In June 2000, when “green” was not the talk of the town, my husband, John and I started a business called Synergy Environmental. We developed the market and obtained all the approvals for the use of a product called BioMatrix.  This is a product that biodegrades oil, breaking it down to its natural components (H2O, CO2 and fatty acids), none of which are toxic or hazardous to the environment.  We have focused a lot of time and energy on educating people, including children in schools on alternative ways to handle oil and chemical spills, by using this product.  We started this business because of an awareness that we had of the need to make some changes with the environment. We could have never predicted the crisis in the Gulf with the largest and most harmful oil spill of all time and consequently a situation that BioMatrix could have such a positive impact on.

BioMatrix is created from sphagnum peat moss, found above the 49^th parallel of the earth.  It is a simple and abundant material found in Mother Earth herself. It can be used to clean up the damage of the oil on the wetlands. But it seems the powers that be still choose to turn a blind eye to the simple solution.  How indicative is that of how we lead our lives? Why? Because we are afraid to let go of the old ways: in our lives it is called beliefs, stories, etc. In the world at large it is called polypropylene, surfactants, kitty litter “clay” products, etc.  These products represent what doesn’t work. They are manufactured by a chemical process that can result in long term side effects that are harmful to the fragile ocean environs, where as, BioMatrix is an all natural product does not.

I continue to “hold that space” for a solution to the Gulf crisis that best serves Mother Earth.  My desire has been to be able to reflect back to Mother Earth the love and joy she reflects to me, from a clean and clear space. This has never been about saving the environment, for she is perfect the way she is.  It has been about a partnership, a romance, wherein she has been willing to be that mirror for me to see myself, in so many ways, they are unmentionable at this point.

It will take more than one system, product or solution to control and clean up the damage of this spill. We are confident we have one of solutions in BioMatrix and we look forward to collaborating with others who have the desire and means to clean up this spill.  Look at what happened with the Exxon Valdez.  Here we are over 21 years later, and we are still being impacted by that spill in so many ways.  We cannot afford to not do everything we can. Especially in the fragile state that Mother Earth is now in.  

We are at a point where Mother Earth is clearly making a cry for help. I have a strong hearts desire that I can no longer ignore to respond to this cry to help by getting our product out there.  

It is time for “CHANGE”.  We need new solutions for old problems. The situation in the Gulf calls for new ways of responding – not the same old same old.  I don’t have the solution for every aspect of this disaster, but I do have the solution for a piece of it, and I know there is someone out there on this same team committed to “CHANGE” that has another and yet another.  It is time for humanity to stand up and be accountable for what is showing up, and DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.  That is what this spill is about.  No more sitting back and just getting angry, pointing a finger, being a victim.  We need to play bigger than that.  Mother Earth is willing to be that reflection for us to see that once again Watch what I mean, You Tube Rachel Maddow

John and I have now gone into passionate action with this intention; grounded in a desire to step up, take responsibility for what is showing up in our world. I see that all of it has the potential to mirror what is inside of us. In some ways we created it, maybe not the oversight that caused the disaster to happen but our dependency on oil and our inability to shift our life styles. If we all just stopped, embraced ourselves, stopped pointing a finger, and no longer went into our own corners to hide and protect ourselves but rather sought cooperative ways to work together to solve our environmental problems, miracles could happen.     

You can visit our website at http://www.synergy-environmental.com/ and get a better idea of the potential here. You will find we have obtained approval from the EPA and many other government agencies on the use of this product.

More specifically we are looking for an agent or connection to get our product into the market place so it can be used in the clean up of the fragile wetlands, saving the habitats of the creatures that live there. Please contact me if you can help in bringing more attention to this valuable solution.

At Dream of the Heart, we enjoyed a Dreaming weekend together during the Equinox in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a gorgeous weekend of sunshine and deep blue skies.  We spent the time exploring the fullness of our connection to each other and to nature; humans engaged in the process of recovering their authentic awareness and expression.  We played with our awareness of ourselves as living fields of energy and presence. 

We watched the sun rise on the first day of spring with eyes and bodies open to the experience.  We felt that sun deep in our cells and our body memories.  Later, each of us dreamed into the places where we trusted the flow of life and into those places where we still entertained doubt and dreamt the stuck feelings and experiences that reflected that doubt.  Then we experimented!  In the evening session, one person at a time would take their place in the middle of the circle, name their desire to move whatever stuck energy they had encountered and ask the group for its support.  The circle in turn, would take that particular issue and dream into how it expressed itself in their life.   The group practiced allowing each emotion or energy in the moment to be felt, breathed into and moved through the field of their heart (our center of compassionate awareness).  One person expressed how they desired to move their fear in a particular situation and so we would all notice, accept and move our own experience of fear.  The results were powerful.  Everyone experienced a deeper connection to each other, to their own dreaming mind and to their acceptance of the emotional energy flowing through them.  The felt sense of our connection to Life itself was enhanced through the power of combined intent.  Many people felt a willingness to step more fully into their heart’s desire in the moment and express with clarity all they felt.  Many discovered an awareness of feeling and connection outside the usual limitations their mind’s expectations.  We all understood with more certainty that the field we create with our thoughts and emotions has a direct and palpable effect on our experience and the experience of those around us.

Spring met a willingness to allow, express and move closer to our heart’s full expression that weekend.  At the end of our time together, we gathered outside in the sun on the warming earth and allowed our bodies to lead us in whatever way they felt led to express themselves and to move the energy we had played in all weekend once more.  It was a delightful celebration of the body leading the mind and singing its freedom.  Joyful humans feeling, expressing, releasing and moving with the flow of life!

Ahhhhh.   Every contraction brings an opportunity to see the stories I have created in my emotional memory with great clarity.  Nothings like a good contraction to bring old, unconscious fear to awareness.  Those parts of us scream if the contraction is tight enough.  All the old anger, blaming, fear, hurt and judgment rise to the surface.  All the feelings we resist and hold hostage and deny, rush out of their closets to get a breath of air.  It’s about being a human blessed with a highly developed survival-based fear brain embedded in a brain wired to tell stories.   

I now have a choice.  It is a choice to experience the flow that I am by allowing the energy of emotion to move through the blockades my mind has constructed.  I can gently encourage those parts I’ve denied to come to the surface because I have invited them.  I can create an open field that welcomes the dialog so I am no longer run over by emotions escaping a locked closet.  By attending to those inner contractions from the point of view of acceptance instead of belief or of denial, those contractions begin to transform themselves.  The beauty is that giving those emotions my full acceptance allows a miracle to happen.  When that energy flows, it jump-starts feelings of freedom, creativity, compassion and joy.  So, as Miguel’s fifth agreement states, “Be skeptical, but learn to listen.”  You just might hear the thread of the story that opens you to the fear beneath the anger, the hurt beneath the blaming, the part of you that needs to be seen, not believed, but seen nakedly and honestly so that forgiveness, release and flow can happen.  Once my internal flow begins, my external flow follows.  Once again, I am connected to my whole self and therefore connected to my whole life and the feeling of expansion is the result.

A contraction is an opportunity to notice its source of creation.  How can we ever be separate from the life flow that is what we are?  We never can be but we can certainly perceive and then feel that way.  It is possible to see the expansions and the contractions as a love letter.  It is possible to appreciate the perfection of a system that allows such healing and expansion to happen.  If we say so.

I have been sending you love letters
every moment of your life.

Some made you laugh beyond reason
so you could know the joy of abandoning yourself.
Some made you weep for months
so you were bound to seek a soft shoulder
and later become that softness.
Some made you shake-your-fist angry
so you learned how to stand for yourself
and then how to stand for others
and finally how to stand still.
Some clearly terrified you
so you could feel your boundaries
and find they were porous
and find they were gone.
Some made your heart soar
in spite of anything you could imagine.

I have been sending you love letters
every moment of your life.
You are learning how to read them
for the encouragement  that they are.

The first handcrafted editions of Ellen’s book of poetry, A Dream of the Heart, are in process.  We’ll keep you posted.

Place every feeling that arises
in the mortar of your awareness.
Raise the heat of your attention
as you breathe.
Trace the patterns of your sensations. 

Watch as the base metal dissolves:
Thoughts try to coagulate meaning,
Ideas insist on their validity,
Vibrations intensify,
Panic may arise,
as an option.
Breathe deeply,
and observe as illusions melt,
wisps of smoke,
chimera. 

Notice the glimmer round the edges.
Feel the energies unleashed and flowing.
Breathe deeper.
Accept, allow, release.
Continue the expansion that
concentrates pure peace. 

This is the gold worth mining.
This is the treasure that you are.

ecluksch 01/14/10

As often in such genres, good is confronting evil once again.  The evil is clearly drawn with healthy doses of greed, hostility and ignorance.  The good is misperceived as “less than” and subjected to a healthy dose of torment.  And in the middle of that old formula is a theme of union, the Na’vi people are capable of joining their consciousness to the natural world all around them, to their ancestors and to the planet they inhabit.  One human gets to fully explore this possibility through the use of an “avatar”, a genetically engineered Na’vi body that can be inhabited by his human consciousness. 

I wonder, can we as viewers allow ourselves to see our humanity reflected through all of the mirrors of the characters and the emotions that we experience in this film?  We cheer for the Na’vi and feel a reflection of our own communion with our mother Earth or the reflection of our desire for a greater sense of union with our planet and with each other.  We leave the theatre feeling empowered, or asking questions, or incensed or with a sense of longing.  The movie even falls flat for some whose critical thinking gets hooked into noticing the flaws of plot.  These are all aspects of ourselves.  We are the Na’vi and we are the “jarhead clan”.  We feel, we criticize, we attempt to control, we have trouble letting go, we surrender, we are jealous, we grow, we love and we are connected to each other in so many ways.  

When we allow ourselves to see all these aspects of ourselves, we can begin to move away from seeing other points of view as “weird” or “dumb” or “less than”.  Can we even move to embrace all these aspects of ourselves rather than idolizing some and demonizing others?  Can we really begin to move toward union by seeing the root cause of our separation: our rejection of aspects of ourselves? Our self- rejection then projects our disowned “self” out onto others.  “They” are the problem and they need to be fixed.  If they cannot be “fixed” then they need to be cast out or annihilated.  And so we project our internal drama out into the world over and over and over once again. 

At the root is the fear of not being enough; of needing to adopt a certain identity to count, to matter, to be worthwhile.  I am if I can prove you are not.  And that is what we say to all those “less than” parts of ourselves.  I am worthy if I can control my fears, my anger, my jealousy, my “weaknesses”.  I can feel superior and perceive my group, my nation and my planet as superior.  What is out of reach, though, is a deeper sense of worth and belonging, a sense of connection to the force of Life that flows through everything, even Colonel Quaritch.   He is a reflection of the darker side of our own fear and of our need to manage and control so we feel safe. He is the security officer.  He simply takes it to the extreme so that we can feel the tension of living on fear and observe the results of that dream of separation.  Perhaps, the more we take responsibility for our angry feelings and the need for control in our own mind through the process of acceptance, the less need there will be for the external mirror. Unity is the result of creating union within, from accepting all that we are with compassion and forgiveness.

Finally, a word about the longing many people feel for an experience of unity and communion like that of the Na’vi.  You are that which you long for.  You have a remarkable heart that emits an electromagnetic field that is experienced by everything around you: plants, animals and the earth itself.  Your heart is an intelligence waiting to be tapped.  It is your link to communion with yourself and your surroundings.  When that heart field is filled with unconditional acceptance of all that we are, that heart field is unified and all of Life feels that energy.  This website is filled with heart wisdom and a community that delves deep into the possibilities that are experienced when we surrender our notions of less than/better than and open to the flow of Life that we are.  When we surrender our opinions and drop deeply into the wisdom of our hearts and feelings, we embody the Avatar of our awareness and union is the result. “I see you” takes on a whole new meaning.

You wake me
In the middle of the night
Whispering something beyond words
That sets my soul to dancing.

I lie here in the same bed
In the same room
Feeling not the same at all.

The air shimmers.
“I am alive.”
Stones start speaking.
Roses fall tumultuously
From the lips of saints.

My mind turns inside out.
I am lost inside my own bewilderment.
My heart whispers reassurance
And leaps toward total abandon.

You wake me
In the middle of the night
Calling me by my true name,
“Beloved”.

ecluksch

Please join me for a Solstice telegathering and poetry sharing on Monday evening, December 21st, 2009 from 8pm-9pm. We will savor poets musing on the mystical path of love and abandon presented by the likes of Hafiz, Rumi, Mary Oliver and some homegrown offerings of my own. The last 20 minutes is open for a poetry slam where anyone can offer a poem of their own or read one of their favorite inspirational poems from any spiritual tradition. Let’s get together and share some intoxicating verse to transport ourselves to sublime sweetness in preparation for our holiday gatherings and winter repose.

The cost is free except for the cost of the call to you. Dial 218-486-1600 and enter code 920454 and join our evening of divine inspiration!

As they settle into their chairs to review their lives with new awareness, they surrender to the process of being fully present with all that arises in their reflection. It is not an intellectual process but a deeper noticing that is practiced and mastered. They find that they have a witnessing mind that lives outside their automatic responses and the reactions to old emotional memories. They learn to open to that larger point of view that provides insights and a range of experience unknown to them before. These people are Dreamers and they are committed to the practice of dreaming their life with conscious awareness and experiencing their full potential to dream from the point of view of love.

Charlottesville is offering a Dreaming weekend on September 25-27. We are Dreaming at our new house in Afton (20+ miles west of Charlottesville, Virginia). We begin Friday evening at 7:30 pm and end at noon on Sunday. The cost of the weekend is $225.00 which includes Saturday dinner and casual lodging (bring your air mattress). For more information go to www.DreamoftheHeart.com or call Ana Mariza at 434-284-1733.

The Four Agreements, Life Mastery and all the beautiful mirrors of my mentors, friends, family, students and the natural world have blessed me with an amazing journey I started in earnest eight years ago as I learned not to believe myself!   It has been a ride that has changed everything, meaning how I experience my emotions, my mind, my body and even my breathing!  There were lovely adventures prior to this one, but this is the one that has given me access to a deep sense of home in my heart and a presence in my daily life that is alive with awareness and connection.  

I live and practice in Charlottesville in the heart of the Blue Ridge in Central Virginia.  It is a beautiful, mountainous, lush landscape that inspires me and is now the home of Dream of the Heart.  Along with my beloved dreaming sisters, Rose and Ana, I have supported a community of courageous hearts who are learning to redream themselves.  We have weekly wisdom groups and monthly dreaming weekends that are unending opportunities to explore, experiment, inspire each other and trust in the perfection of everything.  There is an energy of communion and creation that multiplies exponentially as we gather with common purpose.   We are committed as well to mentoring the many young people ready to embrace their authenticity through work in the charter middle and high schools and beyond.  I am particularly in love with exploring the possibilities of connection between humans and horses.  My horse, Sunny, has taught me volumes.  He is always perfectly clear about how I “feel” to him and about whether my mind is getting in the way.  He and other horses have been assisting people of all ages to question their assumptions and try new approaches through our equine assisted programs at Galleywinter Farm. 

Visit our website, http://www.dreamoftheheart.com/ for ongoing events.