BEAUTIFUL ANIWANIWA
MEMORY ISLAND with ANIWANIWA
MEMORY ISLAND with TAIOWA GOING TO SLEEP
MEMORY ISLAND AS I SEE HER EACH MORNING
AMAZING DOUBLE-ANIWANIWA 3 DAYS AGO
WHAT MY DESK LOOKS LIKE NOW
MY FIRST HONEY-BEE ROCK
MY SWEET MOREPORK or 'RU-RU' GUARDIAN/FRIEND
MY LOVELY DOLPHINS or 'AIHE' GUARDIAN/FRIENDS
TWIN POHUTAKAWA FRIENDS/GUARDIANS with ANIWANIWA
TWIN POHUTAKAWA FRIENDS/GUARDIANS with ANIWANIWA
MEDICINE WHEEL HERE...BEING RECREATED NOW
MY OUTSIDE TABLE with TEDDY, WALLY and PLANT FRIENDS
TEDDY and WALLY with my native American cedar flute
'AIHE-WANIWA RURU-THUNDER-SONG'
WHOLEMEAL BREAD and INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN FLAG
MIXING COLOURS FOR A
CELESTIAL PAINTING BACK-GROUND
CELESTIAL PAINTING BACK-GROUND
TE AHUMATA SUNSET
TAIOWA SHINES HIS BEAMS UPON AWAKENING
PEACEFUL EVENING RIVER
MORNING VIEW FROM ATOP MEMORY ISLAND
GREETINGS FROM BEAUTIFUL AOTEA, or Great Barrier Island, to me, one of the most special places not only in all of New Zealand but in the whole world that I've experienced so far. 'Aotea' means 'the dawn' in the ancient pre-Maori polynesian language, and Medlands Beach, where I am now, is where Oruawharo, an ancient and legendary explorer/navigator, first landed here who knows how long ago.
Today is THE most absolutely beautiful day in many weeks, and with all the extremely miraculous happenings of late, the full moon coming up tonight (called the 'harvest moon' in the northern hemisphere), and then the austral vernal equinox next week...I feel a tremendous amount of power and beauty streaming through, inspiring and uplifting me. I have SO much to be thankful for. Words fail me in my attempt to share this beauty and power, but I wanted to send this posting to you...my friends wherever you may be, members of my family of life, mitakuye oyasin, and true 'people of one heart.'
I want to say THANK YOU to ALL OF YOU who are reading this now, for being there and for doing what you do and being who you are and for being in touch with me, for making me possible, for being wonderful friends and fellow crew of Mothership Earth.
I LOVE YOU :)
I cannot begin to describe how magical, how enchanted my weeks on Aotea have been since I arrived a couple months ago. I've been in deep solitude, not being around other people very much. A series of unending miracles brings me to the present moment...a morning so beautiful that I can barely make myself sit here at the computer to write this. I want to thank my awesome friends John and Peggy-anne Garlick who have been letting me care-take their lovely home(s) here at Medlands, the place where I have spent more time than anywhere else and the closest thing I have to a real 'home' since leaving America in 2000.
The Garlicks on this very day are beginning a week-long tour of some extremely beautiful and powerful areas in the desert southwest of America, places I know and love dearly. They will be visiting the Grand Canyon (I've urged them to walk down to the river in order to meet the spirit of the Canyon in person), Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and Monument Valley, which is in the Four Corners area that the Hopi refer to as the 'navel of the Earth.' This is one of the most powerful places on Earth, and also one of the most grotesquely violated by 'wasichu' industrial civilization. When I was there I felt energy conflicts so powerful as to be unsettling, spooky, even. I highly recommend a brilliant book called Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey for anyone who loves to read and wants to explore the desert southwest multidimensionally through the mind of a person who I liken to a cross between Mark Twain and Rachel Carson.
I would also like to thank the New Zealand Department of Immigration for giving me a 'special deal' that allowed me to stay a while longer than would normally be allowed so that I could take care of the Garlick's place in their absence.
And I especially want to thank the beautiful spirit of Aotea, who I've been getting to know since I first started coming here in 2006. YOU ARE AWESOME! She has been blessing me with rainbow after rainbow, visits from dolphins, on-going relationships with moreporks (a small native owl, known as 'boo-books' in Australia). Nothing I can create or share can express the purely magical feelings of being here and that I experience as I am embraced ever more deeply by Aotea. She is Gaia, she is Mother Earth.
Another dimension making being here and now all the more powerful is that my beautiful partner of five years, Liesbet Verstraeten (who has been 'doing her own thing' apart from me for over a year now) has been back on Flinders Island, Tasmania, for just about one lunar cycle now, staying at our friend Arni's place, a remote property by the sea with no electricity at all and where Liesbet and I spent 6 weeks in 2009 (and made a film 'The Chronicles of Balarnia' about this) then 4 months in 2011. This 4 month period was THE most intense and powerful time of our lives as we dedicated ourselves to being true 'people of one heart'; to not only surviving but thriving in the possible absence of 'civilization' (while remaining vegetarian), which entailed the creation and nurturing of 10 gardens of various kinds; and most powerfully, the design, construction and activation of what we came to call the 'Mother Earth Temple', a 'stone-chakra medicine complex and inter-dimensional park' that started off as our 8th medicine wheel but evolved into what is by far our biggest, most complex and most powerful art-project ever.
DJED-PILLAR IN CROWN CHAKRA WHEEL
VIEW OF LUNAR CYCLE WHEEL ON TOP OF KIVA
DESCRIPTIVE PLAQUE AND CHART
SOUTH CELESTIAL POLE,
MAGELLANIC CLOUDS and DJED PILLAR
MOSAIC-ED ENTRANCE TO KIVA
AERIAL VIEW OF ENTIRE COMPLEX
Today is THE most absolutely beautiful day in many weeks, and with all the extremely miraculous happenings of late, the full moon coming up tonight (called the 'harvest moon' in the northern hemisphere), and then the austral vernal equinox next week...I feel a tremendous amount of power and beauty streaming through, inspiring and uplifting me. I have SO much to be thankful for. Words fail me in my attempt to share this beauty and power, but I wanted to send this posting to you...my friends wherever you may be, members of my family of life, mitakuye oyasin, and true 'people of one heart.'
I want to say THANK YOU to ALL OF YOU who are reading this now, for being there and for doing what you do and being who you are and for being in touch with me, for making me possible, for being wonderful friends and fellow crew of Mothership Earth.
I LOVE YOU :)
I cannot begin to describe how magical, how enchanted my weeks on Aotea have been since I arrived a couple months ago. I've been in deep solitude, not being around other people very much. A series of unending miracles brings me to the present moment...a morning so beautiful that I can barely make myself sit here at the computer to write this. I want to thank my awesome friends John and Peggy-anne Garlick who have been letting me care-take their lovely home(s) here at Medlands, the place where I have spent more time than anywhere else and the closest thing I have to a real 'home' since leaving America in 2000.
The Garlicks on this very day are beginning a week-long tour of some extremely beautiful and powerful areas in the desert southwest of America, places I know and love dearly. They will be visiting the Grand Canyon (I've urged them to walk down to the river in order to meet the spirit of the Canyon in person), Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and Monument Valley, which is in the Four Corners area that the Hopi refer to as the 'navel of the Earth.' This is one of the most powerful places on Earth, and also one of the most grotesquely violated by 'wasichu' industrial civilization. When I was there I felt energy conflicts so powerful as to be unsettling, spooky, even. I highly recommend a brilliant book called Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey for anyone who loves to read and wants to explore the desert southwest multidimensionally through the mind of a person who I liken to a cross between Mark Twain and Rachel Carson.
I would also like to thank the New Zealand Department of Immigration for giving me a 'special deal' that allowed me to stay a while longer than would normally be allowed so that I could take care of the Garlick's place in their absence.
And I especially want to thank the beautiful spirit of Aotea, who I've been getting to know since I first started coming here in 2006. YOU ARE AWESOME! She has been blessing me with rainbow after rainbow, visits from dolphins, on-going relationships with moreporks (a small native owl, known as 'boo-books' in Australia). Nothing I can create or share can express the purely magical feelings of being here and that I experience as I am embraced ever more deeply by Aotea. She is Gaia, she is Mother Earth.
Another dimension making being here and now all the more powerful is that my beautiful partner of five years, Liesbet Verstraeten (who has been 'doing her own thing' apart from me for over a year now) has been back on Flinders Island, Tasmania, for just about one lunar cycle now, staying at our friend Arni's place, a remote property by the sea with no electricity at all and where Liesbet and I spent 6 weeks in 2009 (and made a film 'The Chronicles of Balarnia' about this) then 4 months in 2011. This 4 month period was THE most intense and powerful time of our lives as we dedicated ourselves to being true 'people of one heart'; to not only surviving but thriving in the possible absence of 'civilization' (while remaining vegetarian), which entailed the creation and nurturing of 10 gardens of various kinds; and most powerfully, the design, construction and activation of what we came to call the 'Mother Earth Temple', a 'stone-chakra medicine complex and inter-dimensional park' that started off as our 8th medicine wheel but evolved into what is by far our biggest, most complex and most powerful art-project ever.
DJED-PILLAR IN CROWN CHAKRA WHEEL
VIEW OF LUNAR CYCLE WHEEL ON TOP OF KIVA
DESCRIPTIVE PLAQUE AND CHART
SOUTH CELESTIAL POLE,
MAGELLANIC CLOUDS and DJED PILLAR
MOSAIC-ED ENTRANCE TO KIVA
AERIAL VIEW OF ENTIRE COMPLEX
What is so powerful about the past month is that even though Liesbet and I are physically apart, we are still a kind of 'spiritual partnership', two creative beings who share an immense love of life and who have each been gifted a tremendous amount of creativity in honour of the dream-time ancestors and all ancient indigenous peoples, connected by the power and beauty of all we did together for five amazing years. For the past month Liesbet has not only been back on Flinders Island, which is a 'sister island' to Aotea, spiritually and geographically, but she has also been with the Mother Earth Temple and kiva, which is the first time that either of us has been there since we left in November of 2011. When I spoke with her about a month ago, she expressed great anticipation at being with the MET again, and I have felt that she has both re-activated the complex as only she could do, being of its two creators, as well as RECEIVING many memories, inspirations and motivations old and new and other amazing and cosmic benefits that may be totally unknown.
I have felt her presence and activities there sending waves of power and inspiration to me here, as if 'rainbow bridges' of true and deep spiritual connection are being created and maintained, connecting our hearts with the hearts of mitakuye oyasin and Mother Earth, and linking our two favourite island-paradises in the worlds known to us! Plus, a few weeks ago I got a native American cedar flute, an F# Odell Borg, identical to Liesbet's! We've tried to do some synchronized 'jam sessions' with her in the kiva at the MET and me on top of Memory Island, where I go each day at sunrise and sunset, play flute, burn sage, sing, shake my rattles and offer my prayers to the seven grand-mothers and grand-fathers!
I have felt her presence and activities there sending waves of power and inspiration to me here, as if 'rainbow bridges' of true and deep spiritual connection are being created and maintained, connecting our hearts with the hearts of mitakuye oyasin and Mother Earth, and linking our two favourite island-paradises in the worlds known to us! Plus, a few weeks ago I got a native American cedar flute, an F# Odell Borg, identical to Liesbet's! We've tried to do some synchronized 'jam sessions' with her in the kiva at the MET and me on top of Memory Island, where I go each day at sunrise and sunset, play flute, burn sage, sing, shake my rattles and offer my prayers to the seven grand-mothers and grand-fathers!
JOIN US FOR SYNCHRONIZED 'JAM SESSIONS' THIS COMING FULL MOON TONIGHT (a window of time centred on 23:00 on the 19th) and the EQUINOX (a window of time centred on 8:00 on the 23rd)
These past few weeks have been some of the most powerful and productive that I can remember. I've been getting up between 5 and 6am every day, and going to sleep between 9 and 11pm. I've been doing heaps of everything I do, including working on several paintings and hundreds of rocks; getting better on flute and recording on two different pianos; helping two community gardens and the garden here, and eating HEAPS of brilliant fresh veggies including greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale; catching up on thousands of digital photos; capturing dozens of hours of video footage (including the 19 hours from Flinders Island 2011 and the making of the Mother Earth Temple = a new film project); down-loading dozens of new 'Music from the Hearts of Space' radio show; doing heaps of activism, including my 'shining for cetaceans' series; recording my weekly radio show; making a rock-garden for Peggy-anne here, re-making the medicine wheel here and making a new one at my friend's property at Okupu (where I was house-sitting during the very cosmic week back in late July); and spending a lot of time out with the spirit of Aotea. I am going to go and camp out a night or two here as the weather is getting nicer. I might go and try to see some penguins swimming in the ocean by the light of the full moon, as Liesbet saw some when she was here in April!
GOTU KOLA
('penny-wort' or 'arthritis plant')
CENTELLAS ASIATICA (L) and UNIFLORA (R)
Another of the many wonderful blessings I am experiencing here is that, for the first time ever, I have not one but two varieties of gotu kola, a small ground cover plant that many people have, but they are unaware that this plant is regarded as THE most important in the entire Ayurvedic medicine tradition of India and Sri Lanka. I've gone to great trouble for the past year to get these plants for all my friends in Australia and New Zealand, but I've hardly ever gotten to eat any of the leaves. You're supposed to eat 3-4 leaves daily for immense health and cognitive benefits, as well as increased longevity; gotu kola is also associated with the crown chakra in the Ayurvedic tradition. Thanks to botanist Hugh Wilson at Hinewai Reserve on Akaroa, I learned that a variety indigenous to New Zealand exists, and at a plant nursery in Oratia I was able to find some. I had it couriered out to the Garlicks, and I've been nurturing her as well as some of the other variety I got from Nikki at Sunbeam, where I was house-sitting during the 'sacred week out of time' in late July.
OK...thanks for reading this! I better go and paint and garden and swim in the ocean! THANKS for being there, thanks to everyone who is supporting me from loving my art-work, many blessings on everyone! Let us ALL try to ask more of ourselves, to live simply so that others may simply live, to ask not what our planet can do for us but what we can do for our planet.
SENDING 'AIHE TOHORA PAIKEA WANANGA MITAKUYE OYASIN ANIWANIWA RU-RU HINE AHU ONE HIRAKIMATA HARATAONGA TE AHUMATA WAITAHA ROPEWAI AOTEA' SUNSHINE FULL-MOON LOVE AND GREETINGS :)
('penny-wort' or 'arthritis plant')
CENTELLAS ASIATICA (L) and UNIFLORA (R)
Another of the many wonderful blessings I am experiencing here is that, for the first time ever, I have not one but two varieties of gotu kola, a small ground cover plant that many people have, but they are unaware that this plant is regarded as THE most important in the entire Ayurvedic medicine tradition of India and Sri Lanka. I've gone to great trouble for the past year to get these plants for all my friends in Australia and New Zealand, but I've hardly ever gotten to eat any of the leaves. You're supposed to eat 3-4 leaves daily for immense health and cognitive benefits, as well as increased longevity; gotu kola is also associated with the crown chakra in the Ayurvedic tradition. Thanks to botanist Hugh Wilson at Hinewai Reserve on Akaroa, I learned that a variety indigenous to New Zealand exists, and at a plant nursery in Oratia I was able to find some. I had it couriered out to the Garlicks, and I've been nurturing her as well as some of the other variety I got from Nikki at Sunbeam, where I was house-sitting during the 'sacred week out of time' in late July.
OK...thanks for reading this! I better go and paint and garden and swim in the ocean! THANKS for being there, thanks to everyone who is supporting me from loving my art-work, many blessings on everyone! Let us ALL try to ask more of ourselves, to live simply so that others may simply live, to ask not what our planet can do for us but what we can do for our planet.
SENDING 'AIHE TOHORA PAIKEA WANANGA MITAKUYE OYASIN ANIWANIWA RU-RU HINE AHU ONE HIRAKIMATA HARATAONGA TE AHUMATA WAITAHA ROPEWAI AOTEA' SUNSHINE FULL-MOON LOVE AND GREETINGS :)
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
JEFF PHILLIPS
AOTEA
MOTHERSHIP EARTH
18 SEPTEMBER 2013
LINKS TO HEAPS OF RECENT AOTEA PHOTOS:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103250190528562753850/AOTEAGREATBARRIERISLANDNEWZEALAND20136
BELOW IS A CHRONOLOGICAL SELECTION OF PHOTOS FROM THE LINKS ABOVE, FROM THE MORNING I LEFT AUCKLAND UNTIL A COUPLE DAYS AGO
BELOW IS A CHRONOLOGICAL SELECTION OF PHOTOS FROM THE LINKS ABOVE, FROM THE MORNING I LEFT AUCKLAND UNTIL A COUPLE DAYS AGO
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