Tengo ganas de oír un concierto de las estrellas dirigido por la luna.
Tengo ganas de sentir el roció en mi espalda.
De hundirme en la tierra y acurrucarme con las raíces.
De sentir la tierra negra y húmeda en mis uñas.
Tengo ganas de hablar con la luna y que sus rayos descansen en mi piel.
Tengo ganas de quitarme el disfraz de piel y vestirme de nube.
Tengo ganas de volar.
Tengo ganas de hundirme en la tierra.
If I was a teacher I would transform my classroom into a magical forest
I would transform myself and my kids in to a giant bird
I would be the heart and the wings
They would be the eyes
I would guide them so they can see all the wonders in nature
We would soar high and touch the clouds
I would introduce them to the clouds responsible for making water
The nice cloud would then tells us about her beautiful friendship with the rivers, the flowers, the bees, the fruits and us.
My kids would then understand that we are all friends
If I was a teacher I would never say:
"That's just your imagination"
I would say:
"your imagination is everything"
I would dress in the colors of a child's soul
I would never be afraid of speaking of god
If I was a teacher I would smile and ask them nicely to sit
I would smile big every time we made eye contact
I would shake every single one of their hands, look at them in the eyes and tell them they are important.
If I was a teacher my kids would say:
" I wish this class would never end!"
If I was a teacher.....
wait.. I am a teacher!
And in America we ask if they are ready to know about the birds and the bees....
Kids are ready for so much more then what we give them, kids are more flexible then we are, we just gotta show them the way. If we show them love, they hug, if we show them violence they grab guns, if we keep them from everything they won't do anything..
I will be posting more of these, I have a few more ideas on the difference between knowledge and wisdom...
What do I believe in, you ask?
I believe in you
I believe in him and I believe in her
I believe in me
I believe in your eyes!
Some say eyes are windows to our soul
but I believe they are more then windows
I believe they are messengersMy eyes see water and they see leafs, they see flowers and they see bees
My right brain says its magic, my right brain says it's a miracle
My left brain asks my eyes how many bees and how many trees?My eyes tell my brain less bees and less trees daily
My right brain tells my heart; this is sad
My eyes shed a tearMy left brain says how many humans to have more trees and more bees by the end of the year?
My right brain tells my heart to smile because my left brain has a plan
My right brain hugs my left brain and my front lobe has a vision of
more and more flowers, more and more trees and more and more bees.My lips say let's do it!
My ears hear footsteps
My brain asks what is it?
My eyes see humans ready to commit to more trees, more water more beesMy right brain says it's a miracle
My left brain says it's an institution called the human race
(download)
I was organizing my files earlier today and I found a folder called: One Canopy. One Canopy is a company two friends and myself started about 5 year ago. Our idea was to educate people about environmental issues through Art. My job was to come up with concepts and design them. Unfortunately we were never successful in building our company. We had great ideas but somehow we couldn't get it together. At the end we all went different ways; One got married, the other one moved to Georgia and I moved to LA.
I hadn't thought about this for a long time because I had categorized it as a "failure". Now digging through my stuff and running this experience through my adult brain, I realize this is a huge success. Five years later I am speaking about the same things. Perhaps at the time I hadn't developed the skills one needs to go accomplish something; integrity, organization.. Actually integrity is the main one. I had no integrity, it was very difficult for me to keep my word and how can we achieve anything if we can't follow through with what we say?
Life is fascinating, I find that no matter how much we grow, how much we learn, our essence remains. And when we feel lost all we have to do is go back and see what choices we've made, what were we talking about as kids, what were our interests, what made our light brighter. Like Steve Jobs said; all we have to do is connect the dots. I feel like my dots are connecting :) and hopefully all these dots will eventually transform into a giant gift to the world.
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These were the designs I ran into while organizing my files:
Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described in this terminology by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.[1]
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In my recent trip to Colombia I attended a conference on Cultures of the Andes. One of the conferences was about climate change from a western perspective and the indigenous perspective. In this conference, a Colombian man with German background spoke about his passion for indigenous communities and the danger the Amazon is in. I could hear in his voice his deep concern for nature. After the conference I wanted to thank him for such a wonderful conference but I never got the opportunity to speak to him. I never found out his name but I played the recording once in a while when I got back to LA to remind myself of the danger the Amazon is facing and how important it is to help preserve indigenous communities.
It has been 4 months since that conference and I still didn't know this person name neither did I think I would ever find it. But a few days ago a friend recommended a documentary on the "kogi" indigenous people; "From the Heart of the World, the elder brothers warning" I ordered it and watched it tonight. Toward the end of the documentary, guess who shows up?
His name is Martin von Hildebrand and he will be added to another person I look up to.
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Dr. Martín von Hildebrand - ethnologist, visionary and leader in efforts to secure indigenous territorial rights and protect the Amazon tropical forest. On March 26, 2009 he received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in honor of his work with Fundacion Gaia Amazonas.
Hildebrand is former Head of Indigenous Affairs and an activist for indigenous rights, cultural and ecological diversity in Colombia. He has led efforts in both government and non-government sectors, which have resulted in more than 246,000 square kilometres of Colombian Amazon territory being officially handed back to its rightful owners, the local indigenous inhabitants. Local governance is also being achieved and state policy of decentralisation enables indigenous organisations to manage their own education, health and other programs. Hildebrand established the COAMA program, winner of the Right Livelihood Award, and is founding Director of Fundación Gaia Amazonas
A conversation over tea
A few days ago I was a conversation over tea with some friends and they spoke about their passion for history. As I listened, I didn't quite connect or understand why they loved history so much-specifically American History, so I asked; "what is it about American History that gets you so excited?" She replied very enthusiastically: "Hundreds of years ago, people came here with a dream, a dream for a democracy, a dream to create a country where they would actually have a say in what goes on. They came here when there was nothing, when there was only trees and a few savages"...
That's when I shut down
I felt as if someone had pressed the OFF button on my body but oddly enough my heart was working faster. I tried to explain my thoughts and feelings on the subject but perhaps my lips haven't been wired properly to my heart and my brain because as I spoke my heart raised its speed and my so did my brain but unfortunately my lips couldn't keep up and the results were horrendous verbal delivery of thoughts and feelings. Since I couldn't explain it then, I will explain it now that my pen and hand are going at the same speed of my heart and brain:
We are in BIG trouble. Trouble as in we-migh-die-trouble
My friend was right, hundreds of years ago there were only trees and a "few savages", also known as human beings or homo sapiens, part of the Animalia Kingdom, or simply Indigenous people. These "savages" and all these trees were part of an ecosystem. There were different groups of these indigenous people and they all knew their function on earth was. They knew they formed part of this ecosystem and their purpose was to take care of the rest of nature because they understood that they were the most powerful species in this ecosystem. They understood that every tree, every insect, every river, and every animal, each had a function in order to keep their individual ecosystem working properly so that the bigger ecosystem remained healthy. They understood that our function as human beings on earth was to take care of nature because being part of it we simply can't survive without it.
The problem began when some of the human species forgot their purpose and began to act against their home. Because they forgot their purpose, they began to search for that purpose and fulfillment using their creative forces to build a world outside of themselves. In the process destroying their home; destroying their ecosystem. And because they built such an advanced world of technology they no longer needed to use their natural abilities to survive. This species is now highly developed technologically but underdeveloped as a race, which is a very dangerous combination. A hungry purpose-less heart with technology. So until this species realizes and remembers their purpose they will continue to hurt nature which is essentially hurting themselves.
The devastating part of this is that in this country; in the United States the native human who didn't forget their purpose were all exterminated by the forgetful-hungry-hearted humans with technology. Now, guess what's the only type of human being left in this dying ecosystem? Forgetfull hungry-hearted human beings with technology. What does that mean?
it means we are in BIG trouble. Trouble as in we-might-die-trouble.
But wait, there are some good news!
There are still some indigenous people that continue taking care our ecosystem for us, the forgetful ones. These people are mainly located in underdeveloped parts of the world. These humans live their everyday life fulfilling their purpose. They have advanced so much as humans beings that they are able to communicate without words. Sounds like science fiction right? It's not. I experienced this first hand in Colombia when I approached an indigenous women I had previously spoken to; when she looked at me she didn't remember me so I continued to speak to remind her who I was and what we had spoken about. After a few seconds of my explanation she raised her hand to stop me, closed her eyes and waved her hand across my face slowly. She immediately said; "Yes! I said I would give you a protection gem!" She didn't remember my face, she remembered my presence! These indigenous people haven't "developed" their surroundings because they know they have to strengthen their inner self to continue to be the caretakers of our ecosystem. Similar to the way birds fly and migrate using their visual system by way of our magnetic field. These indigenous communities use the sacred rituals and practices to understand and see how their ecosystem works and this way they move and act accordingly.
Since we, the forgetful humans don't act in accordance to our Eco-system we are destroying it and right now we are experiencing what we all have heard of; climate change. Which means that in the past 100 years the average earth's temperature increased about 1.4 F. We believe that this is caused by deforestation and fossil fuel burning.
But what about everything else we are doing?
Think about it!
WE as mammals belong to a natural ecosystem (as I said previously) just like any other animal. We no longer live in that natural ecosystem. We created concrete boxes to live in. However we somehow know that a concrete box alone wouldn't work because we need sun ray, so we made windows. Then somehow we remember that we need plants so we bring in potted plants in our concrete boxes. Then somehow we realize that we need to be around animals, so we bring an animal that won't be too destructive to our man-made stuff. A dog? A cat? that works! Some people realize that they need to hear birds every morning so they trap a bird in a cage to fulfill this need. Some other people realize that they need the sound of water flowing near them, so they make a concrete apparatus that pumps water so that it sounds similar to a flowing river or a small waterfall and they place it on their small patch of green in front of their concrete box. Now! that patch of green cannot be touched because if we step on it with our shoes too much then it gets damaged and if your patch of grass outside of you man-made fake ecosystem gets damaged then the other forgetful-hungry-hearted humans will think less of you because if you have an ugly man-made fake concrete ecosystem it means you haven't collected enough "gold receipts" receipts of a mineral that is part of us in the first place; money. Ugly house equals poor and poor is no good. After living in these concrete boxes so long, once in a while we feel the urge to explore and learn how other animals live so we capture them and do onto them as we've done onto ourselves. We build a fake ecosystem for them. Some animals get depressed or angry and begin to attack humans. Other animals are attacking us because we've trapped them? It couldn't be! How dare those wild animal! we should inject them with a drug so that they never rebel again.
Thinking about zoos remind me of the biggest cities in the world; New York, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Bogota, Milan Etc. Why? because it is the same concept. A man made world so far from our natural environment that the animals living in it are angry and depressed. But not to worry, we've made a drug to make you feel better.
Ahhh! the wonderful world we've created! (or shall I say destroyed?) and to think they all came here with just a dream!
We would be dead by now
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if other animals began doing what we are doing? What if birds decided they didn't want to live in trees anymore. What if they began to build bird houses or cages on top of us and they began to reproduce and "develop" their community so rapidly that their development stopped letting in the sun says or rain or wind. Their community began to block everything we as humans need to survive. A bird community so advanced on top of us that all we experience are bird droppings, coldness and trouble breathing. What would we as humans do? We would probably destroy this community or perhaps kill all the birds blocking us from our sun, our wind, our water.
Thank god other animals don't think the way we do. We would be dead by now.
Now imagine that the earth is a living organism just like we are, and because we've built such large concrete communities she is having a hard time breathing, she can't connect with us. she no longer feels our feet, she can't even feel the sun.
Imagine she's getting fed up, imagine what she will do...
As I said before; we are in BIG trouble.
A disease we need to cure
Our desire to "develop", to build, to pave, to have more, bigger, better, faster.. etc. It's a disease of never being satisfied. A disease that has been spreading slowly in the past 500 years or so. It has spread entirely through North America, some countries in Asia, most of Europe and it is rapidly spreading through South America and Central America. Our concept of development is killing us slowly. We are under the impression that if it hasn't been touched by man, then it's not developed.
Perhaps we need to reverse this concept. Perhaps it is time to reverse this concept.
I was deeply moved by a conversation I had with an indigenous woman in the Colombian Amazon. She sat down beside me to tell me stories about the history of the amazon and all the threats they've faced. It was night time and our faces were lit by the moonlight and a small candle. She was generous with the information she shared and I listened closely with all of my senses. Towards the end of the conversation, I felt her getting sad. I gave her space to think without interrupting and she continued by saying: "Right now the president has a 40 year plan to "develop" Colombia." She paused, looked up and asked me "Do you know what development means to us the indigenous people?" I knew that question wasn't meant to be answered so I remained silent. With a very sad but determined voice she said: "DEATH, development means death" We both remained quiet as I attempted to hide the tears running down my cheeks. I saw someone feeling powerless, I saw a woman feeling like her home is in danger, I saw history repeating itself.
Why do we do these things?
Imagine if a group of indigenous people gathered and went to the president's home and said "We think this land is perfect for natural reforestation. We need to destroy your home and reforest the land. We think this will help us with our mission of taking care of our planet earth"
What would the president say to that request? you want to destroy my house to plant trees? Absolutely ridiculous; send them all to jail for threatening the well being of my family. And all the indigenous people probably would go to jail.
Ok so let me backtrack here;
Forgetful, purpose-less humans killed the non-forgetful purpose-full humans, destroyed what was here already working perfectly and we now spend the rest of our life trying to imitate our natural ecosystem and trying to find our purpose by destroying everything and what we destroy we call it development!
Does that make any sense?
Am I an environmentalist, a hippy, a tree hugger, a nature lover, a jungle girl?
NO! I am an animal, a mammal that remembered that is part of the earth and the earth is her natural ecosystem. I remembered this important piece of information, that's all. I am mammal that would like to one day take her grandchildren to the Amazon and show them how magical it is. A mammal that is trying to save some clean air for her grandchildren. A mammal that realized her purpose and is trying to use our man-made creations to remind other animals who we are and what we were intended to do in the first place.
So what do we do now that we've gone this far?
How does every human problem begin? With a word, with an emotion, with a dream. What would have happened if the Europeans came to America with fulfilled hearts, knowing that we are all mammals and that we need to live in harmony with nature and with one another. We would probably not be in this much trouble.
I believe everything is perfect and in a sense what we've done so far is perfect in its own way. Perhaps we had to destroy most of it to realize that we are actually backpedaling not forward pedaling as a human race. But we need a shift. We need development. We need to develop, not our exterior but ourselves. We need human development. Not with knowledge, we know enough, we need emotional education. We need to look within, to look at our relationships, to forgive, to apologize, to meditate, to quiet our minds, to spend more time in our natural ecosystem. To be more conscious of our actions. Because the happier we are with ourselves the less destructive we are to others and to nature. We need to remember that the earth is having a hard time breathing with all of this concrete and remember what you would do if birds built a community on top of us.
Just remember, remember that it all starts with a dream.
