Once Upon a Time

My dreams came true. I gave my love freely and wholly and I was desired and seen and appreciated. I made art and lived in my body. I had a dog to love, a person to love and a garden to tend. My mornings were slow and my days were filled with pursuits of curiosity. I felt gratitude for the opportunity to behold a divine universe.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

My mental practice (meditation, breathwork) is really beginning to click and it’s melting my brain with its efficacy and utter simplicity.

Let me explain. 

When we meditate, we strengthen our ability to manage our own physiological responses. What Yogis try to do manually, pharma does artificially. And not even as well. It makes me a little angry... I feel I was robbed of a very important coping tool for the majority of my life. Why are we not taught how to find this medicine within ourselves?! 

I wonder; is it because the techniques are from a culture we don’t fully understand? Is there a shortage of role models and teachers for us Westerners? A little of all of it? It’s true that Americans have only recently had access to these teachings. Yoga didn’t come to the US until 1947 so if you’re in the States; unless you are the grandchild of Indra Devi or immigrants, your Grandma probably wasn’t big into yoga like the Indian Grannies. 

Meditation and breathwork just isn’t part of our culture and unfortunately the byproduct is that we go our whole lives thinking something is wrong with us and we need drugs because we aren’t “happy”. Our privatized healthcare system certainly isn’t going to shine a light on treatments that don't make them money. Regardless as to the cause, our ignorance of these incredibly powerful tools has resulted in our being disconnected from our core selves which then causes us to look for bliss in all the wrong places. 

Understanding how important a mental practice is, I cannot understand why it isn’t a priority for every human being. I am confident in saying that learning and exercising the inner workings of the mind through meditation is more fundamental than even reading.

We’re not too lazy or ignorant to do the work… we simply aren’t taught how important and transformative it can be. If we’re lucky, we stumble across these practices and philosophies and have the curiosity to pursue answers. But because the practice is working within our minds; by a long shot a place we don’t yet fully understand, it is mysterious and therefore intimidating but this ignorance is not our fault! We shouldn’t feel inferior because we don’t understand. As my friend DT used to say, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” Our ignorance is a failure of Western society, not of us as individuals. We simply weren’t taught. Myself included. 

I’ve been alive half of the total time I will be alive and it’s only now I have truly directed my focus inward to investigate. I’m part of our broken system too. Being introduced to this as a child would have saved me decades of anguish .. and run ins with death himself. It would’ve saved my family tremendous pain. Lovers and friends too. 

It’s not an easy thing to wake up to the suffering I have caused myself and others but I am lucky because in that awareness, there is the acknowledgment that I have caused enough suffering and my path forward is more illuminated.

Hyphae, a light sculpture by Annie Mitchell in Newton Canyon. Photo by Tom Clancey.

The Better Part of a Year

As we approach a year of this pandemic-life, I find myself with four (4) paid professionals attempting to keep me balanced and I wouldn’t say no to a fifth. What is it about being still that is so difficult? Is it that our demons can catch us? 

Yes. I believe so. 

Alaska is a hostile place that earned its reputation but the mind is truly the last frontier. It’s in our minds that we hear such horrible, hurtful and misguided things. It’s in our minds that we suffer the most. If only our demons were more like Winnie the Pooh. 

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

I wrote an article a while back about how we are all hardwired for dissatisfaction. Turns out, I was more right than I even knew. With insight from my Fantastic Four, I’m learning that self-deception is a story as old as time. Humans throughout history have had a little voice in their heads telling them that things are bad, that they themselves are bad. And the kicker .. everyone thinks the same thing about them that that aggrieved little voice does. For all intents and purposes, that drive for an ideal has served us well. It’s why we have air conditioning and NASA. But it’s also why we have divorce and botox.

Hearing this nagging voice of negativity is not serving me so I’ve been turning to my teachers during this downtime to help me reprogram. 

The Rope and the Snake

In my spirituality class, we touched on a topic recently that I sincerely thought I had grasped but hearing it on this day .. I understood it in a much deeper way .. and it was profound. Suddenly I knew that I have and always will cause the majority of my own suffering. My mind just automatically reacts to what it perceives as a threat and .. bad news .. the threats aren’t usually real and it takes lifetimes of practice to retrain the mind.

To illustrate, my teacher, Eben, told me a parable from Vedanta philosophy (the Hindu scriptures) called Rajjusarpa Nyaya. The Rope and the Snake. 

A man walks at night along a path. He sees a poisonous snake barring his way and turns and runs in the opposite direction. As he returns along the same path in the morning, he finds a coiled rope on the ground. He realizes that in the darkness, he mistook the coiled rope for a snake and it dawns on him, in the dark it is hard to see reality as it truly is. In the light of day, we see more clearly.

This story seeks to show us that our perception of reality can be clouded. Ignorance to reality sometimes manifests as rapid judgment or fear, and when that happens, we react solely based on senses or emotions. 

Guilty. 

I react based on my senses and emotions a lot. And it indeed causes me a lot of anguish. I must be walking around in the fucking dark most of the time.

As I sat in meditation, trying to turn my own snakes into ropes, I wept for all my unnecessary suffering. I wept for the pain I allow others to inflict upon me. And I wept because I don’t yet know how to stop it all. This is why I have to keep practicing. I want the waters of peace to wash over me. I want to see a rope for a rope. I want bliss.

Day Forty-Seven

Day 47 without human touch. I drove up the Pacific Coast to the only beach that is open to the public and sat on the rocks for a few hours feeling the sun warm my skin, listening to the waves crash against the rocks, remembering what it feels like to be human. I drove and drove. Into the hills, through the canyons, stopping occasionally to take in the view. The sky was clear and blue and you could see for miles and miles.

Los Angeles, you sure are beautiful.

New Music And a Global Pandemic

Los Angeles shelter in place orders are active due to covid 19. We're to only go out for food and healthcare. I've personally been in isolation for over 3 weeks. This song emerged during that time. The rain at the end is from LA a few days ago. The guitar is a sampling from my playing a few months ago. The singing is my own. The video is the Santa Ana’s whipping through a tree in Venice Beach last week, the day after the shelter order went into effect...obviously manipulated.

I haven’t known what to say about all of this. It’s all been said by more eloquent people than myself. It’s scary though. I’m 43 and I’ve never seen a global event even resembling this. Horrible that it had to take a global pandemic to bring us together as human beings, but hey…whatever it takes. We have certainly needed a collective wakeup call and whoo-boy…here it is. It just really sucks that so many people have to suffer and die as a result. I’m so so worried about everyone and sending all the good vibrations I can muster out to the world. Please be safe and don’t hesitate to reach out if there is anything I can do to help. I’ll even jump on zoom to cheer you up or maybe we could do a Netflix Party and watch Tiger King while making crude commentary about how fucked up THAT shit is. Whatever it takes. <3

Stay safe. You are loved.

Love and Light,
Annie

My Dutch Grandfather and More

I’ve been teaching myself the guitar enough to play along to what I’m composing and come up with melodies. It’s much easier to find them on the guitar vs. the piano. Would love to get some proper lessons someday. Anyway, here’s some new compositions .. I hope you enjoy them.

<3,
Annie