The Crystal Quilt, Making a Weighted Blanket

“Sleep is the best meditation.” - Dalai Lama

I’ve been hearing about weighted blankets lately.

 Everyone I know who has tried them loves them. 

They drag them around with them wherever they go. 

 Also, I’ve been trying to improve my sleep quality. More and more people these days seem to be having sleep issues, and I’ve been looking into various remedies that people are trying. One is weighted blankets. The weight is felt as comforting and relaxing, perhaps lowering cortisol levels in the body (stress hormones).

“There is an underlying science behind weighted blankets. It’s called Deep Touch Pressure or DTP.

Often times, sleeping will be a major problem for those that suffer from anxiety. This can come from not being able to calm down as well as not being able to slow down the running thoughts in one’s head. One study found that people who used weighted blankets have calmer nights of sleep, with a reduction of movement.” -weighted blanket website 

I’m not sure exactly why so many people are having so much anxiety and disrupted sleep these days, but there does seem to be an epidemic. 

My guess is that one thing might be our constant staring at our illuminated devices, and artificial light at night in general is throwing our cycles out of whack. 

Our bodies are incredibly adaptable, but we have evolved for thousands of generations without artificial light at night. Not to mention electromagnetic fields at variance with that of our planet. 

So I decide to experiment on myself by restricting my bright and blue light exposure in the evening, using blue blocking glasses and doing lower light activities. Also, to sync with the Earth’s electromagnetic field, I sleep with a grounder at night.

It also helps me to eat early in the day, and not late, and if possible, to restrict the number of hours in the day that I eat. This is also known as intermittent fasting.

Also, your natural production of the sleep hormone, melatonin, peaks at around age twelve and by your thirties really begins to plummet. As it is only made when you are in total darkness, it helps to cover your eyes when you sleep or keep your bedroom dark.

Then there is the general stress of modern life, especially for those of us who are sensitive to the world around us. For that I use awareness of my news intake and mindful awareness of my attention and thoughts. 

But I want do more. So I decide to look into weighted blankets. I quick look around online shows me weighted blankets from fifty dollars to three hundred dollars. Most are weighted with glass or plasticish pellets and very few are made of all plant fiber.  

So I decide to make one myself. I find I sleep best in the cool, and polyester is hot to me. Silk is cool and soft, but too much violence goes into it.  So cotton would be best. 

My first thought is of sand for a weight. But I can’t think of a way to contain it in a blanket without using plastic. Sand has a way of getting everywhere and escaping from containers. Still, I like the idea. Sand is quartz, sand is heavy, glass is made from it. Rocks!

I love crystals, pink rosy quartz, clear quartz, amethyst. So I get several pounds of tumbled, smooth, gravel sized crystals in those three flavors. Everything else I need I already have around the house. 

I clear the crystals. You can do this in various ways using salt, moonlight, earth, seawater, etc. I use reiki. As I do this, I learn that the crystals have had a rough time getting mined, tumbled, and traveling to me. So as I clear them I pray for their healing and ask for their help. Normally you should clear each one individually but since I had thousands, I had to do them all together.

I need some kind of cool cotton fiber batting to stuff my quilted blanket, something to contain and pad the rocks, create micro insulating air pockets, that will not clump, and will be washable. Terry cloth! 

 I’m never one to hesitate to tear up household furnishings for a good art cause. A few months ago, I was gutting pillows from all over the house to make my cloud art installation. 

I merrily rip up several cotton terry cloth towels into three inch squares, and the sew two hundred and twenty five little pouches. I put a spoonful or two of the tumbled crystals into each pouch, and sew it shut. (I only break one needle hitting a rock.)

Next I sew them onto a grid of cotton muslin cloth that I have marked out in colored pencil. I leave one inch wide rows of blank area in between the pouch squares for sewing together the layers. 

I sew the muslin with the crystal pouches to an all cotton waffle blanket on one side, sewing seams in the one inch blank rows in the grid. I sew this around the sides to a cotton print sheet on the other, and hand quilt the three layers together in the middle.

Finally, I program the crystal quilt. You can program the quartz crystals with whatever you intend for your blanket to do. It helps to use reiki for this, but you can use various methods. The key is to clearly impress your thoughts and intentions, respectfully, to the crystals. Quartz is used in every radio and communication device because it faithfully holds and transmits the vibrations that pass through it. Perhaps you might program it for peaceful quality sleep, or for protection, or remembering your dreams, or healing, and so on.

OMG! This thing is heavy! All folded up anyway. But when it is draped over me it does not feel heavy, or like I’m under a pile of rocks. Just close and present. Sleeping under it is nice. Sparkly.

I wonder what I might learn from my crystal quilt ...

“Happiness consists of getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.” - Robert A. Heinlein

On the Idea of Evil

I don’t believe in the devil, and I think evil is just unconsciousness.

There are things and even beings which have gotten shuffled into areas where they are out of place. A cougar wanders into a playground.  So there is need to fight sometimes, to protect. 

But can there be beings, devils, or psychic entities who try to create fear and suffering so they can farm emotions to parasitize people? 

There is energy everywhere, and everywhere there is energy, the universe comes up with ways to use it. Bacteria arise to eat the garbage. Cougars proliferate when we invade and devastate forests, as has happened here, in a misguided attempt to provide for our children, resulting in an overpopulation of deer that thrive in clearings. 

But ultimate evil megabeings who try to run worlds? Only in their fantasies. More like just puny wizard of oz style oversized ignorant egos who temporarily have too much power and not enough wisdom.

Whenever you have multiple players in a game, you have temporary cloaking of motivations. This can be on a level of friendly playful contention, with a respectful handshake at the end, or it can get out of hand, if egos rule. Ego is the root of temptation. It is the true meaning of the word selfish. 

A little self is ok, a little self care is not selfish, it is responsible. Who else will drive your vehicle-body, if not you? You are an individual for a purpose, or why have a body of your own? But when the steering wheel becomes the driver instead of the mechanism for implementing the driver’s choices, the system is out of whack, and there will surely and inevitably be casualties.

It is possible for many, even an endless number of individual beings to arise and flourish and still live in peace. And it is possible for as few as two egos to create a constant state of misery and contention and live in a hellish prison of their own making. Maybe even one ego!

So each one is exactly where they have shaken down to, in the gravity of the time and space matrix, perfectly situated for moving around from there according to their wishes and needs.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where someone or something seems terribly out of place.  This is usually a boundary problem. The big cat gets stuck on the wrong side of the playground fence, the bacteria gets out of the garbage and into the food. The result can create great amount of suffering or at least great fear. It seems evil to its victims, but without an intention to harm by a conscious being, there is only a mismatch.

To be enlightened, that is, truly conscious, while also intending to harm others, is an oxymoron.  But history is full of situations that have gotten way out of hand. Humans on Earth are by and large, far from awake. The confusion here is strong. Slowly they are waking. They are semiconscious at best, and most of the time, they function as smart pack animals. They can commit atrocities upon one another individually in their instinctual mode; and when their capacity to work together goes toward group goals that are at odds with awakened wisdom, much suffering has resulted, and this can seem quite deserving of the appellation “evil.”

The combination of pooled intelligence and skewed intentions is particularly poisonous to human groups, due to the amplified power of the group. The more power intelligently but unwisely directed, the more we want to call it evil instead of misplaced.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 

But I say unto you, That ye RESIST NOT EVIL: but who soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” -Yashua

In other words, don’t engage on the level of the slight to your ego by seeking revenge, that only keeps your energy and attention stuck in that level; instead, get out of there by rising above it.

If you can, wake up from that nightmare. Mobility is nobility; where your attention is, there you are. The best way to win the fight, as it is said, is to not be there for it.

I wonder when a critical mass of us will wake up and create heaven on Earth?

The First Hippy of the New Age

Everyone wants a piece of him. We have been talking about him for two thousand years and are not about to stop.

Your own personal Jesus.

Though he never disavowed his Essene Judaism, a whole line of new religions were sparked by him, and most of the others give him a nod. The Christian churches all give him a starring role, but divide themselves into endless factions when it comes to exactly who and what he is or was, ranging from the Catholic idea that he is one third of God, to the Protestant idea that he is the one and only way to God, to the Unitarian idea that he was a great teacher. Even the Hindus call him an avatar, an incarnation of God, the Moslems regard him as a saint, and the to the Buddhists he is a Buddha, an enlightened one. In the new age thought he is called an ascended master. 

Some anthropologists have doubted the actual historical existence of Jesus, pointing out that many aspects of the Jesus story were identical to the storylines of the deities of other groups in the Middle East at the time.

But feminists have noticed the lack of sexism of the words attributed to Jesus as evidence that he probably did exist, given the unlikelihood he would have been made up by the patriarchy of the time.

But whatever you believe, you must acknowledge the the fact that we are still trying to figure him out even after all these centuries.

And you must at least notice that the entity we call Jesus had so much charisma, that despite all of the noble deeds and atrocities committed in his name all down the years, he still stands in our midst, whether in our hearts and minds, or in marble in the square, or in the literature and culture of our planet.

And despite the attempts of the fundamentalists to use him for political gain, and the murderous crusades, and the co-optation of his name by racist groups, and all of the endless foibles of his followers, I still can find no fault in this self proclaimed son of man, himself.

His gentle teachings stand the test of time, seeping like a solvent, through the ages. He taught care for the powerless, kindness to children and animals, respect for wimmin, disregard for materialistic pursuits and worldly power over others, and above all, forgiveness. His challenge is hard, except for all of the other ways. If he walked the Earth today, we would call him a hippy. He would probably be wearing blue jeans.

All of the mud fashioned around him by those who seek to shape him for their own lesser ends, slips off, leaving him still shining through the ages. Beckoning even. So, I say, ignore them, they know not what they do. 

I wonder if we can ever let go of trying to cop his charisma and just practice his teachings.

I say, let’s take back the Jesus, First Hippy of the New Age.

“And who do you say that I am?”

Apples

"An apple a day keeps anyone away, if you throw it hard enough." ~ Stephen Colbert

I love the apple. I’m not the only one.

"Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Right now I’m thinking about apples because our trees are heavy with them, our first bumper crop since planting them.

Sometimes I resent the fact that my Apple iPad is always correcting me when I write the word apple, changing it to Apple. I mean, I do love my iPad, but there have been apples around since long before corporations. I do not think of computers when I say apple. 

John Lennon of the Beatles met his sweetie, Yoko, at her art exhibit which consisted of a simple, actual apple on a pedestal. He bought it. He named his record company Apple.

"Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." ~ Solomon

Deep in Asia, in the Tian Shan mountain range of what is now called now Kazakhstan, grows the wild native apple forest. There is a town there called Alma-Ata. Alma-Ata means “father of apples.” It is believed that all of the apples in the world originated from here, spread first by animals, then the humans. 

We don’t know if the fruit in the human origin story, Genesis, in the Bible, was an apple, but it is generally depicted as one.

What I love the most about apples is their shape and geometry. It seems to reflect the primal shape of the universe.

I often draw them, sometimes with shape lines inside and out.

Also, there is pie..

This one is made by rolling out the pie dough and placing apple slices in the middle, then pouring blended spiced steamed apple sauce over it, folding over the sides of the dough, and topping with chopped pecans. Mmmmm

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." ~ Carl Sagan

("An apple is an excellent thing -- until you have tried a peach." ~ George du Maurier)

Simple Hats

Makin hats.  Ish. Messy bun brimmed headbands. 

I find some happy merino sheep a bit south of here, living on green rolling hills in a small flock, and buy three bags full from the farmer, an old woman with a kind face. 

I wash up the fleeces, spin and dye them into pretty colored yarns. They are soft enough to touch my face. 

I knit with a peg knitting loom, a small double knit one with twentyfour grooved pegs. 

First I create headbands then I add a brim. 

I like some protection from the sun for my eyes and warmth around my ears, but not so much on top, so my design is perfect. Sometimes I also make a matching scrunchy for the messy bun.

Finally I add a flower with a couple of leaves. 

You can wear it under your hair like a headband, or on top like a hat.