Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with… Read More »


Finding Your Way — Part 2

The Many Faces of Heroic Journeys….

The very first time I experienced this Holotropic-like breathwork, the music began, I started doing connected circular breathing, and I rapidly became very agitated. I was miserable… frustrated, angry and simultaneously hopeless, and shortly I was thrashing and rocking side to side. One of the sitters who considered himself adept at doing body work on people breathing came over and started pressing on my… Read More »


Searching for a new Mythology (3)

the river's dream

Eve… of Destruction or Renewal?

These two mythologies – Judeo-Christianity and the primacy of “logos,” the world of language, thinking, and reason –structure and underlie many of our daily dramas in modern life. They combine to create a sense of value that is abstract, above-it-all, and not present. Thought is abstract; heaven is abstract. Both are distant from and uneasy with physical life. The old-testament gods are not of the… Read More »


Black Elk’s Dream … and Mine…

Black Elk was a ‘wichasa wakhan’ — medicine or holy man — of the Oglala Lakota, born in late 1863 on the Little Powder River in Wyoming. He had been taken ill at age nine, unresponsive and lying in a coma for several days.… Read More »


Circles of Air & Stone • Putney, Vermont