Sanctuary
We Were Made For These Times
Dear Ones,
Hi Misfits. Soul explorers. Welcome to these head and heart experiments. Welcome to the august of our iterations. We face many combinations and possibilities in this transition. It feels like a choose-your-own-adventure, visionary, science fiction book.
We can write ourselves into our new stories.
I recently wrote a substack note sharing my disillusionment with U.S. health insurance. I referred to an imprisonment so total that I didn’t even know I was locked up. A digital tsunami soon followed. Thank you for your kindnesses.
I read your stories. I hear your pain. I feel your pain inside of my marrow. If that sounds intense, it is. It is intense and merciful.
Here you may find sanctuary to feel, create, connect, believe, and embody the sacred and mysterious science of being human together.
Not the fluffy stuff. The rolling around in the grit of thorny truth stuff. Head in sanders depart.
I know that the truth of our moment stings. A universal salve is available to us all. Feeling the sting is part of the salve. Watch it burn. What genius came up with that?
AMYGDALA REBOOT
My almond-shaped amygdala grows larger with sustained fear and anxiety. So does yours. It is the reptilian part of our limbic system. Amygdala is also called the “emotional” brain. It is interconnected with the prefrontal cortex which is involved in higher-order cognition. We have capacity to be higher beings.
RESIDENT ALIEN
I was born in foothills of the Alborz Mountains in Iran (motherland). Maladapted with severe mother hunger. A child of revolution. A misfit.
I came here hoping to escape socio-political tyranny and extremism disguised as religion.
Please don’t take this wrong. I am indeed thankful for the permission to enter and the gift of U.S. citizenship (stepmotherland). My body was on the line for 2 decades in hospital servitude.
Once a misfit always a misfit.
When I was a young kid in Texas, my U.S. residency card labeled me a “Resident Alien.” I saw it and instantly thought: I knew it! I knew I was never from here anyway!
I surrendered to my cosmic origins very early on. The imagination and creativity it took to surrender may be my greatest superpower. So I am a Moonchild turned Earthchild lost and found at sea child. So what? Of stardust we come, of stardust we go.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Systemic harm is like the water in the story above. We don’t even see that we swim in tar marinade. The tar may never come off. Battle scars. I emerge from downstream trenches wondering WTF is happening out here upstream.
“Nature itself is the best physician,” said Hippocrates, a Greek Physician/Philosopher born in 460 B.C often known as the “Father of Medicine.”
I’m sorry, what was that? Nature is the best physician? Is that so? Well, who would have thunk it? It was never mentioned in physician school. Curious.
Hippocrates knew it as evidenced by his 90 years of aliveness. As a physician, he knew the importance of nature. As a philosopher, he embraced the art and science of healing (this notion is debatable and I am no expert).
I live so many questions:
How did this raw truth of nature’s power get so lost in translation?
Where did the Mother of Medicine go?
Where is she now? Can we call her? Can she come back? (checks notes but sees that this is happening naturally due to our mother hunger afflictions)
The word doctor comes from the Latin word docere which means to teach. There is much to unlearn and learn, sapiens.
CONSCIOUSNESS REVOLUTION
Imagine building a life you do not have to escape from. Imagine finding innate secrets to a joyful life.
Attention to consciousness may help you along this path. It helped me out anyway. Consciousness is complex and multifaceted:
It is a mindbodysoulfulness phenomenon.
It simply cannot be explained in words.
It is the space between words. We word everything to death.
It is a felt sense. Lived experience is vital.
***NESSA TIP*** Sanctuary can be a place to feel safe and serene. It is needed for this daring path. Build one within and around you. Visualize a place identified as sanctuary.
Some of my sanctuaries:
Thank you for experiencing this labor of love with me. Click on the heart below if you feel like it. Sharing, commenting, and subscribing = loving.
May All Beings Find Peace.
Nessa (born at 333 ppm)
***********A NEW LISTENING PROJECT**********
Listening is healing. Storytelling is heart-to-heart resuscitation. Relational health is vital. Nessa Sanctuary is my new experiment of being available with you in a safe space as a teacher, student, and guide. I plan to meet one-on-one for 60 minutes with a limited number of people for unknown duration.
For a free 30 min curiosity call, click on calender link here or reply to this email.
LOCAL SHENANIGANS
Come here for an amazing acupuncturist/herbalist healer in our local community. She really helps me with hormonal dysregulation.
For a great herb selection (aside from my garden of course), check out Ema’s herbs.
I just attended a Ventura Land Trust-sponsored Wild and Scenic film festival. The environmental short films are balms for eco-anxiety. If you love our beautiful hillsides, help support Ventura Land Trust.
SCARS OF MY HAPPINESS:
Empire uses words to bind us into servitude. You being a resident alien places you in the UNITED STATES which is a corporation, ultimately controlled by the city of London and the Vatican. Since 1871 the UNITED STATES has been a corporation controlled by European bankers. My ancestors came here in 1620, before the corporate empire existed. I now declare myself a nonresident alien, a non us citizen. This puts me into common law, the law of the land, free of Washington DC. Corporations masquerading as lawful government is the way nearly every nation is now structured. The Roman Empire rules through the Vatican and they expect to control all of us. The empires alienate us from the earth and ourselves by herding us into invisible traps made of words.
Thanks for the update. "Hospicing Modernity...." a must read for those interested in the last part of the book's title ..."the Implications for Social Activism." What we can do is a lot more than worrying and saying how awful things are. I liken the desired behavior to guerilla warfare, doing battle from the inside, to challenge and change the structures that dominate and destroy rather than collaborate and create. Some might call it misplaced idealism. I called it my realism. Each to her/his own to deciide who to be and what to do. The only time we have is now, so let's make of that what we will