How to Meditate: Appendix A: Using Low-level Spirits

This post is a little out of order. I know I haven't written anything since Part 2, but I've realized that I have a book on my hands here, and I'm preparing each chapter carefully to fall in with the kind of progression I have followed. However, I wanted to present a little something that some folks overlook, and which I myself overlooked until reminded by my spiritual guidance team.

I've been trying to do quite a bit of physical healing lately, since I've ill-used my body and there is plenty of damage to repair. Two things in particular have been bothering me: my eyes and my gut. I'm quite near-sighted, and suffer from periodic diarrhea and frequent gas. So, I contacted my spirit guides (using a technique I'll detail in Chapter 3) and asked them if they could help. They said they couldn't, since their spiritual vibrations were so high, so they suggested that I use elementals to help.

Elementals are low-level spirits which correspond to the four classic elements from alchemy, which in turn correspond to the four common states of matter: earth to solid, water to liquid, air to gas, and fire to plasma (there are other, more exotic states, by the way). I worked with elemntals fairly early on in my spiritual training, and they are usually quite amenable to helping -- provided you don't try to order them around like slaves. They are spiritual beings with free will, and should be treated with the same respect which you would show to your fellow humans, to angels, or to God.

Earth elementals are known as gnomes. They're completely unlike the gnomes you find in gardens -- I get the impression that they are like hard little animated balls of rock, which unfold into arms, legs, and glowing red eyes. (The first time I was contacted by Gaia, she came to me in the form of a giant gnome.) They have gravelly voices, and greatly enjoy building and breaking things. The earth element corresponds to the legs and lower abdomen, and gnomes can be contacted from the first chakra.

I lowered my vibration into my root chakra, and immediately I became aware of four gnomes. They sensed my awareness and intention immediately, and were ready to get started fixing damage in my small intestine. I asked them if they could also work on my eyes, but they said I would do better to call on sylphs to help with that.

Sylphs are air elementals. I perceive them as semi-transparent, clothed in sky-blue robes, with white hair and faraway eyes. Their primary passion is in intellectual pursuits. The air element corresponds to the chest and neck, and sylphs can be contacted through the fourth (heart) or fifth (throat) chakras. They are aloof and proud, and usually don't respond well to requests for help. However, when I raised my vibration to my throat, I found two sylphs willing (albeit grudgingly) to help me "better see the truth." They are not delicate in their work, despite their ethereal makeup, and my eyes began tingling and stinging as they delved deep to repair my lenses.

I went back down to the root and checked on the gnomes. They told me they could do much to improve my gut, but they could use some water to wash away the debris they were removing.

Undines are water elementals, and concern themselves primarily with healing and empathy.I have difficulty perceiving them physically, but they seem to be women composed entirely of animated green water. Spiritually, they leave a very clear impression on me of love and caring. The water element corresponds to the stomach and upper abdomen, and undines can be contacted through the second or third chakras. I found five undines ready to help, and they immediately set up a liquid wave of cleansing to wash my gut of the damaged cells the gnomes were clearing and to help set the new cells they were putting into place.

Being a creature of fire myself, I've never had occasion to call upon salamanders for help, so I've never perceived them. In the texts I've consulted, they are described variously as living tongues of flame, fiery serpents, or men clad in flame with molten metal spears. They are supposedly even more aloof than the sylphs, preferring not to associate with others, and can be angered when distracted from their own pursuits. Their primary concern is with emotions, thoughts, and the energy of motion. The fire element is associated with the head, and I would surmise that salamanders can be contacted through the sixth (third-eye) or seventh (crown) chakras. Again, I've never had occasion to consult them, and most texts describe this as a potentially dangerous task.

Annie's Test Kitchen: Total Dinner Satisfaction

I just had a dinner of two roast beef sandwiches, which were just slices of beef on dry white bread. Now, this would be a poor dinner under normal circumstances, but for the fact that everything involved was made from scratch in my own oven. It is by far the most satisfying dinner I've had in a long, long time. I invite you to experience this satisfaction for yourself.

Bread
I followed a recipe for "Amish White Bread" which I found online. Take two cups of water and heat it to 110-120°F. Add ¾ cup of sugar and a packet of yeast and let sit in a warm place until the yeast has expanded and become foamy. Mix in a teaspoon of salt and ¼ cup of oil (I used canola), then add 6 cups of flour (I used unbleached flour) a cup at a time until it forms a stiff dough. For the first three cups I used a whisk to blend the flour uniformly into a smooth batter; for the next two cups I used a wooden spoon, and for the last cup I used my hands to knead the dough. Continue kneading the dough on a floured surface for several minutes until it is nice and smooth, then put it in an oiled bowl, cover it with a cloth, and set it in a warm place to rise for an hour or two until the dough has at least doubled in size. If you cover it with plastic and let it rise for 24 hours or so, it will become sourdough. Anyway, after it has doubled, punch it down and knead it until all the large bubbles have been worked out and the dough is smooth again. Divide it in half and place it in two 9x5 loaf pans (or three 8x4 pans), cover and let rise until the dough is protruding above the pans' edges. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. I like to brush the tops with melted butter two or three times before and while baking to give it a nice crust and a buttery aroma.

Beef
I started with a three-pound eye round roast. I put it in a bowl, sprinkled it with garlic salt, black pepper and oregano, then added white vinegar, water and red wine until it was nearly covered, then let it sit covered in the fridge for a day. (The wine is also homemade.) My roasting pan is rusty and crappy, so I wrapped the roast in aluminum foil before placing it in the pan. I used two sheets of foil, wrapping one piece over the top then another around the bottom so it formed a shell to catch the steam and send it back down into the bottom. I then baked the roast at 350° for several hours, checking the temperature with a meat thermometer until the center was at 170°.

Incidentally, the most important factor when preparing meat is the temperature it reaches at the center. This applies to all meats, whether beef, chicken, pork, or whatever it may be. As long as it reaches the appropriate temperature, it's all good. Using a higher temperature will make the meat tough on the outside, so the lower the temperature you use, the more tender the meat will be. Theoretically, you could wrap the beef up tightly and put it in an oven set to 165° (the recommended temperature for beef) and bake it for hours or days on end -- as long as it doesn't dry out, it will come out absolutely perfect.

Working to Be Jobless

I work in a warehouse, for a major online retailer (known herein only as The Company, because they have not explicitly endorsed any of my viewpoints nor are they likely to publicly). I wear a lot of hats there -- driving a forklift, putting boxes and totes full of product on pallets, sorting items to go to different destinations, pulling and putting product in storage, among many others, I look at every job I do in that warehouse and think that there are very few tasks I perform there which couldn't be achieved more swiftly and efficiently by robots.

The Company has been looking into ways to automate more of their inventory, warehousing and fulfillment processes. I sketched out some of my ideas and showed them to a coworker. He immediately saw a major problem: "Wouldn't this eliminate everyone's job in this warehouse?" To which I replied, "Yes! Isn't it wonderful?"

I go into that warehouse four nights a week and see nothing but misery in the faces of every one of my coworkers. Every one of them would rather be doing something else. I see twenty-somethings who would rather be at college, travelling the world, exploring nature, or thousands of other activities. I see men who should be retired lifting fifty-pound boxes and wincing in agony as their knees and shoulders and fingers protest such unnatural activity. I see folks in the prime of life putting on a show, like they're playing a game -- "Let's pretend we work for a major corporation!" -- managing workers by set formulas they learned in some generic classroom taught by a bored professor who doesn't really believe any of the material he's teaching. Everything is performed according to whatever the prevailing business philosophy dictates.

Put a robotic forklift on the loading dock in my place. I'd rather that than spend ten hours a night fighting my arthritic knees and toes and dodging other forklifts and solid stationary objects which could instantly end my life as I know it. (Last night I came with a few arc-seconds of losing a kidney.) I'd rather be puttering in my garden, or writing code, or developing new composting methods, or dicking around on my violin, or a thousand other activities more suited to my physical, intellectual and moral proclivities and which would profit me more than what I do to "earn a living."

I really hope that The Company's efforts to automate bear fruit.  I have little doubt they would pay to have me retrained to service those robotic forklifts, or automated conveyors, or special manipulators used to palletize a wide variety of products. I could even leave The Company entirely -- spend my time teaching classes on microagriculture or herbalism or small-scale construction, or simple robotics. I could run a farm, or a small soil reconditioning business, or waste reclamations. The span of my knowledge is vast, and I see the same potential in every one of my coworkers. I go to work "and I see some of the strongest and smartest [people] that have ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it wasted." (Tyler Durden, Fight Club)

The point of automation is to reduce or eliminate menial work. The ostensible reason is to increase productivity and efficiency and thus maximize profit, but I see so much more there. I see the potential to elevate humanity to the status of creators, freeing them from the drudgery of unskilled labor to become artists, engineers, architects, designers, to bear and raise children, to bring forth their true potential. I see a lot of human energy wasted in maintaining a consumer economy, in creating scarcity of resources, in the production and disposal of cheap crap that does nothing to truly improve their lives.

It could be argued that such menial jobs are the only recourse for some people, that they are too stupid or backward to wrap their simple minds around anything more complicated that placing a cardboard box on a pallet. I argue that that is utter nonsense. I have seen people in my life who have, once sufficiently challenged,  risen above ignorance and become smarter. I have seen people deemed "mentally challenged" -- or "retarded" -- produce artistic works of sublime beauty and grasp fairly complex mathematical concepts and perform complicated tasks.

It could also be argued that my viewpoint is skewed, that I have natural advantages in my intellect, that I came from a privileged background and received superior education. I argue that that is utter nonsense. I was born into to blue-collar parents, who came from long, long lines of farmers and factory workers, raised in near-poverty, educated in a public school, and attended the equivalent of one year of community college. The only "advantage" that I can claim is parents who encouraged the development of my potential by spending their nickles and pennies to indulge me in books, toys, tools, craft kits, and other objects which would stimulate my intellectual development and satisfy my natural curiosity. In my adult life, I continued to learn, reading everything and anything I could get my hands on, from philosophy to economics to every branch of science to fantasy fiction to how-to guides. Now, I am the woman everyone else comes to when they need to know how to do something.

All that is required for you to excel in your life is for you to accept the challenges put before you and make every effort to overcome them. You may not always succeed, but you will always learn a valuable lesson, increase your knowledge and skill, and have a better chance to succeed against the next challenge. Never should you throw up your hands in defeat or proclaim something impossible. Nothing is impossible. Nothing can defeat a properly-motivated human being. Not even a robot threatening to take away your livelihood.

Decision Trees and Empathy

[Image courtesy Wikipedia: in loving memory or Peter Boyle]

 Imagine all the things that had to occur, not only in his life, but in everybody else's, to arrange it so on that particular night, the Big Bopper would be in a position to live or die depending on a flipping coin. I became so obsessed with that idea that I gradually became capable of seeing the specifics of everybody's death.

Peter Boyle won an Emmy for his portrayal of Clyde Bruckman in an episode of The X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose." He played an insurance salesman who had the unique psychic ability of seeing the moment of people's deaths. The quote above is Bruckman describing how he came by this gift. The specifics of the incident are flawed: it was actually Ritchie Valens who flipped for the seat on the plane which crashed, killing him, Jiles "Big Bopper" Richardson, and Buddy Holly in 1959. Waylon Jennings, then Holly's bass player, voluntarily gave up his seat to Richardson. But I digress in the name of accuracy.

The skill known as physiognomy works by the ability to read cues in a person's facial expressions and body language to determine specifics about their character and emotional states. Nearly every human being has this ability wired into their nervous systems. Empathy works in a similar fashion. Multiple cues in a person's demeanor may lead you to deduce their emotional state and several points of their character, which may lead to further deductions concerning their life experiences. A similar train of deduction is displayed in "The Adventure of the Resident Patient," a Sherlock Holmes short story, where Holmes deduces Watson's train of thought based solely on Watson's subtle gestures. With practice and sufficient knowledge, any person can learn to do this.

The part where it becomes psychic is that at each point of decision in your deduction, you may feel an intuitive "pull" or "push" indicating either an affirmative or a negative on each decision. For most people the entire process will take place in the vast and churning sea of the subconscious, which, upon arriving at a properly intuited experience, will throw an appropriate thought or image into the conscious mind through one or more channels. It may be a simple sensory experience, such as an image or a sound or even just a smell, or it may be a more complex sequence of experiences, like a video playing out in your mind but with all five senses represented along with emotions, thoughts, world-views, and so forth. For empaths who have developed a stronger link to their subconscious through introspective meditation, the process will be less opaque, and the practitioner will be more consciously aware of the steps in arriving at the specific intuition.

Of course, the process isn't fool-proof. You need to really tune into your intuition and learn to trust it. Hopefully, my posts on meditation will help you achieve that.

Annie's Test Kitchen: Ranch Stroganoff

Stroganoff has been a major staple of my life. My mother made it all the time but refused to teach me her recipe (or any cooking skills at all), so I had to find out for myself through experimentation. This is how Annie's Test Kitchen got started. Anyway, any stroganoff has six necessary elements:

• meat
• mushrooms
• tomatoes
• another edible nightshade fruit, usually paprika or another mild pepper
• sour cream
• noodles or potatoes

I add onion to all meat dishes I prepare (well, okay, most dishes I prepare) to add a little extra zest. That and the sour cream led me to a delicious inspiration: Ranch Stroganoff. I was missing a few of the necessary ingredients above, so, as always, I substituted and came away with a wonderful meal.

12 oz. regular or lite sour cream

2 lbs. ground beef

1 lb. fresh mushrooms (any variety), sliced

1 medium yellow onion

1 banana pepper (or equivalent amount of your favorite pepper, or 2 tbsp. powdered paprika), chopped

¼ sweet Vidalia onion (they're big, so don't go nuts)

1 packet ranch dip seasoning

3 cloves garlic (substitute 2 tbsp. garlic powder)

2 tsp. cumin

Salt and black or white pepper

In a large skillet, sautee the onions until soft. Add the garlic, beef,  black or white pepper, and cumin, and brown until the beef is showing no pink; drain and set aside in a separate dish. Sautee the mushrooms in the same skillet until slightly brown and the skillet has a bit of water in it. Add back ther beef and onion along with the chopped pepper and ranch seasoning. Cover; simmer over low heat for at least 15 minutes, preferably longer, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and uncover; add sour cream and stir.

You can serve this over noodles, or, for those of us who are gluten intolerant, substitute potatoes, rice or leafy greens. I served it warm over shredded iceberg lettuce, and it was heavenly.

Now, you can substitute just about any kind of meat you want for the dish. Be aware, though, that if you use chicken or pork, you may have to increase the amount of seasonings, and definitely increase the simmering time to allow the meat to get properly done.

If you want to serve this over rice, a fun (but labor-intensive) variation is to prepare the dish like a risotto. Use medium-grain rice if you don't want to shell out for arborio (it works just fine, don't let those snooty TV chefs tell you otherwise).

Ingredients above plus
½ cup chopped celery
2 cups dry unwashed rice, medium-grain or arborio (basmati may work too, btu I haven't tried that)
1 cup soup stock (use whatever stock matches your meat, or you can use pickled peppers and substitute 1 cup of the brine from the jar)
Reduce sour cream to 8 oz.

In a large saucepan, sautee celery, onion and garlic in a bit of oil until soft. Add mushrooms; sautee until they begin to soften and release water. Add rice; stir. Keep stirring and add the stock or brine very gradually, allowing the liquid to be absorbed before adding more. Continue until all the liquid has been added. You may use a bit of grated parmesan cheese for added texture, adding it gradually along with the liquid. Remove from heat; stir in sour cream.

I haven't found a way to make these dishes vegan, but as a carnivore I haven't looked very hard. Because of the sour cream I doubt it's possible, but I welcome any comments from those who have succeeded. It's easy to make the dish vegetarian by substituting more mushrooms and a bit of hard vegetable, like celery, carrot  or bell pepper, for the meat.

Battle Stations!

[Image courtesy Wikipedia]

I'm watching the recent film based on the old anime series Space Battleship Yamato, released under the title Star Blazers in the US. When I was very little, I would rush home after school every day so I could catch it on one of the local TV stations. It seemed an epic adventure to my young mind, and over the years I have studied the concepts behind the series which have lent it tremendous significance.

Near the end of World War II, Japan found itself in desperate straits in the Pacific basin. She placed her hope in the Yamato-class of super-battleships, the largest seagoing craft ever constructed on Earth (displacement of over 70,000 tons). Every one of these ships, except Yamato herself, had been sunk in action around the Japanese islands. On April 7, 1945, Yamato and her escort group, bound for Okinawa, were set upon by a large squadron of US bomber and torpedo aircraft. Yamato's death was spectacular -- a magazine exploded, sending up a mushroom cloud nearly four miles high. With her sank Japan's last hope of holding onto the Pacific.

Later, in the year 2199, Earth was in similar straits. Bombarded by radioactive meteors sent by the Gamilon Empire, Earth had become a sere wasteland. Humanity was forced to move underground in order to survive. Earth Defense Forces (Star Force) engaged in skirmishes with the Gamilons in and around the Solar System, but the enemy craft proved too strong for their space battleships.

In the last space battle near Neptune, Captain Okita Juzo, commander of the Star Force, was forced to flee under heavy fire. Covering his escape was the missile ship Yukikaze, commanded by Capt. Kodai Mamoru. Despite Okita's objections, the Yukikaze remained and was completely destroyed. Okita returned to Earth haunted by Kodai's death and the death of his own son in battle years before.

Meanwhile, Earth received an unexpected boon -- a message of hope from a far-off planet. An alien spacecraft crash-landed on Mars, killing the beautiful pilot. The message cylinder she carried was picked up by the younger Kodai brother, Susumu, and his friend Shima Daisuke. The cylinder contained a message from Starsha of the planet Iskandar, providing plans for a warp engine and offering a machine which will clean the Earth of all radiation and make her viable again. Plans were immediately changed to send a ship to Iskandar and retrieve the machine.

In the barren desert which was the Sea of Japan, the Yamato was already going through a refit to evacuate the Earth. She was immediately repurposed to make the journey to Iskandar under the command of  Capt. Okita. Yamato, once the last desperate hope of Japan, has become the last hope for Earth. She faces a one-year journey 148,000 light-years to the Greater Magellanic Cloud and back, facing the forces of Gamilon and their calculating, single-minded leader Deslar.

Of course, this is all fantasy. We can only guess the level of technology which will exist two hundred years from now, and whether we are alone in the universe or not. Besides, the wreck of the Yamato was discovered in many pieces in 1984.

But this theme, the final, desperate, seemingly doomed effort of a small group of people upon which are placed the hopes of an entire culture, is a recurring theme in Japanese entertainment media and elsewhere. Even when all hope seems lost, there is always a small glimmer of human spirit which can carry one person or a group further than seems physically possible to achieve the wildly improbable. The same spirit which drove the Japanese Combined Fleet was present in the future Star Force, the past forces of the American Revolution, and countless revolutionary forces throughout time. The idea that a small group of rag-tag adventurers can bring down the military might of a giant empire is inspiring, and examples of their successes litter the pages of history.

When someone tells me there is no hope, that nothing will change, that one person cannot make a difference in the face of impossible odds, I laugh and tell them that nothing is impossible.

UPDATE: In the movie, Kodai gave a pre-battle speech which perfectly summed up in a few sentences exactly what I said above. I strongly suggest you watch the movie. =)

Condescension

I was watching the Manos: The Hands of Fate episode of MST3K earlier. The episode starts with a short, the second episode of Hired! It's a training film made in 1940 for Chevrolet to teach sales managers how to handle new salesmen. In the film, Mr. Warren, a sales manager for a major Chevrolet dealership, is complaining to his father about the poor quality of his new salesmen. The father reminds his son how green Warren was when he started as a salesman. Warren was flabbergasted at how little his new salesmen knew about the basics of sales that he knew, forgetting that he had had to have that information drilled into him bit by bit by his own boss.

It's fashionable for everyone to shake their heads at others' ignorance of wisdom they they understand as basic, forgetting that such wisdom had to be obtained either through hard experience or the patient instruction of someone wiser than they. Even I am guilty of this from time to time. I constantly have to remind myself that others may not have had the manner of experience that I have, which forced me to think carefully about my world view and how my attitudes shape my life and the lives of those around me. Now I am much more likely to teach rather than berate when I see someone acting in an ignorant manner. And when someone asks me a direct question, I answer directly and completely, patiently instructing in my hard-won wisdom. That's why I write this blog, in the hope that others will benefit from my experience.

Whenever you are tempted to shake your head at someone going down a wrong path, take time to correct them rather than simply allow them to suffer hard knocks. Think of the hard knocks you've taken in your life and imagine how much better off you would be had someone come along to keep you clear of them.