It’s the last day on Yakushima Island in Japan. I’m face to face with unmistakable evidence of my addiction to the Internet. Our rental cottage lies forty minutes from a store offering broadband access for my laptop. With my website and blog still under construction, and the WordPress 2.5 update mischievously littering each web page with typos, it has been frustrating to be disconnected from the electronic nervous system of the planet. Yui , however, insists the experience has been good for my personal growth.

Instead of poring over global news sites each morning, I’ve been restricted to a diet of headlines and quick scans. I can now imagine that this is how it is for most people, in a busy world of work and raising children. Instead of having the time to read, digest, and compare different opinions about world events, there are only fleeting glimpses of information, always without context and usually without opposing commentary

As I think about what has grabbed my attention this week (from twenty minutes a day or less of news reading) what stands out is:

* Oil in the West increased in price to $129 a barrel, and gold is at $920 an ounce. This seems due not to any commodity price hike, but because of the decreasing value of the US Dollar.

* With the approach of summer in the US the reports are that many Americans will stay close to home, due to the high cost of gasoline and fuel surcharges on air travel. Projections of $5-$6 per gallon of gas are in for the coming future, with associated commodity price rises.

* Barrack Obama has gained an unbeatable delegate count, but Hillary Clinton refuses to quit.

* George W. Bush compares Obama to Nazi sympathizers in a speech to the Knesset while visiting Israel (Obama+Iran=Neville Chamberlain+Hitler). Huh?

* Gore Vidal on an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! says there was a military coup on 9/11, and states that the US White House is run by idiots who know nothing. See above.

* The death rates in Myanmar and in China keep rising as we get more news despite governmental reporting restrictions. I don’t know what to get more angry at: Myanmar’s military junta and their pilfering of foreign aid, or reports of non-earthquake planning and shoddy construction that has tremendously increased the body count in China. Awful news.

* Rice production this year has been hit badly by these two disasters. Also, corn production for food is down in the US due to crop problems and emphasis on ethanol production. All in all, world food shortages seem inevitable, with food riots probably following in their wake.

I have been reading the US news blogs along with The Asia Times and a few other non-US news sites. Interestingly, Japanese TV mostly ignores these topics, with the exception of the Chinese earthquake. Right now the Japanese are focusing on the tremendous fear of a secondary disaster in the making. Chinese dams have been severely weakened by the past earthquake, and some of them may break.

Naturally, each country will have its own priorities for news and views. My internet rehab on Yakushima has forced me to face my Western news hunger, and also brought my habitual news bias to my attention. I will definitely broaden my news reading. I am also determined to remain in denial as to the extent of my internet addiction.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
-Goethe

The first and basic approach to Relational Energy Healing addresses the unconscious forces are at work in our lives, and in our relationships. We must deal with our personal and family issues systemically in order to truly solve our problems. Otherwise we keep repeating our personal or family patterns. Along with the psychological uncovering of these forces we must actively address -and change - the energy body (auric body, chakras, chakra cords) that is the underlying mechanism of human consciousness. The second layer of relational energy work is to understand that our personal and spiritual growth is evolutionary: that our lives proceed through earlier stages of development and build upon previous successes, while mitigating choices that have led to failure. In other words, that we learn and grow through our mistakes, and begin to weave those life lessons into the fabric of our soul growth. The third layer of relational work may appear more philosophical, but is essentially practical and deeply meaningful. It looks at the the elements of emotional slavery existing in an individual’s life, and how the unconscious acceptance of that slavery may color our relationship to self, to others, and to the outside world.
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One of the unfortunate realities of Yakushima in the rain is the absence of bookstores for browsing and immediate book-buying gratification. There is always Amazon.Com, of course, but until my return to Tokyo in ten days I’m suffering Bookstore Withdrawal Syndrome. But once back in urban Japan I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Kevin Phillips new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (published by Viking Adult). Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow.org interviewed Kevin on May 6: go here if you want to read his interview. Good stuff.

While I searched the internet for more interviews with Kevin I discovered a fascinating video by author Bill Still: “The Money Masters: how international bankers gained control of America”(1996). Many people are aware of the importance The Federal Reserve Bank has on the US economy, but very few know the history and agenda of the privately-held central banks that have financed Western society over the past three hundred years. The Money Masters lays out the awful truth, and makes for riveting viewing.

Although the late Nineties economic crash did not occur as Bill Still predicts in The Money Masters, Kevin Phillips updates the situation and explains why the coming collapse is inevitable. Of equal importance to Kevin’s book, The Money Masters educates us to the reality of international banking “farming” of the US economy, where bankers implement a period of expansion and easy credit (which also builds incredible public and private debt) followed by a recession and fiscal contraction, resulting in the accumulated wealth being transfered from the middle class to the extremely wealthy class. All the signs are that this will occur very soon, leading to recommendations by experts to baton down the fiscal hatches and prepare for the worse. The best advice out there seems to consist of getting out of all paper debt and assets as soon as possible, move your liquid funds into Euros or Swiss Francs, and to stock up on physical gold or silver bullion.

Just as worrisome are American concerns over the availability of food and water should a financial crash occur. If the US economy wakes up one morning to an economically dead dollar and the rapid onset of hyper-inflation, food will vanish from the shelves of supermarkets faster than a speeding bullet. Survivalist thinking that encourages stocking up on non-perishable food and bottled water while you still can is probably prudent.

These days it is not a good time for a naive trust in our governments. Burma’s junta seems complicit in the deaths of thousands of their citizens this week, the US government did little to respond to the Katrina disaster a short time ago, and European countries allowed Chinese troops dressed in tracksuits to protect the “sacred” Olympic flame by assaulting Free Tibet protesters. Healthy adults take care of themselves, rather than expecting it of others. It sounds to me like Americans stocking up on food and water right now is worth consideration.

Yui flew to Tokyo yesterday, to teach a workshop, and leaving me alone on Yakushima Island for a few days. The island responded to our separation by slowly beginning to rain, alternating with a monsoon-like downpour, and forcing me into a writing and study retreat. But, at some point, even monks in paradise have to eat. At dusk I set off for the local supermarket to practice my few words of Japanese, and stock up with provisions until the on-again-off-again deluge from the heavens ended. Darkness was complete by the time I headed back to the cottage, but I was confident of my bearings. There is only one main road, encircling Yakushima, so how could I get lost? But, after thirty minutes of driving I suddenly realized none of the landmarks looked familiar. What had just happened? One minute I’m sure of things, the next minute I’m disorientated and lost. The young part of my psyche kicked in with a wash of concern…I don’t know where I am, I can’t speak the language to ask for directions, and the GPS in the rental car is configured with Japanese characters. Oh, no street lights, and it’s dark and raining.

Of course, the adult part of my mind had the obvious solution of turning around and retracing my journey. Sometime soon I would return to a recognizable place. As I’m driving back, I mused on how symbolic this mundane inconvenience was to my life, and to my professional work as a healer. All of us, at some point, get lost, take a wrong turn, choose the wrong relationship, pick the wrong company to work for, and so on. Mistakes are not only human they are essential to exploring the world, and gaining life skills that help us evolve. My young psyche was anxious at not being able to easily find the way home, and the older part of my mind chose a strategy that was tried and true: when you are lost, backtrack until you are no longer lost.

Healing our young traumas and memories results in following this same everyday wisdom. If you are lost in a relationship, or in your personal healing process, go back in time and locate where things went awry. Return to the source of the disruption, and reset your bearings. This is, of course, the meat and potatoes of psychotherapy, as well as the uncovering of fresh resources unlearned along our path of growth. For instance, if my disruption in early life was abandonment by a parent, I would need to re-inhabit that place of fear and anxiety while learning to connect self cords deep into myself, to remind myself that I had my own resources and was no longer fully dependent upon others. With practice, moments of apparent abandonment would follow the symbolic journey of returning to the source whenever we get lost.

I eventually passed a landmark that was familiar, of course; the local road-side coffee hut. It seems I had driven right past my cottage, dark and unrecognized, and I had been lost by ten miles. How much closer than that are the memories of our emotional body, just awaiting for a small turning within. Turning back we may find ourselves, once again, back home.

The final island on our three-island vacation tour is the incredible Yakushima, which lies to the south of Kyushu. The center of this eco-paradise island is covered in dense forest with spectacular waterfalls, and the coastline is a combination of Hawaii and Northern California. We’re here for two weeks, and I’m very excited to be exploring the hiking trails and meeting Sugi (old growth Cryptomeria trees). Blog postings until we leave for Tokyo will be sporadic; it takes forty minutes to come to the internet café, and then back again. And, I’ve got a two thousand year old Japanese Cedar to meet before it starts to rain!

Here’s a link to a wonderful blog posting, with great photos of Yakushima. Thanks to Jonathan (a fellow Brit) for his photo blog.

One of the helpful concepts of mainstream psychotherapy is transference: the unconscious redirection of feelings from a childhood relationship to a current one. This knowledge is useful for Relational Energy Healing work because our focus is educating the infant mind (inner child) within us as part of improving all our personal relationships. Also, many of the spiritual ideals leading to gaining higher consciousness parallel this therapeutic education process of child becoming adult. It is an unrealistic fantasy that presupposes we can move from the infant self to a high level of soul awakening without first developing a functional adult self (see the extensive works of Ken Wilber). Despite being full of innocent promise, the infant mind is unprepared for the complexity and sophistication of the outer world. We must do inner - and relational - work in order to bridge our three inner psychic states of child, adult, and soul.

Transference is also where the infant mind within us projects or overlays infant-level needs and demands onto another person. Because the infant is natively narcissistic (self-orientated) rather than developmentally mutual (I/Thou orientated) it must attempt to force or seduce its will onto the mother (or “others” in the outside world) in order to survive. Two major strategies of the child consciousness are either assuming helpless cuteness (an evolutionary design to engage the mother and have her happily cooperate with the survival needs of the child) or the use of threats (tantrums, refusals to cooperate, withdrawal of love, etc). There are other strategies, of course, but it is seduction (“Give me what I want because I’m lovable.”) and coercion (“Give me what I want or you are in trouble.”) that are fundamental to the human psyche. Many of our adult actions with others are, in truth, actions taken by the infant within us, designed to seduce or impel the other to meet our real (or imagined) needs. Through these and other lenses the infant mind actively projects its survival strategies onto the other, with no regard for the psychic invasion that results.
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We’ve rented a cottage on Ishigaki Island for a few days. Our arrival yesterday on this, the second of our three vacation islands over three weeks, was uneventful, except for the bumpy, engine-roaring landing by the small commuter plane bringing us from Okinawa. After a morning bath it’s time for me to make my breakfast, which means overcoming the challenge of the cottage’s modern Japanese-style kitchen. As you may imagine, everything is small, which means Yui and I can’t comfortably stand in it, side by side, and cook. “Japanese men don’t cook, so there’s no need for a lot of room in the kitchen.”, Yui enlightens me, after listening to my pithy observation about how size really matters. I reach for the fresh eggs we bought before our arrival yesterday, and extract a frying pan from the slide-out rack built into the cooker that reminds me of something out of the Bat Cave. Everything in this vacation cottage kitchen has been well-thought out, designed by someone who wants you to have everything, but not have to look at it all the time. Western kitchens, by contrast, are big on display. In my Maui home the kitchen was as big as many Japanese apartments, and you just had to put out all your gadgets, storage racks, and kitchen implements to make it look homey. Not so here, or in any of the other Serviced Apartments we had occupied in Tokyo.

To cook my scrambled eggs I first have to turn on the burner. I scan the front of the cooker, whose buttons and displays look like they could launch a cruise missile towards North Korea if I choose unwisely. Yui’s psychic sense picks up my silent confusion from the living room where she’s watching the news, and she squeezes past me to punch three buttons - and we have liftoff. My pan begins heating the oil (there’s a butter shortage in Japan), and now I need to find the salt to add to my egg and tomato concoction. Fumbling around with Japanese-labeled containers while searching for the familiar sight of little white crystals, I feel like an alien fallen to Earth, unable to fit in like everyone else. My grumbles are growing in volume; I just want to cook eggs like any other adult, and to do so with a minimum of fuss. Now, where is the damn spatula? Like a genius I suddenly remember I’m in Asia, and I reach for the cooking chopsticks. Soon I’m stirring away at my scramble, in unusual contact with the eggs via the chopsticks, and wondering how I’m going to be able to turn the oven off without Yui coming to my rescue one more time. A lucky stab at a button, and the power dies with a happy beep. I’m convinced that the next generation of Japanese cookers will audibly thank me for cooking safely, and then wish me a happy day.

Out on the porch I settle down to my hard-won food, and begin to watch a video on my MacBook Pro laptop. The sun is shining, crows are noisy, the goat next door bleats in the background. Out on the road an elderly and hunched-over Japanese woman pauses to admire a flower growing opposite my deck. She sees me, and bows. I smile, and bow back, forgetting my foolish kitchen pride in her simple act of courtesy. After all, it’s the start of a beautiful day, and the eggs actually taste pretty good.