Transitioning into Fall

The houses next door on Hood Canal - I love my Canon

Dear Friends,

Some of you asked me, wondering where I am. In the last eight days I had flown across an ocean, road up into the Santa Cruz hills in a VW camper van with my brother Jerry, took a train through California, Oregon and Washington, and a ferry across Puget Sound. I spent last night in that little yellow house on the Hood Canal. Plane, car, train, boat - in four states, in eight days. Somehow I didn’t find the time to write a blog. But now I do . . .

My friend Scott has a little old house on the Hood Canal and has invited me make it my home for the next two week. I had no idea where Hood Canal was up until yesterday. On a map it is west of Seattle, between Seattle and the Olympic National Forest. A little over two hours away from my base camp - my sons’ home just north of downtown Seattle in Ballard.

I felt right at home as soon as I walked in the door. Scott asked me not to do anything - just to be there. Eat, sleep, look at the water and the seal swimming around, and the ducks and crane - an eagle or two. Keep the fire going. kayak around or not. Write novels, read novels - take naps. Whatever. There are only two rules at Scotts cabin. Rule #1: If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down. and Rule #2: Relax. I don't think I'll have any problem relaxing. This is really a cozy place. A pellet stove keeps it nice and toasty. Clean, well-stocked kitchen in a living/dining room - two bedrooms upstairs with electric blankets. I forgot all about electric blankets.

Looking down Hood Canal from my new porch

Across the Canal in the early morning

When I left Kauai in June I set out to find some secluded places like this to hide out and write my novels. That's not what happened. I ended up driving around the country staying with different friends, more now than before, I really love. It truly felt like a whole bunch of home comings. I look forward to returning to each place, to each friend, to each new home spread all over this beautiful country. I also wrote 40 blogs during my four month trip - which I now mark as ending when I returned by train to Seattle last week. Almost everyone of those forty blogs was written during a break in driving. I'd stop for a couple hours at a Starbucks or Borders and compose a story, choose some picture and push send. For me it was a great experiment in speed writing, and right now I am seeing the positive effects of those blogs as I move into the sixth chapter of my new novel "Shambala." So far each chapter is like a story blog - and as I finally find places like Scott's to settle and write for the winter, I plan on finishing forty or more chapters of this novel in the next four month. I'm anxious to see what happens - especially since right now I have no idea what I'm going to write about in chapter seven. I never knew if I would write another blog either, but they just kept coming. This is going to be fun!

A crane out on a canal dock - taken from my porch

Looking right from off the porch

While I'm at showing off my pictures, here are a few nature shots. The one on the left is of a eucalyptus trees I took while on a walk in Aptos, California, just south of Santa Cruz. On the right is a little caption of the Hood Canal yard I'm staying at. The bottom picture is in the mountains above Santa Cruz, looking toward the Monterrey Peninsula.

In ending this blog I encourage everyone to check out this video:

http://www.newrealitytransmission.com/

It's a lovely, well presented reminder of where we are right now in the transformation of consciousness, at this challenging opportune time in history. I share this with my love and blessings for the very best outcome of whatever form of self-realization you choose.

In love as always,

David Dakan Allison

ps. my new email address is: daviddakanallison@gmail.com

The Death Whisperer

Dear Friends,

I’ve been busy visiting and traveling - and have much to write about, and pictures of places I’ve been to share. But today I wish to write a very special story, the introduction to a much longer, quite involved detective/high adventure/inspiring love story, my newest novel. Beginning the night before last, I took the 24 hour Amtrak from San Jose to Seattle, and for breakfast the first morning I sat across from a lovely couple. He was 78, full of quips, and she . . . well she just held this space of interest and compassion . . . looked young for her age, though I didn’t ask, fifty years of marriage suggested somewhere over seventy. She still works as a hospice nurse, and has blessed the souls of the now departed during many, many passings. She told me that she was known as the Death Whisperer. She knew, could feel and sense when it was time to go. Later we sat in the coach lounge and I shared with her the introduction to my novel Shambala. She was nearly moved to tears, said this is really how it is. I felt as though I was gifted with the blessings of the Death Whisperer.

Shambala

Introduction

I suppose, not wanting to confuse, I should start at the end, which is really the beginning, which is the story of the hour of my passing.

I was old. Eighty years old. After twenty-nine thousand moons I welcomed death, even though I entertained no good reason besides old age to suggest it. Still, it pulled me to itself . . . until finally . . . a stroke took me by surprise. In physical weakness, with mental and spiritual resignation, I was ready, stood most willingly at the tunnel entrance, waiting for the passage light, when, for reasons I didn’t then understand, that door closed; the passing was postponed. My entire being was suddenly shrouded in stillness. Starting in Capricorn - the days to Cancer were lost in coma, in the almost certain dark curtain of death.

They said it would all end that still dark day in July; the monitors said so, the doctors knew.

A single candle flickered. Bodies huddled. Hushed. It was one a.m. the morning of my anticipated death. The silence sounded like the voice of the white light speaking, reminding me of how vulnerable I was, how ready I was, lying there open - to the consummation to my eminent passing - to the ultimate answer to the question of when I would die.

Buddha sat serene, surrounded by lilies, white carnations and appropriate passing flowers, silently watching me, patiently waiting. He knew what they didn’t. He answered the koan of the sound of one hand clapping.

That sound . . . the sound of their tears . . . woke me. I listened. Surprised I could. I listened to the tears, which turned to whispers, the short dialogue of the deaf, the muted hushes of dying crying; the surrendering to death, my death. They mumbled their prayers. Prayers for what? Prayers for maybe a few more days, hours, moments? Yes, moments. For one more opportunity to say what I maybe hadn’t heard, words they knew, thought, I couldn’t hear.

I gathered the whispers: “wake up. don’t go. Please don’t go.” Followed by my inner voice; my still small unspoken whisper saying: You can get up. You do have more life to live. You can go home.

Home? What home? I thought death was my only way home.

Dried tears stained the floor. A forever moment. The room dissolved to silence.

Golden flame, white candle light glow - they watched my shadow flicker on the wailing wall, anticipated the ghostly gray reaping, floating spirit, gone; my slip from the dark coma, through the tunnel and beyond. What they didn’t, couldn’t see, was me that night, returning, black to gray to white, to life once more.

I wasn’t ready to speak. I couldn’t make myself, or at least wouldn’t, animate. I stared an uncomfortable goodnight. The hushed huddle moved closer. Kisses on my forehead, hands on my heart. Goodnight, they said. Maybe . . . forever . . . goodbye. Yes, they thought, forever goodbye.

They left me then, there, unconscious, not yet dead, still in coma, they thought. Yet I was . . . conscious, and quite alive. Lying there, I stole a peek around. Alone, I stretched like a great cat, purring quietly for only me to hear, my sound once more. Listening, asking for permission - from who? from myself? - permission - is it right for me? - to enter back into life. The stretch proved, a deep inhale proved, I could choose that, it was alright to choose to return. And yet, I was still so very tired, and wasn’t sure at that moment what I really wanted.

Turning my head, I stared at the candle light. The golden flame. My eyes suddenly reached into it; merged with it. They, my eyes, caught on fire, blazing out of control. Two flames shot out of the sockets; burning, boring holes through the darkness of death, giving me a new vision, allowing me to see, yes, I saw, remembered, accepted what I had forever been denying. It was then I knew what I wanted. More than death, I wished to return to Shambala.

Present day:

Pulled from death’s door, reincarnated into life again at eighty, my denial, yes my fears and excuses, however cleaver they were, are now gone. I have remembered how to breathe. It is time to embrace life, to return to and celebrate the gift which was ceremoniously given to me so many, many years ago; a gift which I never really did or could or will forget. Today, right now, I will begin . . . my journey home.

Shambala - Copyright 2010 David Dakan Allison All Rights Reserved

The Zen Moment

Aloha my friends,

I had no intention of writing this blog when I sat down. Being out in nature I think more about the Body Electric - the magnificent radiant being we all are, as shown in this Alex Gray painting. Could you imagine what it would be like if we actually saw each other in this form?

It inspired me to write a zen poem, but . . . just blabbering away in prose is more fun. So I'll free zen flow sorta like a poem maybe, instead.

Every morning I rake the leaves in my zen garden. Either truly but hardly or metaphorically always I rake the leaves in my zen garden. The zen garden is perfect. Sand. Stones. Stillness. The wind blows. More leaves come, settle. I am not attached to the wind blowing. I am not attached to the leaves or the leaves leaving and landing. I am not attached to the rake, or the rake awakening raking. I am but a movement, maybe an intruder, maybe not, a hands and feet and body movement in this dance which I’m choosing, and sometimes not. I’m simply an observer presented an opportunity to rake leaves. The wind and the leaves and the rake invite me, they must or I wouldn’t. I show up and do my part, when called. I fill my bag of balance and harmony. Sand. Stones. Stillness. Once more. Maybe for only a moment all is still, all is orderly, all is what some call, I wish to call, beauty, what I call zen . . . until the next zen wind blows . . . and the cycle continues.

Is not chaos part of the perfection? Chaozen.

I water the flowers and plants. I scan the world around me, beyond me, within me, real or imaginary and pray for, wish for, extend my blessings for everyone’s good health and happiness . . . then I go about doing what makes sense, or nonsense, one or the other. I join the zen wind.

As you know, I am an artist. I can’t help it. It’s terminal. It’s a sub-breed of the human species, probably or ET maybe . . . definitely ET. Some of us artists, though we can’t prove it, are here only to witness and record. Birthed really, we come from another planet that doesn’t have money. Money doesn’t make sense in timeless imagination. I fit in that category. Terminal imagination. And so, I imagine that we were given the free pass to paradise, into a place of incredible beauty, and we, me, artists absolutely can’t help but talk about it, channel it, reproduce it and remind everyone of the profound good fortune it is for us, for them, to actually be here. To be alive here. To be walking around here and taking it all in. Wow!

Every day of the week I plug in and I make art - I write. This is what I get up for . . . it’s what gives me joy. The witness recording. Seeing, Being. Reminding myself and whoever is interested . . .

I arrived with a gift . . . a talent. We all did. But I remember. I qualified. Certainly we all qualified, and then forgot. As I pray and meditate/contemplate on what that means, I remember more. I remember that I am, not necessarily what I do, I am a gift to share. Is that so strange? Is it so strange to think of yourself as a gift? I know that unless the gift or talent is put out there and shared, it’s squandered. I don’t want to waste my talent, my gift. I simply want to share it. I want to make the most of this precious vacation on earth. Who knows? Beaming up could happen at any time.

Every morning I rake the leaves in my zen garden. I gather my scattered leaves and place them in my bag of balance and harmony. I water the flowers and plants. I nurture my friendships and make sure they are healthy and happy ones.

Time is so precious. It is illusionary no doubt, but still precious. I read that the Hopi do not have a word for time. Their verbs have no tenses - no past or future tense like in the romantic languages. They live in what is called the “eternal present.”

This is what I contemplate: How can I successfully bring this concept of the eternal presence - created the reality of it - into my everyday life. How can I live in the eternal present? One way is to begin each day with the intention of creating successful eternal moments. As the opportunity arises I could orchestrate a very pleasant sharing of time and space with others, get lost in the moments of writing a fun and informative blog, or dive into the cooking of the best meal ever, or allow my brush to move flowingly over the canvas. The eternal moment could be the simple the act of sharing love, even with myself, writing a meaningful letter, cooking a delicious meal and creating a beautiful painting.

Spirit Dreamer by Dakan

So I could wake up and look at the day before me as an empty canvas. My conscious intention is to fill that days canvas with a beautiful and successful painting, each and every eternal moment. I could start in one corner and paint a delicious breakfast, then move toward the center with several hours of fun and productive work, and continuing on with the activities of the day, giving each the love and attention which brings forth beauty. And by the time I lie down in bed that night I could say, “Wow, what a beautiful and successful eternal present I gave myself.”

These few days on Kauai I am focused on making my tent home beautiful and relaxing in the arms of Mother Kauai. I get up each morning and ask myself how I can organize and beautify - how can I get this home ready so I can leave it and have something wonderful for my friend Jack to return to?

It’s a question artists ask. “How can I get lost in the no-time of creation and make this piece of art so beautiful that whoever has it will enjoy it for the rest of their life? Truly, art is about letting go.

I let the free prayer fly.

With love and blessings,

David Dakan Allison

Forever Free Gift of Love

Dear Friends,

I love my little tent home in paradise.

It’s sitting alone on this beautiful piece of land - no electric bill, no cable bill, no water bill, no gas bill, and no rent bill - no mortgage or interest payments. I don't owe anyone anything, and nobody owes me. I'm not being asked to do anything. It almost sounds like freedom. Looking around there are no neighbors I can see, and the ones I don’t see I love. I just breathe.

My tent is 20 foot x 20 foot square, with a fully carpeted wooden floor and 4 foot high pony walls inside around it. (all which I built just before I went on my US tour) I have a 10 x 20 foot bedroom with a queen and single bed, side tables and the rocking chair I’m sitting on. The 10 x 12 foot living room has a glass coffee table with candles on it and cushions around it, with Persian-type carpets on top of the base carpet.

Roughing it

I have shelves filled with books and art. The kitchen is in a 8 x 10 foot room with pots and pans, dishes, shelves with food, a dining table and a Colman Stove. Outside I have endless pure mountain water on tap - and a 10 x 10 foot supply tent filled with tools. Fifty feet away is a bath house with a composting toilet and shower. I haven’t figured out how to get the solar hot water working, so I’ve been taking cold showers in the day, which I don’t mind. I pick vegetables from the organic garden and enjoy them mixed with rice and soy sauce. I have no refrigerator or TV or lights. I don’t miss these conveniences. I share the space with a cute little mouse, some chameleons, a few cockroaches that don’t want to be disturbed, and an assortment of tiny flying critters who bite me on occasion. None of it bothers me whatsoever.

Do you know that in China 40 million people live in caves? Think about that - there are 300 million people in the 50 US state’s. If 40 million people lived in caves in the US, divided equally among the 50 states - that would mean that 800,000 people would live in caves in each state. It’s a bit difficult to comprehend. Of course in China they all have electricity and indoor plumbing and TV’s. I don’t have any of that. The illusion of poverty is that I’m unemployed, living in a tent with no electricity or running water. What a great illusion!

To the right is buddha overlooking a beautiful illusion.

I have to show the picture below again. My Canon does it more justice than the iphone. It’s the perfect swimming hole on the far end of this 740 acre piece of land. Right above the swimming pond is a gazebo under a shade tree. The perfect place to sit and write my stories. I truly am blessed.

This is my Kauai sanctuary whenever I wish to have one. Everything in and around this tent belongs to me, but not really, and I’m not attached. In fact this part of the land I'm on is a Corporate Soul - everything belongs to God. I could easily leave and never come back - hand this tent and everything in it over to my brother Jack. And I will come back . . . I’m just not complete with my worldly visits - places I haven't seen and places I wish to return to. There's something about being an ambassador of sorts to all the love and goodness this land represents.

Fearlessly I journey out into the world. There are so many people to meet, so many stories to tell. As I said before - I am the fool standing on the cliff ready to take the next step.

Being alive isn’t, or shouldn’t be, all about being comfortable. A coffin is comfortable. Wise people have written that we are only truly alive when we are in danger - standing on the edge of the unknown, wondering which direction to jump, knowing that there is no choice but to, knowing that death is inevitable, that death is merely change, and that change is always good.

I entered in all the information to book my return flight to Seattle on the 19th. When I got to ‘submit’ I couldn’t do it. I pushed delete instead. Surely I am loving my home in paradise, but how can I be a traveling writing gypsy if I stop and nap for too long? Suddenly I realized that flying from Lihue to Honolulu to Seattle is boring. I have probably done it 150 times since I first came to Kauai in 1987. I want different.

I want to sail back to the mainland, take the Love Boat, a 150 ft yacht, a hot air balloon.

Something different. I checked everywhere. There are no boats to the mainland, and it is actually against the law (the Jones Act) for a cruise ship to go from a US port to a US port. What a silly law! Maybe I could walk the docks of Honolulu for weeks with my thumb pointing East, but I don’t think so. I have no choice but to fly. Maybe I should fly to Hong Kong instead? Or Japan, or maybe Bangkok. I could. Maybe I will. I don’t know. I’m waiting to be inspired. I’m listening.

Not to my mind. I’m listening to my Inner Authority. Which, in my case (and 70% of the people on earth) is my Sacral. In Aikido we identify it locally as the hara, which is about an inch below the navel. That’s where I go for the ‘Sound.’ The ʻyesʼ or ʻnoʼ or ʻI donʼt knowʼ sound, a gut reaction, the “ahunh” or “unun” response that comes from the gut, or a movement towards or away from something without hesitation. Should I push the ‘submit’ button and book my flight - “Unun” - no! Simple mind logic says yes, but the answer I trust is no.

My definitive experience of this trust happened in Detroit, as I planned my route to Montreal. “Should I go to Montreal?” “Unun” “No.” “Should I go South?” “Ahunh” “Yes!” “Should I go to Asheville, North Carolina?” “Ahunh,” I listened and went South - and it all flowed perfectly from then on.

So I will be here until I’m not, as silly as it sounds. By the way - I wrote about going on a ten-day kidney cleanse. I went to my doctor Miles first and he checked in with kinesiology. His answer was a strong No. We are all build differently - sure there are basic truths to dieting - and there are bodies that do well with meat, for instance, and others that do better without. I found out many years ago, suffering from extreme anemia, that a raw or vegan diet doesn’t work for Me - no matter what the vegan guru’s say. I need a certain fuel to keep my fire burning - and too much water and air puts my fire out. Therefore fasts may have the opposite effect on me, than it would have on someone who actually needs water and air. Miles recommended a macrobiotic diet - as did my other doctor Latifa - which is perfect for me - living out on the land without a refrigerator. Rice and vegetables from the garden - supplemented with fish a few times a week. I’m feeling healthier every day.

As I sit here off the grid, away from electricity, away from TV and outside of stimulation, as I check in with the pulse of the earth, check in with astrologers and sensitives who record information, the shaman and oracles who speak of this time leading to 2012, I directly feel the change of energy. The sun is flaring like never before. The earth is glowing.

Everyone is effected by this ramp-up of energy. Many will not know what to do with this energy. They may turn to more drugs, more crazy behavior, more anger, more frustration, fighting and wars . . . or they may turn to more Love. We are really at choice now to take this energy and go to God with it, or not. Go to Happiness. Go to joy. Go to abundance. Or not.

It really is about time to carefully choose who we hang out with. Are we spending all our social and/or work time with friends and family who are going toward good and God and happiness and joy and abundance - and encouraging us to play a masterful game, or are we hanging around those who are bitching and moaning, being angry and fearful, depressed and filling us with all that yucky stuff?

I was thinking more about how each and every one of us, in our pure essence, is a magnificent being. We are each given a purpose, a reason for being. We all have the ability to choose correctly, to live our purpose, to have great fun, freedom and abundance, based on who we really truly are. The tools of personal power are out there. Just ask.

With love and blessings always,

David Dakan Allison

Still on Kauai

Life just keeps flowing in the most spectacular way

Dear Friends,

I left Kauai in June. I was done. After twenty years my romance with the island was over, and I was anxious to move on - to find a new home on the mainland. My US tour was abbreviated by my return ticket for late September. I bought that return ticket only because I was overly anxious to leave in June, and chose at that time to put things in a storage locker and deal with them later. My return to Kauai was all about dealing with my “stuff,” and I didn’t waste a heartbeat. I sold a refrigerator and bed within two hours of arriving on Kauai, and within two days, with the help of my dear friend Layna, we had cleared out my 10‘x10’ storage locker, and shipped a 4’x4’x5’ pallet to Seattle.

On the third morning, the morning after shipping the pallet, I woke up to one dirty, cluttered and disorganized 20‘x20’ tent. In one corner I had my single bed under a screened tent. In the other corner was my queen bed, which I had given to my tent partner Jack, who lives in Maui, and intents to move and build his house on this land. The other half was to be a living room and kitchen - but on arrival it was filled with tools and paint and all sorts of boxes of stuff I didn’t put in the storage locker. Dealing with twenty years of accumulated stuff isn’t that easy, and in the last days of June, what I didn’t know what to do with was thrown in the tent.

So I dove into organizing the tent, deciding what to keep and what to let go of, making it at least comfortable for my week there, intent not to leave any of my clutter for Jack. I had a plan.

Waterfall on the property

Then something happened. I realized that I was no longer the same man who left Kauai three months ago. I don’t know how one explains or qualifies “healing,” but I truly went through a significant healing while driving alone around the United States for nine weeks. I now realized that wanting to leave Kauai had nothing to do with the island itself, or my wonderful dear old friends who live here - it had everything to do with ending the constant doing, producing, struggling for survival lifestyle that I never could seem to get away from for 20 years. In my mind Kauai equaled "struggle for survival." And I just wanted to get as far away from that old way of life as possible. That is what was healed over 8500 miles of highway - without even trying.

Richard Kraft is a wonderful human being. He and his wife Greta somehow manifested a 25 year lease on eleven acres attached to 740 acres of ideal paradise land on the North Shore of Kauai. In the two years there they’ve set up the beginnings of a wonderful community, with a greenhouse, bathhouse, bee keeping hives, storage sheds, their personal home and a huge organic garden, fruit trees - the beginnings of a totally self-sustaining lifestyle. They want to share their land with like-minded friends - and so far a man named Robert, my 70 year-old best buddy Jack and I have been invited to live there. In my unhealthy desire to flee I didn’t give this invitation much thought, but upon my healthy return I totally honor and embrace the gift. I have a home in paradise, for the rest of my life, if I choose.

There is a whole lot more to this story, which I will write about later. I have come to realize that I am a wondering journalist. I love traveling about, being with family and friends I love - meeting new people - sharing my love the way I do, and of course writing and posting the stories of my adventures. I have an epic story - a living story - to tell, which is much bigger than any one place, even if that place is paradise.

I sat next to an extremely lovely woman name Deb on the plane from Honolulu to Kauai. She was a Medical Intuitive. Actually she was a gift. She told me that I need to get the stones out of my kidneys. Twice in my life I endured the excruciating pain to trying to pass kidney stones, and I don’t want to do it again.

On the 740 acres

So I’m out on this beautiful land. No electricity - no noise or disturbances - just a clean and pure environment. My tent home will be organized and comfortable - and Richard is ready to coach me through a ten day Kidney cleanse. After twelve years the novel form of my Shambala story is pouring through me. I’m going to cleanse my body and write a novel - and every now and then I will plug in and let you know how I’m doing.

Following my stay in Kauai I have a house waiting on the Puget Sound just south of Canada, fifteen miles from the nearest store. So for at least the next month I will be sequestered away metamorphosing some more . . . rebirthing.

With love and blessings,

David Dakan Allison