More Hope: One Final Post

I’ve decided to go back and tell how this all turned out for me. It ended well. We visited many friends in California. We went on vacations such as Ojai and Las Vegas. We knew we had to move back home to Illinois with our family so we saw the Grand Canyon on the way back. Amber cried profusely.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and we got to spend our last day in San Diego on Halloween promptly leaving the next day. In the evening we celebrated by going to the excellent decorations on a single street near our Victorian house apartment. This street has actors and animatronics complete with a moving dragon. 

Though during the day we went to Coronado and got to see all the kids in costume going from shop to shop trick or treating. They were all adorable, and some of them even got to have ice cream from the local shops along the way. I know I got some ice cream while walking around watching them with my wife.

The next morning we cleaned out our apartment, got in the car, and drove back home. Like I said we did indeed stop by the Grand Canyon.

The Meaning of Life

I have to say my favorite part about San Diego is simply the walks. There are gorges and cliffs and the ocean. They even have mountains. When I was working my contract job I would often take long breaks in the middle of the day to go to Balboa Park and back. There was a very specific tree with thin white bark that I would touch, say hello, then begin my walk back home.

The meaning of life is to be kind to people. Then choose the ones you love most. Then keep those ones you love most as happy as you can make them for as long as you can until they leave you in some way. But as the saying goes, no one is ever really gone. That’s how I feel about my time in California. It is still with me. That beach, any of them, is still churning inside of me.

I’ll say it once again. The meaning of life is to be kind to people. I ended up finding a way to be kind to people in every job I had since I left. And as always my wife is always the first and foremost someone in my life. Everything else falls away like grains on the ocean sand.

The Passing On of Brutus

Brutus is our special guy. We moved back into my parents house for a time and he enjoyed living on their ground floor, where there was a full sliding glass window for him to go to every day as he looked out at the nature in their backyard.

He lived long enough to move out of their house with us and into a nice duplex apartment. His last days were spent watching the olympics with Amber every day. When it was his time to go we took him to the local park and took our last pictures with him. At the vet we comforted him every step of the way as he fell asleep. Then we proceeded to bawl ourselves to profuse state, and comfort each other afterward.

Two More Buns

It didn’t take long for us to buy a house and realize our home was an ideal place for another pair of bonded rabbits. We found a mother daughter pair that didn’t want to be separated named Rosemary and Sage (the father was named Parsley). We changed their names instead to Rosalie and Sage and they became a part of our family.

They didn’t love us the same way Brutus did but that didn’t prevent Amber from constantly telling them stories about him, and about his wife named Clover that he had previous to this blog.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude for how this blog started, which was just a way for people to follow me on our travel across the country. What ended up actually happening is that this became a memento for me to look back on, especially in the use of pictures. I’m sure I’ll continue to look back upon this page for a long time, reminding my wife of each photo and asking her if she remembers each memory as well as I do. Then she will explain each memory back to me from her perspective and we will both relive them all over again.

Madre Grande 101

Soundtrack: White Stripes - We Are Going To Be Friends

Conclave and the Rise of Ken

It has been a busy time for the Madre Grande Monastery. First of all, Amber and I attended our second annual conclave in the end of June. I remember last year's conclave and how we hiked through the mountain just to get there. Last year's was very eventful since it mostly focused on the absence of John, and how we would all pick up the slack. This year was more business as usual, simply reporting on our projects and reviewing finances.

Mostly what Amber and I had to report was on our San Diego Theosophy study group. It has had some different turns lately since we are no longer using the ULT location. Mostly we are using libraries and a Swedenborgian church, although the good news is we've been having good turn out and we have met some enthusiastic people. Hopefully we will have a more set location down the road.

Promptly after the conclave it was the rise of Ken Campos. I've gotten to know Ken quite well in the last year, and I am glad we were there for his final vows as he became a fully professed monk.

The 101

A short 2 weeks later I was back up to the monastery to enjoy Madre Grande 101. That's the nickname for a program they are running the second weekend of every month to try to orient or reorient friends and well wishers of the monastery as to its daily life and significance. I was helping by being the first participant.

The first night was enjoyable hearing Sally and Marty explain the history. The main bullet point is that a lot of people have loved the land over the years, and it is sacred to many people for many different reasons.

Newfound belief in Christ Bugs

For karma yoga the next day, one of the chores was to help Marty try to persuade this new infestation of bugs in the crops to depart. There were questions as to what kind of bugs they actually were, and Monica offered that in her country of Romania they called them "Christ bugs". This led to a whole conversation as to what miraculous nature these bugs could possibly possess and maybe we should tread carefully. Monica further suggested that perhaps they were Christ bugs because they would forgive us if we tried to get them to leave, and so we were back to work.

I found myself not being able to let go of the phrase "Christ bugs", and I've decided it is a new expletive I will try to incorporate into my vocabulary. It is used in such phrases as "Christ bugs! Someone left the milk out!" or maybe "Christ bugs! There are Christ bugs all over everything!" Much later we found out they are likely Boxelder bugs.

Also during gardening I discovered seashells here and there. I began to collect them. When we were done I finally inquired what they were all about and it was explained to me that many years ago, when John Drais was still with us, he got a 'deal' on a truck full of kelp that they could use as fertilizer. The monastery land smelled for a long time and, as more permanent evidence, seashells that were caught in the seaweed were still spread throughout the garden.

Heart Spring

Another fun jaunt during Madre Grande 101 was that Monica, her son Martin, and I took a trip to the spring. As a bit of trivia, the mountain skyline looks like a woman curled up in fetal position (whom we call the Mother). It was explained to me that a freshwater spring is right where all the greenage is that would be her heart.

Halfway up the trail to find the spring, there sat Jonathan. We did not expect to see Jonathan, but there he was, sitting on a rock. I thought he was going to ask us a series of riddles so that we could pass, but instead he just joined us in going the rest of the way up. Up until now I still don't know why he was there, or what he was waiting for, but it will just have to go down as one of life's little mysteries.

All in all it has been a productive month, and we still have yet to go back to Wheaton for our visit during Summer National Gathering and visiting my family. Looking forward to that very soon.

As an added bonus song about gardening for you to enjoy: THIS!

I took a lot of photos too. Here are the rest of them.

The Outer Guardian ...of Doom

Suggested Soundtrack: Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

I’m nearing a whole year of being in San Diego in pursuit of Theosophical aspirations. I’m certainly not the person I was when I left. For good or bad, as the Oracle says: some bits you lose, some bits you keep.

A new perspective of Ojai

Before talking about the Outer Guardian, Amber and I recently went on another fun trip to Ojai. The primary reason was to see P. Krishna’s lecture on Krishnamurti and Theosophy, but we made a weekend out of it.

This was a time of reminiscing even though I wasn’t intending it to be such. That Amber and I could drive around seeing the sights made me feel much like I did a year ago on our cross country trip. Mostly we just travelled through Oxnard and parts of Ventura County. We drove along the Malibu beaches and through the mountains.

As we were visiting the beaches of Malibu I suddenly recognized that this was close to where Pablo, Michele, and I went to the beach the first time I came to Ojai in 2012. I picked them up from L.A. airport and we took our time driving up the coast. I still have the stone I picked out of the ocean on that trip.

P. Krishna

The lecture was very good. P. Krishna is a widely celebrated author and speaker in both the Theosophical community and the Krishnamurti foundation. If I had to summarize his points I would say: (1) Krishnamurti taught that in order to realize transformational truth, we have to let go of our conditioning which we perceive as our past, and (2) what Krishnamurti teaches is fully compatible with what H.P. Blavatsky teaches and with what Annie Besant teaches.

Lakshmi with P. Krishna

More than just the lecture itself it was nice to be among Theosophists that Amber and I know very well. They are always kind in Krotona and very generous. We got to visit a little with Elena and Pablo Minniti in their home and with other community members in the school.

Outer Guardian

The Outer Guardian, to me, sounds like some stalwart gatekeeper - like the black knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, ominously saying phrases like, “None shall pass.” It is an initiation of the Minor Orders of Friarship in the Paracelsian Order. More accurately it is the Minor Order I am currently on.

I really like the system of progress from one stepping stone to the next with Theosophical studies. It helps give focus to the lessons currently being learned. The Minor Orders, progressively, are: Watcher, Outer Guardian, Lector, Inner Guardian, and Acolyte. Each initiation focuses on a different lesson, and as Sally explained in a recent study group, they “initiate” a specific energy in our lives. The Watcher puts great focus on observation and mindfulness. The Outer Guardian puts great emphasis on discernment and judgment.

There is also a cross section of Theosophical principles with each one - Watcher in physical, OG is emotional, Lector is mental, IG is intuitive, and Acolyte is what Theosophists call Atma roughly translating from sanskrit as “One Spirit”. These stages or initiations were put together by several people including John Drais at the formation of the Paracelsian Order and the Johannine Catholic Church.

It just so happens that we decided to have an Outer Guardian study group recently, in some part because Allison and I were having such massive karma play out that it was frightening Amber. That is to say, Amber was considering never taking the Outer Guarding initiation to avoid the juju. I think it was when Allison got bit by a rattlesnake that Amber really felt shaken up.

Like all spiritual pursuits, the initiations are what you make of it. For me and what I make of San Diego, I consider myself profoundly luck to be in the place that I am, and profoundly fortunate to have a wife like Amber to share in my spiritual path.

As for Brutus, even though we are living in San Diego, we found a grassy area in our back alley. Sometimes I go out there with him to read or meditate. I am thankful for him too.