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Taking the Work Out of Living
Finding Peace with Ourselves & the World

Also In This Issue:

A Wee Wise Dog Tale

What's with Our Quest     for Perfection?

A Quiz" What's Your    Perfection Response?

Perfection as a Peaceful     Easy Feeling

Two Views of Perfection

Nature Activity:     The Glade

Their Way Profiles:    A Family-Centered Life    A Journey of Discovery

Featured Artist:     Marina Kuran

Recourses to Explore More

   by Sarah Anne Edwards

      “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance,
   direction, which thou canst not see;  All discord, harmony,
   not understood; All partial evil, universal good. And, spite of
   pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is,
   is right.”                                                   - Alexander Pope  
          
         Everything about the mountain meadow and lake
   below my office window seems so content with itself,
   so self-assured, nestled as it is along the valley floor.
   The trees, be they the towering ancient Jeffries or the
   billowing young Poplars, seem quite confident about
   when to sway and when to stand, when to ripple and
   dance and when to rest.

     When, like yesterday, the wind comes at them so
    hard and constant, they seem to know just how much
                                        to bend and twist, back and forth, bobbing and shaking, up, down and around. No self-doubt in these trees.

    Nor in the cattails that surround the southwest sides of the lake, gently wiggling in the breeze right now, but whirling so wildly from side to side in yesterday’s gusts; there beside the meadow grasses that lie quietly slanted westward now, not resisting, just acquiescing to the intermittent gales that sweep down the canyon.

    They each do what they do so perfectly, without hesitation, without qualm. From where does this unshakable, inborn confidence spring? Endowed with some ancient wisdom buried deep in their genomes, they know just what to do.

     So, what’s with us? Where is our ancient wisdom buried? And why do we have such trouble finding it? Why is life such an effort for us? Such hard work? Watching the meadow, I’m reminded of our nine-pound Toy Manchester Terrier. He, too, seems to know the secret that comes so naturally to the mountain wetland meadow below our house.

 A Wise Wee Dog Tale

    When we went to the kennel eight years ago to pick out a puppy for Paul’s birthday, we had no intention of buying a show dog. But way in the back of the pack of 36 Toy Manchesters the breeder let tumble into the fenced yard for us to pick from, back in the corner barking at us, was this one little fella. Proud and cocky, feisty and cute all rolled into one.

   “That one,” I said. “I’d like to see that one.”  “Oh, that’s Billy,” she said. “He’s not for sale. I’m showing him.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. She introduced us to dog after dog, but my heart kept drawing me back to Billy.

    “Well,” she finally said, “if you promise to show him until he finishes his championship, you can take him home.” Sigh. That hadn’t been in the plan. “Dog shows?” I thought, as we drove home with him curled up on my lap. And dog shows it was, most every Saturday and Sunday for the next year, where Billy taught me a lot about self-confidence and the easy perfection of being who one is.  
                

   While we grew tired of the weekly treks to the show ring, Billy never did. As soon as we were parked in the lot and he got a sense of where he was, he’d straighten up as if on cue and begin to dance around our feet. “I’m ready. I’m ready. I just can’t wait,” his expectant look conveyed. “Hurry up, hurry up. Don’t walk so slow!”

   Yes, now he was in his element. He was a show dog. Buried deep somewhere in his genome, that’s what he was, and he knew it with a certainty beyond doubt. Into the ring he went. Head and tail high. “Yes, this is me! Yes, it’s me! See me being me!”

   When it came time to pose in front of the judge, Billy would stack himself without a prompt, look up at the judge, cock his head and wag his tail, fast, fast, fast. “I’m just perfect, don’t you see?”

   Sometimes the judges agreed … and sometimes they didn’t. But that never mattered one whit to Billy. He was always a champion. He was Billy, Toy Manchester Terrier extraordinaire. Always, always a winner. Just like the trees and the cattails and the meadow grass.

 What’s with Our Quest for Perfection?

     So, I wonder now, is that what our endless quest for perfection is all about? Is that why we pursue our personal Olympic Gold Medal quests? So we can stand for just one moment in the perfection that is our inheritance? To know beyond a doubt our claim to the perfection of who we are, but have learned to overlook until someone “important” judges us so?

     Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept, In Search of Happiness Lost, calls this quest a search for a sense of rightness. The quest to feel that we are right, good and welcome in the world, just as we are.

      If that’s what we’re seeking, if that’s the path to finding peace within ourselves, then we’ve distorted the meaning of perfection beyond recognition. We are a culture obsessed with perfection, but rarely do we achieve it. And when we do, it’s so transitory, a fleeting moment on the podium, a quite pause in meditation, a blissful glance at a resplendent sunset, a moment  of prayer.  

    To sooth our disappointment, we’re constantly reminded “Nothing’s perfect.” “No one’s perfect.” But there’s a nagging double message here. We want to have the perfect baby, be the perfect student, find the perfect mate, have the perfect job, set a perfect record, get the perfect score on our SAT’s, be a Perfect 10, give the perfect dinner party, even have a perfect death. … But “nothing’s perfect.”

    If we look at the dictionary definition of “perfection,” it’s easy to see why life is so much work for anyone who strives for what we think of as perfection and why we must inevitably conclude that, indeed, nothing is ever perfect. Perfection, says The Random House Dictionary, is -

• Conforming absolutely to the definition of an ideal type
• Complete beyond improvement
• Exactly fitting the need
• Entirely without flaws, flawless/faultless 

   Eeekkkk!! Ideal type? Beyond improvement? Exact? Entirely without flaws? These criteria are each so illusively vague, yet so laden with evaluation and judgment. Flawless in what way? Ideal according to whom? 

   Billy’s dog show experiences illustrate the very dilemma such standards present for us. Just as we are expected to evaluate ourselves by socially set norms, the judges at dog shows are expected to use a standard defined by the AKC, the National Kennel Association. The goal, be in the show ring and our culture, is to make ourselves into something that matches a defined standard, a fixed criteria.

   Unless we are blessed by fate to be just like the “standard”, it’s really hard to be perfectly what we are not. Yet isn’t that what we expect of ourselves, of our children and loved ones, of our co-workers and friends, and most particularly of our leaders? For Billy on the other hand, unaware of the judges’ standards, perfection comes easily, because he knows he is perfect by nature at being exactly what he is. 

   To make matters worse of us, many of our standards are not only difficult to attain in the first place, but should a limited number of people begin to attain them with any regularity, the standards are adjusted to make them yet more difficult!

A Quiz: What’s Your Perfection Response?  

    We respond to this distorted conception of perfection in a variety of ways. Which one’s describe you?

 ___ Some of us become strivers. We devote our lives to
        achieving the standards of perfection as defined by
        our culture. We work hard at it and we expect to
        be rewarded. If we’re not, we become angry, bitter
        and disillusioned. If we are, we work all the harder to  
         maintain what we have earned and to achieve one more moment on our
         personal podium.

 ____  Some of us rebel. We say, “Forget these standards! I’m going to do things my
         way.” If we can pull this off, we’re usually admired as exotic, unique or
         eccentric, but if we can’t, we’re defined as odd, peculiar, or a loser and we
         go through life without the “rewards” society reserves for those who strive.

____  Some of us strive outwardly, dressing or working as expected, for example,
         but rebel in private. Our house is a “mess.” We dress like self-defined “slobs”
         on weekends. We don’t stand up straight if no one’s looking. And we’re proud
         of it!

____  Some of us try so hard to be perfect, that we become obsessed with
        perfection. Everything, from the way our hair is parted to the how we knot our
        tie must be perfect according to the precise standard we’ve adopted. We
        chastise and berate ourselves for our imperfections and often are critical of
        others who also fall short of our standards. If our perfection obsession
        becomes extreme enough, we are diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive
        Personality Disorder (OCPD) and try to ease the stress of our condition with
        medication and therapy.

Perfection as that Peaceful, Easy Feeling

     “Perfection is nothing more than an unfolding of that which is deepest in human nature.”  Spinoza

     Have you ever told yourself that you’ve had it with trying to be perfect? That it was just too hard, probably impossible, and certainly not worth all it puts you through? And yet do you still find the desire for perfection keeps creeping back into your life. Why do you suppose that is?

   Writer Jean Liedloff found a clue to this mystery when she lived for two and a half years with the Yequana tribe in the jungles of South America. There she discovered a people who are as at peace with themselves and the world as are the trees and grasses, the cattails and Billy. She found among them no desire to be any better or younger or older or taller or brighter. They were just pleased as punch to be exactly as they are.

    At first this seemed strange and unusual to her. But one day while portaging overland with a large, heavy wooden canoe, she noticed that she and her western companions were complaining incessantly of how hot and miserable they were under the strain on their load in the sweltering jungle, but the Yequana in the group were having a jolly time. Not that they too were no hot or tired or aching, but they simply saw no reason not to enjoy themselves nonetheless.

    Shortly thereafter she noticed that the Yequana actually have no word in their language for work. While they did many activities throughout the day to care for themselves, their loved ones and the tribe, there was no apparent difference between such activities and what we might consider leisure. They joked and laughed through the day, virtually always happy. Even when ill or in difficulty they were at peace. 

   From her time with the Yequana, Liedloff came to understand that we and every other species in existence comes into the world with an inherent expectation that we will be welcomed by a sustaining and nurturing environment, a home for which we have evolved exquisitely to live in at peace with ourselves and our surroundings. She calls this state the continuum. When we find ourselves living on the edges of, or outside, this innate continuum, we are don’t feel right, good or welcome. We feel emotional and physical discomfort and pain. When the difference between our reality and our innate expectations of support and belonging are too extreme, we become ill and, in the worst cases, cannot survive.

   Because we are a creative and social species, we not only choose our natural environment, but also create our cultural environment. So, this state of “rightness” that Liedloff refers to is not reserved only for the non-human world. We too can live in this state, by choosing a natural environments and creating a culture that supports us as “humans being.” We can live in this way, inside our continuum, without years of practice. Without hours of pain and suffering. Without ever climbing onto an Olympic podium. We can have this by simply being.

   Nor do we need to go to South America to learn how. We have many role models for the state of peaceful perfection we share with all other species. If we look, they are all around us still, in the wild meadows, forests, mountains, lakes, prairies and rivers that remain untouched by mankind, and in all the creatures living there.

   What would our lives be like if we created a culture where we felt right, good and welcome simply being? We don’t know, do we? Obviously our life would not be like the lives of the Yequana. It would be a new way of living that we can only experience by following our natural attractions and discovering where they lead us. That would be a journey worth taking. Perhaps changing our view of perfection would be a good starting point. 

Two Views of Perfection

   Clearly Western civilization and the Yequana people have two quite different views of perfection. One that’s a lot of work; the other that includes no role for work. Some of the significant differences between these perspectives are summarized in the chart below. 

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Nature Activity: The Glade

    While living with the Yequana natives in South America, Jean Liedloff recalled an experience she’d had as a child, an experience she’d promised herself to remember, but like so many of us, as adult concerns filled her life, this childhood memory had slipped away.

   “I was at summer camp hiking in the Maine woods,” she writes in The Continuum Concept. “I was last in line; I had fallen back a bit and was hurrying to catch up when, through the trees, I saw a glade. It had a lush fir tree at the far side and a knoll in the center covered in bright, almost luminous green moss. The rays of the afternoon sun slanted against the blue, black green of the pine forest. The little roof of visible sky was perfectly blue. The whole picture had a completeness, an all-there quality of such dense power that it stopped me in my tracks. I went to the edge and then, softly, as though into a magical or holy place, to the center, where I sat, then lay down with my cheek against the freshness of the moss. It was here, I thought, and I felt the anxiety that colored my life fall away. This, at last, was where things were as they ought to be. Everything was in its place – the tree, the earth underneath, the rock, the moss. In autumn, it would be right; in winter under the snow, it would be perfect in its winterness. Spring would come and miracle within miracle would unfold, each at its special pace, some things having died off, some sprouting in their first spring, but all of equal and utter rightness.”

   Can you remember such moments in nature when all in life seemed to be as it should be? Your own personal Glade? Where were you? What was the feeling you had? Can you identify where that feeling is in your body? Many names have been given to this feeling. Chicago University psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it
Flow. The Lakota call it Walking in Beauty.

   While we have come to think this is an exceptional state, reserved for extraordinary moments, actually, this is our biological heritage. This is the ease with which we are meant to live. Can you imagine Walking in Beauty? This is our challenge; to create a culture as suitable for us as the Jean’s Glade was for the fir trees and moss that made it their home.

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Profiles: Their Way 
 Jinjee and Storm Talifero
A Family-Centered Life

    Studies show that as many as 34% of Americans would prefer to stay home with their children if it weren’t for the need to bring home a paycheck. This includes dads, as well as moms. USA Today reports that eighty-seven percent of fathers with children age four and under would like to have more time to be with their kids and an LA Times poll finds 70% of dads would even be willing to give up more pay to have more time with their families.

    In fact, family lifestyles of the 1950’s, often held in disdain over the past 30 years, now have a new appeal for both men and women of all ages according to the Current Population Reports, including more than half of people over thirty-four.  Families with newborns feel this need with particular intensity. 

   While, we can’t go back to the 50’s, a wedding of new technology and ancient values is making it possible for growing numbers of parents like Jinjee and Storm Talifero to create their own versions of what we call A Home and Family Centered Life.

   In a cozy, yet spacious, log cabin in California’s Los Padres National Forest, Jinjee and Storm live and work with their four children, ages 5 months to 10 years. They also home-birth and home school their children. They’re a model for how, if one desires, working from home while caring for a family, even an infant, can work well for all involved.


| Storm, 54          | Shale, 3       | Jome, 7           | Raven, 10       | Adagio, 5 mo | Jinjee, 37
                                           The 100% Raw-Vegan Talifero Family

   Throughout the week Jinjee and Storm work together in their Internet health publishing company, TheGardenDiet.com, and offering onsite raw food retreats. 

   With five-month-old Adagio in arms, and the other children busy with lessons, Jinjee’s workday if filled with a rich variety of activities from phone consultations and newsletter design to filling and shipping orders for their vegan diet CD’s and walking to and from the post office. Weekend retreats provide lots of socializing during which participants love to hold Adagio and play with the older children. 

    Their varied work-from-home activities are interspersed with other household tasks, including home-schooling assignments with Raven, Jome, and Shale. Everyone participates in household cleaning and the fixing of raw food meals for the family. This means lots of juicing, slicing, chopping and blended with all the attending rich aromas and sounds.

   All this, Jinjee does with Adagio on her hip, cradled in arms or on her lap. “My mother always did everything with one hand and a baby in the other,” says Jinjee, “so I figured I can too.”    

Adagio, Raven, Jome and Shale are poster kids for the child-rearing methods of the Lequana tribe Jean Liedloff describes in her book The Continuum Concept. Adagio is an alert, yet relaxed, quiet baby who is intrigued with all the activities and events going on around him and seems to have a perpetual smile on his face! Like Lequana children, the Talifero children are growing up healthy, happy, inquisitive, social and self-directed.

    For more information on the Talifero family and their home-based natural-food business, visit them at www.TheGardenDiet.com  To learn more about the unique child-rearing approach of the Yequana people, visit www.continuum-concept.org/

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Gayle Lawrence,
Naturalist Guide
 A Journey of Discovery

    Dental Hygienist Gayle Lawrence’s transition from "teeth to travel" has evolved naturally from the things she loves most  - nature and traveling to powerfully transforming places around the world. “I’ve always had a deep connection with nature and animals,” she explains. “Encounters in the natural world and wildlife speaks deeply to my spirit.”

    From an early age, the average "tourist vacation" left Gayle with a deep longing for something more, a need left unfullfilled. She wanted to open doors for herself and other women to explore the world while discovering deeper parts of themselves. So in 1998, following her heart she began creating and offering magical travel journeys for women to satisfy their own inner longing, heal their spirit, live their dreams and in the process create new and lasting friendships with other dynamic women.

    Her company, Journeys of Discovery – Mind, Body, Spiritual Adventures for Women, was born at a small desk and computer in the corner of her kitchen. Her first official trip was a wild dolphin swim and retreat in Key West, Florida. Her marketing plan was a short letter and flyer about the retreat mailed to every single woman she knew or could think of, inviting them to share her invitation with every other single woman they knew or could think of. It worked! The retreat with the dolphins was magical and fueled Gayle’s inspiration and passion to do more.

   Whether it’s visiting with a Shaman in Peru, gazing into the eye of a dolphin, or enjoying a group meditation in an ancient Goddess cave, Gayle’s journeys are life-changing experiences that combine deluxe travel in off the beaten path locales with a spiritual journey where one can find answers to her own "inner questions.”

   In upcoming 2005 adventures, Gayle will travel with small groups of women to Costa Rica’s pristine rainforests, alive with a diversity of wildlife like Black Howlder Monkeys, Black toucans, macaws and sloths along with many other animal species who frequent the forests.

   
   She’ll share the once in a life-time possibility of having a soft in-water snorkeling encounter with Humpback Whales and the awesome above water action of their breaching, pec slapping and tail fluking. And she’ll explore Andean mysteries in Peru’s magical Machu Picchu with Peruvian guide and shaman Jorge Luis Delgado whose expertise in Andean culture and the shamanic way of life have been handed down through time from a family of healers.
        Scene from Gayle’s African Safari    
                                               Since 1998, Gayle’s business has outgrown the kitchen corner and has taken over the guest bedroom.  Says Gayle, “I am on a never-ending Journey of Discovery!”
Find out more about her exciting events at www.ajourneyofdiscovery.com             

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The Artwork in This Issue Is by
Marina Kuran

  Marina Kuran, a resident of Tacoma for the past 19 years, was enrolled in her first formal drawing class at the age of 8.  An accomplished and versatile painter in oil, watercolor and acrylic, Marina is also a gypsy-blooded nature enthusiast.  She has traveled, conceived ideas and sketched throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Mexico and Guatemala.  Marina’s love of travel and her experiences outdoors are profound sources of inspiration and creativity.  “It is important to me that my paintings are a part of what is joyful and uplifting in this world,” she explains. Whether my inspiration comes from within or from my surroundings, I am drawn to express the magical, whimsical spirit of what I see and feel. I use bright, bold colors, rounded shapes and, often, unusual light. The highest praise comes when one of my paintings speaks to a child or the inner child of someone.”

    Marina’s work has been shown in the Pacific Northwest, California, Florida, New York and Hawaii and hangs in the homes and offices of numerous collectors around the country. She has taught painting and drawing and facilitated a children’s mural project in Tacoma, WA.

   The masthead for our Fall Issue is adapted from Marina's Unspinning Spring, an acrylic on canvas. Her pieces in this newsletter, in order are –

Harvest Time, Oil on Canvas
Light II, Oil on Canvas
Rainbow Lilly Wishes, Watercolor
Early Autumn, Watercolor, Ltd. Ed. Giclee Print
From the Light of Different Worlds, Watercolor, Ltd. Ed. Giclee Print
The Dolphin Connection, Watercolor

      All of the pieces in the newsletter are available. Click on their image to find out more about them. Or, visit Marina's online gallery at www.marinakuran.com  You can contact Marina in person via e-mail at makai33@hotmail.com

Resources to Explore More

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins.

Damasio, Antonio (2003). Looking for Spinoza, Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. New York, Harcourt.

Liedloff, Jean (1985). The Continuum Concept, In Search of Happiness. New York: DeCapo.

Spinoza, Baruch (1945). Ethics. New York, Hafner.

Fall Blessings,
Sarah Edwards