Back to Nature?

Back to Nature? After I wrote: Electricity is Nice which was about the recent power outage that I and 2.1 million other Californians, Nevadans, and Oregonians experienced for one or more days this last week including myself I started thinking about why I originally wanted to live off the electrical grid in 1980.

At that time as a part of working toward the enlightenment of myself, my wife and 3 kids then ages in 1980 of 6,7 and 8(two boys and a girl) we decided to buy land in an extremely beautiful remote place in the mountains and build and A-Frame house which we did with the help of my father, mother and a few friends. This experience was one of the most amazing in my life and ranked up there with taking my family to Thailand, India and Nepal for 4 months in 1985&6. Both these experiences changed all of us in a permanent way. However, I found in the long run that I was not prepared for many of the outcomes.

It appears that when you put yourself and your family in a very primal environment almost anything can and will happen. This can be incredibly wonderful and equally terrible. It can go either way and sometimes both.

What I was most unprepared for were the changes in myself. I found myself becoming more primal and to some degrees psychologically more feral. So when my the 12 year old stepson asked to go to school again and not to be home schooled I was ready for a return to rural suburbia. From a county of less than 40,000 total we moved to the California coast and bought another business.

However, while living mostly remotely over those 4 years (about 8 months a year we learned amazing things about life, each other, and many other completely unexpected things.

One of the many many things we learned is that you can't raise baby golden mantle ground squirrels after your cat eats their mother. This is because your country cat is way smarter than you think and the ground squirrels were never meant to be pets and likely will bite you and your kids. This turned out to be way more disgusting than any of us wanted to deal with. Though we tried to be baby ground squirrel parents we failed.

One of the funniest experiences was with a fairy diddle(flying squirrel). A flying squirrel will stand upside down on a huge Cedar tree(this one was 5 feet through) and scold you until you leave. I stood there and laughed at this behavior for over 5 minutes until I couldn't stand the racket anymore. The flying squirrel standing upside down on the side of the huge Cedar tree while chirping loudly and jumping up and down the tree had me in laughing hysterics. I thought later about how effective this was in making all predators leave the squirrels domain. As long as the predator couldn't climb a tree it was a very good ploy.

One of the scarier experiences was during deer hunting season. Then, sometimes I would hear bullets flying over my head. They sounded like angry bees. A few moments later I would hear the bang. When I watched the movie: Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks, I realized they actually captured what bullets and shells sound like when they are coming at you. My experience on my land made me angry, because this was my land the bullets were flying over at about 10 feet elevation. Even if the gun had been discharged a mile away it was flying over my land and endangering me and my family. I was also wise enough not to go searching for some idiot with a gun. Many have tried and many have died in such situations before me. If the person was responsible in the first place their bullets wouldn't have been flying over my land.

In the winter time we would park about 1 to 3 miles away from our home since the roads were dirt the last few miles and were not plowed by the state or county. A neighbor sometimes plowed but that gets really expensive when you have 7 feet of snow at a time on the ground. So when we parked 1 to 3 miles away, we would tow our supplies on Bobsleds that we pulled on cross country metal edged skis(sometimes they are just called mountaineering skis). We also skied a lot with them between 10,000 feet and 3,000 feet elevation on Mt. Shasta depending on the snow conditions that particular day.

I found living without electricity very restful and conducive toward enlightenment and developing intuitive abilities.

When you live in any house or apartment that is connected to electricity, even if the electricity is not being used in a house there is still electricity in all the walls because current goes back and forth to the power generating center through the earth to the connected house even if no electricity is being used or paid for. Any electrician knows this. So even if you turn off all electrical appliances and lights and heaters and whatever in your house you still are being affected by the electrical connection.

I find that when I'm completely away from all electricity, whether it is AC or DC I find I breathe a sigh of relief even now. It takes a lot to intuitively compensate for being around anything electrical. Since all our nerves and our whole body operates on low voltage electricity created by our bodies when we eat food we are all affected by electricity in all its forms including radio waves, microwaves etc. all the time. Though over time most of the humans in the (civilized?) world have gotten adapted to this, many people who have never had to deal with this might have a lot of difficulty adapting to electricity. Electricity seems like a good deal and in many ways it is. However, many people give up a lot of their natural intuitions that have protected all the human race for thousands of years. My concern is that so many people might become "techies" that too many people will lose the capacity to be intuitive and to experience things before they happen like I do and that the capacity to "see the future" might be lost in the next few generations.

The ability to "see the future" is best accomplished not be speeding up to the speed of a computer world but in "slowing down" to observe each thing in nature whether it be a rain drop, a snow flake, a breeze, the fog, a cloud or whatever. It is in the slowing down to observe all life and to experience "Oneness" and kindredness with all life and in developing compassion for all life around one that intuitive gifts become really amazing and then quantum jumps in awareness toward enlightenment take place.