Where you live: Western Oregon
What you do as a vocation or avocation?
Adventure writer, Author, Spiritual FedEx Girl lecturer!
Your two favorite books:
Peace Like a River Leif Enger
Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahsana Yogananda
Why the Dalai Lama Matters Robert Thurman
Hidden Messages in Water Dr. Masaru Emoto
West with the Night Beryl Markham
The Longest Silence Thomas McGuane
Your two favorite songs:
"The Ganesh Mantra"
("God Music" in Roll Around Heaven...I can sing it in Sanskrit!)"Open my Eyes That I May See" Clara H. Scott
"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" Vince Gauraldi
"Mozart's Clarinet Concerto"
"How Lovely Are the Messengers" Felix Mendelssohn
"Cajun Waltz" Taj Mahal
"Balm in Gilead" Sweet Honey in the Rock
Why you are interested in spirituality?
After nearly 20 years on The Path, a journey that was not my idea!, spirituality is not an interest; it is a consuming passion.
Once you experience it yourself, and understand that everything you love is born of Spirit, then you can't help but fall in love with the source of it all. And once you really do put Spirit first, as every master in history has urged us to do, then everything changes including your very frequency. This attracts and creates like-frequency people, things and events. In my memoir, Roll Around Heaven, we have a tsunami of on-the-ground evidence that this is so, and that the fundamental glue of the universe is, in fact, love...or a force for whose magnificence we have no word full enough. Glimpses of this fundamental truth are also embedded in the inner-crystals of every geode we call a religion. Even the Dalai Lama says you don't have to become a Buddhist -- "you can reach enlightenment in any religion." If you want to radiate Light...and peace, love, happiness, then put Spirit first, choose purposeful, service-oriented work, honor your body with clean light foods and pure water, take the stairs not the elevator, purify your thoughts and send only uplifting language out of your mouth, and watch your own life begin to tilt strongly toward goodness, support, comfort, and joy...and even waffle recipes that work! Choosing to live this way even helps the everyday snafus that do arise resolve themselves in the most ingenious way. Which says volumes about our culture's current misguided worship of exploding car chase scenes, don't you think?
Your favorite quotes:
"Everyone is our neighbor, no matter what race, creed or colour" Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
"You are here to bless the world." The Holy Pig Farmer
"A church is like a finger pointing to God. After a while, people begin worshipping the finger." Thomas Merton (followed by)
"Humans often use that finger to gouge other people's eyes out" Jean Guiton (French writer)
Your favorite web sites:
http://www.karunamayi.org/
http://ncreview.com/ncrblog/
http://www.spiritualmediablog.com/
http://www.mariagefreres.com/ (I love tea)
Your heroes?
Amma Karunamayi
Yogananda
Robert Thurman
The Holy Pig Farmer
Mr. Rogers
A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?
The Final Understanding
A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
Bhutan...and sitting on our bed in my Mornings Are Mine daily meditation
(You know: "Chop onions, carry tea water...")
http://www.rollaroundheaven.com/
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Roll-Around-Heaven/Jessica-Maxwell/9781582702360
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