I am feeling more peaceful than perhaps ever before in my life. I think I have had low level anxiety because I had to deny my hopelessness about the state of humanity and my ability to help to create a world where all of life can thrive, including the animals, plants, and insects.

I feel very connected to each moment. A sense I get is of people who are told they are going to die and they have only a few months left. I don’t think I am going to die. I have no fear of getting the virus. I am so healthy. I believe in the strength of my immune system. I rarely get sick. I hear that most healthy people who get the virus do not die.

But still, I know that changes are coming. I am moving to a simpler life, and won’t be on line as much, and might not have the variety of food I like. I will be alone much more. Big changes. A death to the way I have lived for so many years. And yet, in so many ways, I believe I have been preparing for this transition, even though I have resisted.

………………

A few days in a row, before things got really intense with the pandemic, I stayed in bed until 2pm and prayed, meditated and sometimes fell asleep, often dreaming. I just could not get up. Normally, I awaken around 5am and meditate/pray til 8, 9 or 10. In fact, the months leading up to the pandemic, I found myself wanting to meditate and pray much longer than usual 2-3-4 hours. Somehow, the time flew by.

I am running out of my fresh food. I haven’t been to the health food store for about 3 weeks. Yet I feel content. I bought cases of bananas, grapefruit, avocado, and oranges about a month ago. I had already been eating more lightly than ever before, going 95% raw, 70% fruitarian, about 3 months ago. Before that, I fasted for 29 days on lemonade. It seems like I am preparing for a long fast, and I am praying to do without food altogether.

But I have tons of fresh greens, mostly wild. The chickweed is going crazy, along with the dock. I planted mustard in the fall, and it is thriving. Comfrey is starting to peek out. I want to eat them raw. Maybe even juice in the wheat grass juicer. but for now I am tempted to eat them cooked.

I can also just chew on them. There is so many vitamins and minerals and enzymes in fresh, wild food! for some reason I resist–but I am going to pray for the desire.

I believe that living on prana, sometimes known as breatharianism, is a possibility. That is what I really want to do. Yes, there are scientific facts to prove this. I’ve really enjoyed listening to as many people as possible talk about breatharianism, and I feel hopeful that I can live this way, and then teach others to do the same.

I have withdrawn from people for the most part–except for my family and a few friends. Just before the pandemic hit, I had been deeply involved in some online groups related to saving the world through veganism and collective consciousness. I realized that the environment was toxic for me and I ended up pulling out. Only a week or so later, (just about 2 weeks ago) things started heating up. I used my newly-found time to rest, meditate, be outdoors, and work on the Wellspring Community land.

I was also starting to go to Sunday services and potlucks, and a weekly ladies Bible study in my neighborhood.  I realized that I needed a lot of solitude, and stopped attending these over the past 3 weeks. I am not sure whether or not I will start attending again.

My  beliefs of how to interpret the Bible are in so many ways different from most Christians. I just don’t bring them up very often, yet I hear different things expressed–like a belief in eternal conscious torment for people who don’t accept Jesus as their savior. That hurts my heart. I just feel sad when I think people can have a faith in a Creator who would do something that we as humans–as imperfect as we are–would never do to our own kids.

I’ve been so appreciative of people who have purposely brought vegan food to support me. Yet is is always hard for me to be around the flesh and secretions of animals which have suffered terribly.  I have to block a part of myself out–numb my feelings–which I don’t like to do.

I also realized when I left the groups–including my neighborhood groups–that I had neglected my dream of living in community–once again. I hope that now I have learned my lesson. My 45 years of experience, learning about, visiting, and (only a few times) living in intentional communities has given me so much ability to discern what are the practices, structures, philosophies and values that are needed.

I am accepting that now that I am 65, and have to the best of my ability lived my life to the very fullest, learning from every experience I have had, I just need to give it a go. Starting a new community is one of the hardest things anyone can ever do. Yet now, I feel the energy to be up to the task.

One of the things that has changed is that I am no longer desperate for people to come. If the community is just the birds, deer, animals, insects, plants, trees, rocks, moss, nature spirits, earth, air, water, fire, all of life (besides humans), Jesus and I–I will be okay.

I am 100 percent committed to learning how to live a life of love. I know that dealing with people yields the lessons that I need in order how to learn how to love. However, the thousands of relationships I have cultivated (many of them just in the past 4 years since I dove into the animal rights movement (for 3 1/2 years) have taught me that I only want to interact with other humans who are 100% committed to also learning how to love.

The purpose of my blog is to demonstrate living a life of love.

Of course I will be interacting with people. Some will be on line, others such as my family and neighbors, I will connect with. I don’t plan on being a hermit. However, I will be spending most of my time on the land doing such things as gardening, cleaning up the land, getting organized, walking, forest bathing, laughter yoga, dancing, singing, gazing at the sun, meditating, resting, sun bathing, praying, hugging trees, talking to Jesus, and delighting in every single moment.

And I’ll be journaling, visualizing, writing on my blog when I get on line. I might work once in a while if work is possible. I will eat as little as possible. Consume as little as possible. Live as lightly on the earth as possible

Today when I saw the first bee of the season, I was enamored. I walked barefoot on the grass for a long time. I harvested some greens for dinner that my former husband, Robert, made for us. I did some writing. I meditated and prayed for hours–when I couldn’t sleep, and then later in the morning.

I felt at peace. I didn’t feel super productive. I am feeling okay about that–even though I plan to move out of my very comfortable, cozy environment in less than 2 weeks. I have done a lot of work sorting things, packing, and moving things to the land. But not near as much as normally I would do.

I feel motivated to learn how to live in each moment. I cry at least once a day–so sad for all who are suffering, including the animals who probably passed the virus on to us. They didn’t do it out of anger or revenge. Animals are pretty amazing that way, aren’t they? Nature, guided by something–our Creator?–is designed this way. That mammals who are suffering, and who are in close proximity to humans, can pass on their pain to us.

I like to catch up on the alternative news and find out how strange it is that there are so few deaths from COVID-19, and even those deaths are of people who have pre-existing healthy conditions. Like someone said, we don’t know if people die from chemo-therapy or from cancer.

I’ve known for 45 years that there are powers that be who are manipulating the circumstances–including our financial systems of course. I’ve known about the American Medical Association and how they closed natural cancer treatment centers in the United States from direct experience when I worked at the Gerson Clinic demonstrating juicers to patients.

Cliff, my former husband, and I used to get a paper called The Spotlight that talked about the Illuminati and all their plans. People thought we were crazy–especially since we hung out with hippy-homesteader types.

Because of 45 years of listening to alternative media that I trust, and knowing without a doubt that the mainstream media is owned by people who want to brainwash us, it is not a surprise at all the crazy things that are happening.

Even though I have dreams of living in a community where love for all of life is lived and learned every moment, that dream might not come true. Everything is so unstable. Yet, more than ever, I realize that I must withdraw from society and live in such a way that I contribute to nature, not to the capitalistic, greed-driven system that we live in.

I am doing what I think everyone will need to do for humans to survive on the planet. We need to give Mother Earth a rest. We need to find ways of resting ourselves! My dream is to start and live in a community which can be duplicated. I want others to see how easy it is. There still is not one intentional residential community template that can be followed–although the Fellowship for Egalitarian Communities comes closest to showing people how to live in love.

http://www.thefec.org is where I am getting a lot of materials. I think that most of them, if not all, need more emphasis on living in love–and how to do that–and to make sure that animals and all of life is included in the loving.

I feel more calm than ever before. I just don’t have a choice any more. I need to live simply. I chose not to travel any more after my last stay in Berkeley when I was going to make Direct Action Everywhere my community. I returned home in August 2019. I ran away from my community dreams because I think I knew deep inside–I needed a few more experiences to show me what I didn’t want to do in community.

Even my recent experience with online community showed me some things I needed to learn. A simple lesson was–appearances are not always what they seem. Structure IS essential. Guidelines ARE essential. It is perfectly OKAY for me to create a community with very specific vision, mission, aims and culture. It is GOOD for me to create a governing structure the empowers everyone, as they show themselves to be trustworthy, to make decisions.

Even people who might not be proven to be in integrity–can share their feedback.

Then, when anyone joins the community, they know what they are getting into. For example, if someone is sure they want to have common meals be vegan, they will be happy to know-this is a decision that has been made. If they want reassurance that we are living lightly on the land–they get that.

I am SO tired of people trying to persuade me that having everything in place before people come to live with me is controlling. The beautiful thing about what I am doing is to create a structure that people already by into and feel good about–and which can be changed only by agreement by all members. The way to come to agreement–takes into consideration everyone’s voices, (including non-members) AND most importantly, our Creator.

I conclude this by saying that I am doing my best to be guided by Jesus, who I consider to be Creator of all life along with Father and Holy Spirit. People don’t have to believe that Jesus is creator. They don’t have to be Christian. They just need to know that this is where I am coming from, and that I will be encouraging people to make decisions based on our logic, intuition, nature and our Creator.

I feel so at peace with my direction, which COVID-19 has pushed me to decide to move forward on.

I feel grateful that I am in a position where I don’t feel trapped, as many who are in the city might feel. I pray for all of you who are suffering during this time. I hope that each of you will find your direction–that no matter how this ends up–you will define your vision, mission, aims and culture which includes values.

I’m hoping to start a podcast called Vegan Visions with Cliff, my former husband, where we can share visions of the ideal world where all of life lives in love and thrives by sharing stories of animals (who teach us so much about love,) our past experiences (like when we lived for a year without money–living without electricity or running water), our present experiences (like how I am back doing the same!) and talking with others who have a piece of the puzzle.

We hope to inspire people to live increasingly simple lives. I know that I have been inspired by thousands who have gone before me. To know that people can live without food, or minimal food, live without electricity, live close to nature, live in healthy community with love, live close to Jesus healing presence where people’s trauma’s are healed and unbelievable pain is endured with his help–all of these stories have helped me to believe that the community I dream of is possible.

That is what I am doing. What are you doing during this crises time? I’d love to hear in the comments.

I read this article called “Right Now I Choose Love,” and got some inspiration. Perhaps this perspective might help you as well.

Love to all. I pray that you are finding peace, strength and joy in your spiritual walk whatever that is.