The crows are cawing outside my window, and are making quite a fuss. They only caw like that when something is going to happen in my world.

I am sitting here listening to cd of ancient hawaiian huna chants that I bought at the Monterey Psychic Festival and I dragged my friend K to last April. We went specifically to see a woman I'd heard about from friends. We went to her lecture and afterwards when I told her I had heard about her through friends, she gave me a hug. Sweet huh? My friend K and I have since driven down to Monterey, a good two hour drive, five or six times to take seminars from her in Pacific Grove.

I used to think it was such a big deal to drive two hours to see someone, but having done it now a few timess, it's not such a big deal. It's a long drive but at least you're driving and not just stuck in traffic for an hour or two and not going more than 10 miles.

There was a woman at the Monterey Pyschic Festival wearing a lei on her head. There is a specific name for that kind of lei, but I cannot remember it right now. I stopped at her booth and told her I was born in Hawaii and she started chanting hawaiian huna chants to me. I felt tinglies run up and down my spine during her chanting, and I don't know it was because the chanting was really powerful or it was because hearing hawaiian chants opens the floodgates to my childhood memories.

My hula teacher in 6th grade taught us ancient Hawaiian hula, and not the tourist kind that you see at hotels. This is the kind of hula done mostly sitting on your haunches on the ground and is more ritualistic and tribal. My hula teacher, who grew up on the Big Island, learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, and so on. She taught that hula was a sacred rite performed for the ancient hawaiian gods and goddessses at heiaus, and that we were to act like priesteses, devotees, and not shake-your-butt for the tourists hula girls.

It's kind of amazing that I still remember some of her teachings, but I'm sure like any typical 12-year I was thinking what the heck was she talking about. And I was a bad little priestess too, never quite getting anything right. I could never duck walk properly. She always made us duck walk around the room a couple of time, and I could never master the art of duck walking. I still remember her screaming at me because when I moved my hips, my upper body shook. She would clamp her big hands on my shoulders, tell me to bend my knees really low and start moving my hips in a circle. I could feel my scrawny shoulders trying to move under the presssure of her hands, and the eyes of everyone in class watching me. Beads of sweat started forming at the base of my spine and travelled upwards towards my neck as she kept saying over and over again like a chant, "stop moving your shoulders, only your hips should move not your whole upper body." Geez, I was only 12 years old, give me a break.

I'm trying to remember if I was the youngest person in that class. There were other kids there but they were older, and older women that didn't live in our neighborhood. How I got stuck taking an ancient hawaiian hula class instead of the tourist hula that I started learning at age six is a mystery to me. Her daughter and I were in the same grade, so I don't know if I asked to go to the class or if my grandma knew about the class and wanted me to go. My grandparents were strict catholics, not followers of ancient hawaiian ritualistic hula.

The hula I was taught that year is hardly ever performed except at hula festivals in Hawaii. My hula teacher told us that this kind of hula is passed down from female to female only, and you have to be invited to learn it. No wonder it's never seen if the hula is that exclusive. Tourists wouldn't like this kind of hula anyway. It's all this gutteral chanting, and the costumes are not that pretty and the girls never really smile since they're supposed to priestesses. You have to be serious, religious and devoted because "you are offering a prayer to the gods and goddesses".

I've been meditating every day for an hour this week, and have had the most incredible experiences which have been enhanced by these new supplements I've been taking. David Hudson discovered something called monotomic gold, and my new writing friend S from work loves it and recommended I take some.

The company is called Harmonic Innerprize and they make these amazing products. Their orignal product, Chamae Rose, is made from a plant that grows in this white soil which was created by a meteor that landed on earth 11,000 years ago. From the white soil, they came up with Etherium Gold, Etherium Black, Etherium Red, Etherium Pink, and Shamir. They also have another product called Aulterra.

I had the most powerful experience with Alterra. Lab studies have shown:
1. Aulterra increases the utilization and effectiveness to the body of any substance; including pharmaceuticals, nutriceuticals and herbs, and foodstuff by 30% to 60%.
2. Aulterra activates DNA. When DNA is oscillating at optimal efficiency it opens the potential for a constant state of health.
3. Aulterra neutralizes the harmful effects of toxic substances, including toxins in the body. This is accomplished through electromagnetic dynamics that reverses the negative spin of any toxic substance to positive.

The first night I took Aulterra I felt all these negative vibrations leave my body. The formulation seemed to draw all my sadness away from me, sadness I didn't know I had. Etherium black if taken during a meditation makes you go really, really deep. I'm not sure what the effects of the other formulations are yet.

Etherium gold makes me feel balanced. Here's what the website says:

Etherium Gold has an electromagnetic pattern similar, if not identical to the same pattern that energy flows when it is transmuted into matter.

Physicists believe when energy forms matter, it begins by moving in a clockwise motion. As its speed increases, a vortex begins to form. Centrifugal force causes the energy to rise and the circumference of the spin becomes tighter and tighter. The energy in the vortex eventually reaches an apex where it cannot go any further and it implodes within itself. From the implosion, another vortex is formed and it moves counterclockwise and as it descends it slows. Eventually it slows to a point where matter forms. At first single atomic (monatomic) states appear, and eventually more complex atomic states.

Biofeedback research indicates that individuals become more balanced and calm after administration of Etherium Gold. Test shows a clear decrease in emotional reactivity and greater relaxation.

The most obvious and consistent results occurred in the EEG measurements after taking Etherium Gold. In 90% of the volunteers brainwave frequencies tended to balance out and all frequency bands showed greater activation.

We could casually say that people with high theta activity (as compared to beta) are considered to be "right brained," (creative, meditative, artistic, spatially oriented). People with high beta activity (as compared to theta) are considered to be "left brained," (logical, mathematically inclined, linearly oriented). Etherium Gold balances the differences in the strength of these frequency ranges between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It is therefore a very accurate statement to say that Etherium Gold tends toward helping people become more "whole brained."

In conclusion, this preliminary study shows clear evidence that there is a positive neurological impact, at least temporarily, through the administration of Etherium Gold. The indication is that it somehow provides an environment whereby the brain moves toward a state of homeostasis.

I did my usual Brenda thing and started taking all the supplements at once and got so spacey. S from work said I looked so out of it. She said she saw that my etheric body wasn't attached to my physical body. I was irritated and my synapses weren't firing right, and I was waking up every two hours and having the wildest dreams.

S said it was too dangerous for me and made me promise to take a break. So I stopped taking the stuff, and ate a ton of protein to ground me to the earth and back into my body. I was better within a couple of days and now try to take only a couple of formulations a day.

I miss my wild dreams though. The supplements were stirring up stuff in my subconscious and I really missed my mom and grandma during this time. It made me feel like Iwas holding all this sadness inside of me that now needed to be released.

I had the weirdest dream about ex-husband. I dreamt he was in my apartment and had unloaded all these bags and boxes into my living room. I think the dream was about how much emotional baggage I was still carrying from that relationship. In the dream, my ex-hubbie asked me if I wanted my baggage back and I said NO WAY. In the next part of the dream, the bags and boxes were gone from my place. Weird huh?

My first bible reading wasn’t too bad. In this other new thing I’m doing to put more structure in my life, part of the daily-to-do is to reflect upon the word of God. This is the passage that really spoke to me.

The Fiery Cloud
Numbers 8 (NLT) :
15The Tabernacle was set up, and on that day the cloud covered it.[f] Then from evening until morning the cloud over the Tabernacle appeared to be a pillar of fire. 16This was the regular pattern--at night the cloud changed to the appearance of fire. 17When the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel followed it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel camped. 18In this way, they traveled at the LORD's command and stopped wherever he told them to. Then they remained where they were as long as the cloud stayed over the Tabernacle. 19If the cloud remained over the Tabernacle for a long time, the Israelites stayed for a long time, just as the LORD commanded. 20Sometimes the cloud would stay over the Tabernacle for only a few days, so the people would stay for only a few days. Then at the LORD's command they would break camp. 21Sometimes the cloud stayed only overnight and moved on the next morning. But day or night, when the cloud lifted, the people broke camp and followed. 22Whether the cloud stayed above the Tabernacle for two days, a month, or a year, the people of Israel stayed in camp and did not move on. But as soon as it lifted, they broke camp and moved on. 23So they camped or traveled at the LORD's command, and they did whatever the LORD told them through Moses.

I feel like I’m other some kind of cloud, waiting for the signs to know what to do. I think this is part of the grieving process when you lose a relationship. I have to grieve, I have to be sad, I have to learn the lessons so I can move one.

One big lesson I learned it is I neglected my writing. I never ever want to do this in a love relationship again. Writing is good for me; it takes the stress out of my mind and body. I already have an overly active imagination, and when I’m not writing my imagination tends to spill over into my real life. I need to keep my imaginative mind active by making up stories about my fictional characters, instead of making up stories about my relationship. My imagination does not know the difference, honestly. My imagination will make up a story about anything and everything, and it doesn’t take much to get it going. Making up stories comes fairly easy for me because of my imagination, which is great for writing but not great for having a love relationship. When I don’t write I also get depressed, which makes me focus on what’s wrong with my life instead of what’s good and great about it.

So I must learn to make myself write every day, even if I don’t want to, even if I don’t feel like it, which is how I feel most of the time. Even if I only do 15 minute timed freewrites, at least I will still be writing. I am reading my Natalie Goldberg books; she wrote “Writing down to the bones”. Natalie talks about writing like a spiritual practice that you must do every day, so that one day you will be able to write short stories and novels. And not journal writing either, which is what I do, but timed freewrites.

This is my plan and on Monday I restructured my current screenplay in a freewrite. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, but I think it will be fun to see if could restructure my screenplay to fit my new plot. I like problem-solving. I do it naturally, and I get paid to do it in real life. Maybe if I can transfer my natural problem solving skills to my writing, I will be able to put out a story that I really like instead of something that I sort of like.

So I finally gave in and bought a one-year bible. It’s been a dream of mine since college to read the bible in its entirety, and not just the passages they dole out ritualistically in church readings or the ones that get attention on the History channel with those fanatical doom and gloom evangelical and conspiracy theory pundits. The theatre lit professor who was teaching my class on Samuel Beckett, the playwright, lambasted the whole class for our humongous bible illiteracy. Beckett, like most scholars of his time, knew the bible inside and out and used biblical references throughout his work. I can still hear Ellen Mease screaming “And you all missed 90% of them,” and then going into a tirade of the inadequacy of the American educational system. “How are you supposed to read great literature and understand what the authors were trying to say if you don’t get the biblical references?” We all rolled our eyes secretly, eyes that said “yeah, yeah Ellen, whatever.”

But I never forgot her remark. I hate when I don’t get the references; it like so bugs me. I feel stupid and out-of-it when I don’t get things because I’m a smart girl and should get these seemingly simple things. But I never got around to actually wanting to fulfill this dream until a few years ago.

I started on my one-year bible plan three years ago, and that unfortunately only lasted through the middle of February before I gave up. It was too hard. The bible study plan I was using started off in The Old Testament and I don’t know about you but there are parts of the five books of the Torah that are just, I don’t know, unreadable. The people who put together the one-year bible must have first hand knowledge of the bible’s put you sleep state because each day has a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. Leviticus and its endless dietary restrictions should only be taken in small doses.

I also found the one-year bible online after I bought the book, so dummy me didn’t even have to spend the money. Oh well. My only issue with these bibles is the translations. Although I’m used to reading the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation, personally I like the New Standard Version (NSV). The NRSV takes the wonderful and violent language of the NSV and waters it down, makes it politically correct and I think infinitely more boring. But the one-year bibles that I saw at the bookstore in the Embarcadero only came in the New Living Translation (NLT) and the New International Version (NIV). The NIV is the most popular translation but it only came in the compact version, so I ended up buying the NLT not only because the book was bigger but I wasn’t sure what to make up the NIV introduction when I read that evangelicals endorsed it. That statement, I am embarrassed to say, was enough to scare me off that translation.

The online one-year bible gives you more options to translations, which I wish they would do for the book version. I guess it makes sense for the publisher to print translations of bible that they know will be bought.

So okay, I know it’s March 7 and I have January and February to get caught up with in my reading plan, but I’m hoping that I will be able to fulfill my dream to read the whole bible.