Article Highlights

• This is your brain on survival
• Survival r us
• An Epic negative human tendency

Dear ,

I got to meet my survival self head-on, literally, one morning in New Zealand, 1996 or so.  I rushed in to the bathroom in my hotel room, slipping on the wet floor.  I launched through the air and fiercely smashed the side of my head against a brass doorknob.  It knocked me out.

As a neuro-specialist later told me, my neocortex, or thinking brain, was stunned and non-functioning so my physical operation was taken over by the so-called “reptilian” brain” and limbic system.  I was now in pure survival brain mode.

When I came to I had no consciousness as myself – this operates through the neocortex or thinking brain.  I only had awareness of being endangered, cold, shaking and I felt terrified of a bad noise in the sky.  There was no “self” awareness, just an urgent instinct to seek warmth and safety. (more…)

Dear Dream Dreamer,

April 1 seems a good day to speak of illusions and dreams. Following your dreams can be one or the other, right? And sometimes it isn’t easy to tell which is which. We can get confused about our dreams. That’s because we perhaps have a little kink or two in how we think of this.

One morning recently, I thought of a short poetic way of rethinking this. I wrote it down and want to ponder it further here with you.

May the dreams that you most profoundly are, be the dreams that you dream most true.
I’ll see you in the dreaming, dear friend,
~ X♥️Ma HuLiLi (more…)

Dearest ,

In January I asked a couple of local friends if they’d like to hang out and create Vision Boards.  I’d noticed that Colette Baron-Reid was doing a free Vision Board class and the idea seemed like a fun way to focus on allowing 2021 to be a great year no matter what else was going on.

Like me, Pat and Augustine hadn’t done a vision board in a long time but were up for playing with the idea.  We followed along with Colette part of the time but being creative thinkers ourselves we were soon off in our highly individualized worlds.  

Each of us spent time with the ideas, sections, format, images, and words we would use, texting often and speaking weekly and in February we got together to share our boards.  They were all so different!  Augustine had several smaller boards, one of which folded like an icon triptych.  Her other boards were wonderfully evocative and image packed with many that were beautiful, unusual and mysterious photographs of her own of nature moments she spontaneously happens across.

The photo above is my board.  I found that large poster board with the amazing black and gold border and thought it was perfect 🤩 for me.  Colette had suggested choosing three or so of 8 suggested areas of focus.  I love the pentagonal star so I used five categories, choosing a couple of hers and designating three of my own.   The star gave my board a nice structure.  For my images, I used a few I had and printed the rest from Goggle Images.  Including one I found that I repeated for a background for my board.  It reminds me of Quantum Foam, a formative aspect of material creation that I’ve seen on occasion on Shamanic journeys. (more…)