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the king has no clothes.

with no other qualifications save the immense wealth created by proprietary access to technology, bill gates has anointed himself king of global health policy, where he argues such barriers must continue lest they upend the hierarchy. I need no grand conspiracy to make this claim; it is happening in full view, with complete permission from the law.

https://observer.com/2021/04/bill-gates-oppose-lifting-covid-vaccine-patent-interview/

he didn’t create the pandemic, despite what you might be inclined to believe, but he seems willing to perpetuate it at the altar of financial profit. listen, I’m not saying him and Melinda haven’t done great good. I know they have. I have seen it. I’m saying the ground on which it is built on is doomed from this attitude, that knowledge is power, and some people deserve to hold it more than others.

before people spin out, I want to tell you: vaccines work, and everyone should have the chance to take one. many people who aren’t sure, often have the intense privilege of not knowing anyone in their family who has died from an illness that could have been prevented. ask your great-grandparents if you can. my great uncle died of measles as a boy, before I could know him. people still get crippled with polio. it has saved many women from cervical cancer.


https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020/hpv-vaccine-prevents-cervical-cancer-sweden-study

denying their importance and effectiveness is a magical type of thinking, more suited to the middle ages. denying them particularly to the poor, while claiming an interest in global health, is a modern curse, and is not just hypocritical, but delusional.

no wonder people don’t know what to trust. certainly not bill, sadly, at least for matters to do with your wellbeing. his heart seems too centred in his 100 million dollar home than to be in the right place. what you can trust, though, is his interest, and those of the drug companies, in power and wealth. in many ways this reliability is good. it means the vaccines are likely to be smithed to near-perfection, pharmaceutical grade, pure and effective, then sold to the highest bidder, then once they prove capable, raised in price. what they also want to sell, along with the vaccine, is the idea that only they are uniquely capable of doing it. it is this latter part that is impossible to believe. how would they know? even if so, we’re fast learners. teach us.

are the vaccines safe? of course they are. should you get one? from where I stand in the emergency room, my answer is a pretty resounding “duh”. you don’t have to worry about them hijacking your immune system, only your collective wallet. despite much of the basic research for mRNA vaccines being funded by your dollars, you still get the privilege to pay.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/

but hey, $ provides access, right? for it, you’ll get the booster, a new one for the variants that might be on the way, an all-access pass. if you aren’t in one of the countries that can afford the billion dollar subscription fee, though, all you get is sick.

bill gates, in my opinion, has told you who he is. you don’t need to look any deeper, anoint him as part of a secret cabal. he’s no secret. more than being seen as a “good guy”, he wants to be seen. and truthfully, I don’t know his position. I trust in the goodness of people, and think in his own way, he things he is doing it. his role certainly includes greater access to information than I will ever know, but I can’t help but feel, that is part of the problem, believing that like we can’t handle vaccine production, we can’t handle the truth, and should just trust.

I’m sorry. that’s not how trust works. we don’t trust people who hold things back. we need transparency, and openness. we need to let the knowledge go so it has its highest good. the truth is the only thing that will set us free, alone and together.

over the years, this is the only organization I’ve learned enough about to trust to tell it. the reason? the pay shite and all we do is argue until it gives you a headache. I would follow them into a fire, again and again. https://msfaccess.org/covid-19-action dig, if you will, on their #nopatentsinapandemic campaign.

while I was away on my first mission with them, in Sudan, I was also working with doctors and academics who left CMAJ, because of incursions on editorial independence, to form open medicine.ca (though defunct, it lives forever in pubmed central, tanks god: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=%22open+medicine%22). we knew open-source/access medical publishing was a rough ride because we decided to refuse Pharma and device advertising. we could figure no way around the slippery slope it would put us on, fearing a bias that tilted us away from the inequity that caused so much of the world’s sickness, and towards profit. we called a relationship with industry “dancing with a porcupine”, dangerous to get too close, because you’ll get hurt.

at this point in our human history, we need industry to innovate. it is awesome at it. we don’t, however, need to give them permission to let their pursuit of excellence cost human lives. there is nothing wrong, inherently, with the pursuit of healthy growth, even of a company. I think that bill gates and Pfizer, for instance, are just mired in an old way of thinking, that the best way to make money is through barriers to access. for a windows update, or an RNA sequence. it may have even been true at one time, I don’t know. I think, though, there is a bigger opportunity now, and that is to profit by distribution of knowledge, transfer of expertise. you simply increase the possibilities for innovation, which is both so much more bitching to believe in, and likely to occur.

so the question of profit from innovation, vaccines or otherwise, is not one of good and bad. it is definitely a hardcore YES. as that profit is interpreted only as $, then the morality comes into question. should Pfizer or Moderna make a financial profit? yes, of course. and, once they have, they should open their methods, such that the profit continues for all humanity.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2021/04/02/profiting-from-success-the-future-of-covid-19-vaccine-pricing/?sh=4e83f7b71bf5

during my tenure at Open Medicine, I think my favourite article to work on was with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Heilman and Wikimedia Canada, as we proved that diffusing knowledge into the hands of people was not only safe, but better than any other alternative. as I wrote in preface to his article on #denguefever (sadly, not the band): “With an Internet connection, you don’t need to talk to the brightest people in the room to get the information you need. With the right access, you are one of them.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242788/

let us light the way to a world where everyone who needs a vaccine, can get it. such an endeavour, possible in our lifetimes, will make us realize we are richer beyond our wildest dreams, and the equilibrium it brings will herald the peace we have spent our whole lives chasing, tasting on the tips of our tongue. The movement will need more than loosing of patent laws; it will need active, equitable distribution of expertise. This will allow for places like Ethiopia or India to be foci for production, and as their ability grows, the likelihood that someone there will create a solution for your mother’s troubling cancer, because it is troubling theirs.

https://theprint.in/opinion/why-the-trips-waiver-unlikely-to-solve-indias-covid-19-vaccine-shortage/653979/

What can you do to support such a transition? Well, if you’re in Canada, write your MP. You can find yours here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en

If in the US, here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Click on “contact”, then send them an email with the subject heading “TRIPS waiver for COVID vaccine technology”, and put in your own words why you think it important to your safety as a Canadian. Not just that, of course. The quicker we squash this, the more we save money, and our lives return to one’s in which we can face each other, unmasked and in love.

or, heck, write them and tell them that you think patents are the best, and you want even more. I’m not the boss of you, I just think that if you read around the issues, you might agree that they are there because they are successful in creating wealth, and we are reluctant to let go of something that works so well. I trust, though, that as we do, we will see that profit will actually increase, just be directed towards innovation and efficiency, rather than access. First COVID, then the carbon capture.

all this to say, grateful for yet another chance to not write on my book. thankfully, it is f__king freezing cold yet again in Toronto, and there’s nothing really to do so I’ll probably have the yawning hours of this afternoon to get to it after all. if you’re up for it, I’ll see you for meditation Sunday, 9PST/12EST. holler if you have anything you want me to bring up. love.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/26/preserving-intellectual-property-barriers-covid-19-vaccines-is-morally-wrong-foolish/

ps. these pictures, which I shared before, are of the pharmacy in black lion hospital, first when I arrived in 2009, at Addis Ababa university’s request, to see if we could help with setting up a training program in emergency medicine, then again 2017. we never brought a single medicine, only the thirst for them, then we stood by their side. the other pictures are from graduating classes, the first with five, then the others from leadership conferences that helped them imagine the many directions their growing number can take their careers.I can’t wait to travel there again, to see what they’ve done. now, I don’t know the type of profits bill gates is into, but I can tell you the ones I have accrued: I never have to worry about a place to sleep in Ethiopia, for something to eat, or to be surrounded by people who want the best for me. the Ethiopian Emergency And Critical Care Physicians have done so well. from being once upon a time, my students, they are forever more my teachers. I miss you. see you soon.

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    my greatest fear.

    yoyo. in the hospital til 5, but should be back home by 6pm EDT for an update.

    couple of things i would like to remind people. first, this is a very contagious disease that is continuing to spread. now is not the time for victory laps, nor to emerge even if you are tired of this routine. i know you are. so is everybody. our hands are raw, our faces too. we hold steady until new cases become intermittent, which can happen if everyone remains committed and careful. the vibe of “oh, i’ll just go hang out with friends because its just me, and if everyone else is loosening up, then….”. it’s whack. until another strategy emerges that is as safe for your loved ones, vulnerable family and friends, this is what we stick to. the virus needs larger circles to spread, so we keep ours tight. sorry.

    second, my greatest fear is not this virus, neither getting, nor succumbing to it, though it would be sooner than I would like. my greatest fear is that after we figure out our winning strategy, we go to back to the “business as usual” that allowed this thing to emerge in the first place. the homeless we housed get moved to the street when higher paying customers bid for their bed. we coop animals in cages, smaller and smaller forests, eating them as we go because we like the taste even if it hurts our body, and they live in such constant stress that viruses pass between them and then to us. the masks we started to make in canada, that so many of you offered to send me and still do, get ignored, and instead of growing our capacity to produce our own, get them shipped across oceans again, the sound of the ships making whales so deaf and frantic, they continue to beach themselves while smoke pours into the sky. instead of learning how to create/mend/reuse the things we have, we jump back on amazon because its easier, and our dollars flow to people who already have so much they couldn’t spend it in a hundred lifetimes. lebron james makes 100 more million playing a game while the long term care worker takes 3 buses to be able to afford traveling to the nursing home to take of your mom. people take planes for an afternoon meeting, and the myth that a growing economy, despite its destruction, is a sign of healthy one, rather than the malignancy it represents, continues as dogma.

    these things are viruses too. covid didn’t come from nowhere, and it won’t go anywhere until we work on the conditions that led to it, and support the strategies that mitigate it. forever. caring for the vulnerable, forever, supporting health for all people, forever, refusing to sicken the planet in order to temporarily soothe ourselves, forever. peace, forever. sounds like a tall order, i know, but we’ve never been collectively closer to change than we are now, so nows the time to create a world we most want to see on the other side of this.
    how? i don’t know. i’m no doctor. oh wait. i am. so i’ll stick to that, and let you figure out what you’ve learned from this time in isolation about what you need, what you don’t, and how to carry it into the months and lifetime that will follow this time. i must go back to work. see you soon.
    pics: 1) india from above (me!)2) mitosis of human endothelial cells(https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2019-photomicrography-competition/bpae-cells-in-telophase-stage-of-mitosis

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    The story of a lifetime.

    The story of a lifetime.
    essay by Dr James Maskalyk

    (for the Consciousness Explorers Club)

    “RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.” 
    – Some Rules for Students and Teachers by Sister Corita Kent and John Cage 

    Here’s what it’s like for me at the start of this blank page.  Thoughts circle like clouds, move in then away. If I can glimpse another behind, a shape emerges.  Sentences become paragraphs, clouds line the sky.

    “Start in the action”, editors say.  “Show, don’t tell”. Write “a woman wept” instead of “people were sad”.  Better still, follow her into the parking lot, wiping tears from her cheeks, and watch her fumble with her keys as she leans against the car.  They drop in the dust, and she looks at them for a long second, then follows, sits hard in the gravel, her dress bunched around her knees. Rocks bite into her skin. “Why?” she says, softly.

    I’m at my ancestral home in Alberta, listening to the clock tick seconds. Outside, the needles of a spruce tree I planted as a boy, now tall and wide, swing softly.  It’s strange to wake up here, so far away from Toronto, and Kensington’s busy-ness. No beep of backing trucks, nor muffled voices through the drywall. It’s quiet. Nothing is happening at all.

    Well, that’s not entirely true.  I already told you about the clock, so time’s happening. And there’s the faintest roar of a highway two miles away.  Out the front window, a bird flies from the feeder. I stand to see it better. Beneath its black flat tray, a squirrel picks up a seed, twitches his tail, then moves to another.  A chickadee dives in beside him.

    Aside from them, I’m alone.  My father is on the way to the hospital to be with my mother.  She is there for a month, in a hospital gown, her immune system wiped clean by drugs in clear bags, dripped into her neck.

    Her pale face. Clear tubes passed through machines. Drip-drip-drip.

    This past winter, my dad’s faint voice, over the phone, over her shoulder, just as I was about to hang up.

    “…(You’d better tell him)….”

    “Tell me what?”

    “Well,” she said, “they didn’t find anything on the CT scan to explain my back pain, but in my blood, they found something called…blast cells?”

    Oh no. Nononono.  Anything but that.

    They are trying to kill those blast cells now.  There are too many, lost, without a purpose except to copy themselves until there is room for no others, and since science has no way to be specific, at least not yet, we’re razing them all. Yesterday, her hematologist told her to expect her hair to fall out.

    “I’ll just ask a nurse to shave it,” she said. “It’s better than pieces in my mouth.”

    It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  I thought there was more time. I had a book to write, and a year off from the ER to do it.  I was to travel the world, exploring different views of the body. From India through the Himalayas, into China, to the Amazon and its millions of plants and plant medicines, our indigenous North and what wisdom first people gleaned from thousands of years on this land.

    Instead, I’m in the hospital without a stethoscope, waiting hours for doctors to come.  I didn’t know irony could be so tedious. Yesterday, I pushed my mom in a wheelchair, half my body hers, towards a concert in the foyer.  People listened, tubes in their arms and noses too.

    “Jim, I’m tired.  Push me back.”

    My dad has left the bedroom door open.  Only his side of the bed has been used. Her bathrobe lies on the chair. The house is quiet, but for the clock.

    It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

    And I catch myself.  Finally. Months. Since that phone call in February.

    This is exactly how it is supposed to be, always was.  All the forces of the universe, the same ones hammering stars into stars into stars, every chemical collision and thought pattern has made it come true, and there’s nowhere else to be, no other place worth trusting except this one. What matters most is not what was lost or what might have been, but what I’m losing wishing the story in front of me away.

    This is why we practice, or at least why I do.  It’s not to take the edge off of anything, or get a good night’s sleep.  It’s not to get enlightened, because that’s just another narrative that sits between me and the true place worth trusting, fierce and unsentimental, from which all action bursts into the terrible beauty of being alive.

    I meditate so I can write the story in front of me, conjure it from laws of physics yet to be discovered, from the clouds that surround, from thin air then again.

    My mother’s cells have stopped growing.  I’ll cut her hair. *

    I’ll be gone for a while, from Toronto and CEC, working on this story, watching it unfold, unfolding it.  Not sure where it will go, because like yours, it’s yet to be told in the history of things. I’ll do some writing along the way, here and here, if you want to come along.  Otherwise, I’ll tell you about it when I’m back, and you’ll tell me yours, about the impossible things that happened right before your eyes.

    The woman stands up, rock falling from the dimples in her skin.  She reaches beneath her dress, brushes the rest of the stones free, picks up her keys, opens the door, drives away.  Actually, you know what, fuck that. She can fly. She leaves the keys where they are, looks around, and seeing no one, takes off like an arrow into the sky.

    * Didn’t get a chance.  My sister-in-law did it, and it looks cool.

    *****

    Meditate with me at Mosaic Yoga: 225 Sterling Rd, Toronto

    DATE: September 16
    TEACHER:  James Maskalyk
    THEME:  The body is a dictionary of all words in all languages.
    MEDITATION: Potential energy
    INTERACTIVE:  Trigger practice vs. Mixtapes Vol XVI

    James: There are at least as many bits of advice about how to meditate as there are on how to write stories.  The most important rule, though, is shared by each: ass to chair. Or cushion, depending. From these, answers emerge.  Questions. Characters. Plot lines. There’s something else that helps with both too. Vocabulary. Not words, necessarily, but discrimination, knowing at  an increasingly subtle level the small things that make up the large. It makes a story richer, more vivid, helps orient us towards the truth. For the first part of the sit, we  will dial up the gain in our body, feel into its electric possibility, and in the second, tune it, write down what we find, where we feel it, what it tastes like.

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    It’s always been this way – CEC essay #155

    CEC #155 It’s always been this way.

    “Each of you is perfect the way you are … and you can use a little improvement.”

    ― Shunryu Suzuki
    **

    Happy new year, we say,as the earth, at a hundred thousand miles an hour, whips a full ellipse around the sun. Happy new day, headlines claim, in whatever side sees the starshine and billions of beings blink on, rub their eyes, and stare at the ceiling as if it was the start of something.

     One of my favourite koans to puzzle over took place between Hyakujo and Baso, who startled some wild geese as they walked by.  “Where did they go,” Baso asked his student. “They flew away, Master”, Hyakujo answered. Baso grabbed Hyakujo’s nose, twisted it.  “They didn’t go anywhere!” he yelled. At this, Hyakujo had a realization: he needed a change. Get a girlfriend or something. Hanging out with Baso was getting weird.

    The whole world is shouting. Baso, the tap of your heart, the purr of planes overhead. Every movement an arrow towards some unfound place, reminding us that we have always been here, like the geese.

     Happy new instant.

    It’s always been this way.  The world’s always been on fire, fear about to outpace hope, love seemingly swallowed by death, our darkest notions locked ferociously to our brightest nature, the power to illuminate ourselves married to  one to immolate. And yet we are here, all of us, together, always have been despite a million odds against it. So what do we do?

    Pay attention. That’s it, really. To our experience, what beats through our body, for it has lived a million million times, and is right now, whether we will it or not, catapulting us all like bright, hot stars into a place more beautiful and terrific than our deepest dream.

    We devote January, at the CEC, to concentration, the eternal beginning. We spend the month pouring our attention at  our attention, directing it again and again towards the spot t, falling forever in front, where each beginning is welded to its end, perfect as it is.

    And in need of improvement.  Our lives, the relationships that make them.  The mud from our past clinging to our cleanest feeling. The planet, its hurt rivers and oceans.  It’s ok, don’t worry, we’ll get there. If we pay attention, we can see that what we need has always been  at hand.

    Once, I watched Thich Nhat Hanh explain death to a dervish of 5 year olds.  They twisted, wrestling, at his feet. He smiled, took a matchbox from the table next to him, struck it aflame.

    “This fire is your father,” he said.  They stopped, panting.

    “And, this candle is you” he added, pointing at one on the table beside him.  He held the match as it burned down, and with the last of the fire, lit the wick, set it down on the lip of the candle holder until it sputtered flat.

    “So, is your father dead, or is he alive in you?”

    Alive.  Alive. Alive.

    “Yes.”

    He went on.  Clouds, rain, river, his tea.  He took a sip. No beginning, no end, only this. They understood.

    “Now go play.”

    He turned his attention to us, the children who knew too much.

    School starts Monday, explorers.  Now go play.

    ***

    DATE: Jan 7
    TEACHER: Dr. James
    THEME: New year’s revolution
    MEDITATION:  Knowing the one thing we can know.
    INTERACTIVE: Holding the one thing we can hold.
    James: Riffing off Baso and Hyakujo’s goose fest, we will explore what the riddle points to, begin with the simplest taste of concentration, trying to pour our awareness as fully as possible to an object of attention, see how much real estate it can take up, taste the flavour of absorption (licorice!).  During the interactive part, we’ll see how much we can hold, as we turn up the world around it. Look! The geese!

    DATE: Jan 14
    TEACHER: Dr. James
    THEME: Will not be televised.
    MEDITATION:  Knowing the two things we can know.
    INTERACTIVE: Holding the two things we can hold – mixtape version .
    James: Waiwaiwait.  I thought it was one thing?  It is. But it’s also two things that are the same thing.  All the things really. Sound opaque enough? Great. We’ll make it literal, yaw from one point of awareness to the fringes of the spacious edges on which it hangs.  In the interactive part, just because I’m wont to do it, we’ll hold these as we join the rivers and lakes of our cymatic bodyscape, rolling wherever the music takes us.

    DATE: Jan 21, 2019
    TEACHER: Jeff Warren
    THEME: Valuing Simplicity
    MEDITATION: Relaxed awareness
    INTERACTIVE: Gratitude letter
    Jeff: Many times I’ve heard Shinzen say how we begin with trying to fit meditation into our lives, but over time, a figure ground reversal can happen: our lives become more meditative. In part, that means they become simpler.  Amidst the growing complexity of our entanglements, we find ourselves beginning to appreciate simple things. Things well done. Simple pleasures once overlooked in the momentum of our busy days. This Monday, we slow things down and explore how relaxing our awareness and valuing simplicity can change our experience of meditation. Then for part two, we explore a simple and powerful way of creating and sustaining happiness: the gratitude letter.

    DATE: January 28
    TEACHER: Erin Oke
    THEME: Power of Concentration
    MEDITATION: Babysitting
    INTERACTIVE: Concentration in Motion

    Erin: Zen master Cijiao of Changlu wrote “…at all times use whatever means expedient to preserve the power of concentration, as if you were taking care of a baby.” Babysitting sitting practice tonight! We’ll open wide our lens of concentration, noticing the minutiae of sensory experience arising and passing on the vast canvas of awareness. In part two we’ll bring concentration into motion with a special secret guest movement teacher who has yet to manifest.

     

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    CEC #148 – What is the sound of one foot out the door?

     You can hold yourself back from the suffering in the world, but maybe this holding back is the one suffering you could avoid – Franz Kafka

    For a whole month at CEC, we’re exploring emotions.  Whatever they are.

    Or that’s the joke I like to make to my meditating friends.  It fits in well with the stereotype of doctors, that we somehow succeed in keeping our emotions veiled, private even to ourselves.

    It’s not just a stereotype; it’s a strategy.  A friend of mine, whose dad was dying, said when the oncologist spoke to him, the doctor wouldn’t enter the room fully, only stand at the threshold, one foot out the door.  The hope is that some distance, emotional or physical, allows us to walk among the wounded dispassionately, moved by purpose, not sentiment. Then, when the day is done, we flick the loving switch, and step into the light of family and friends.

    I tried it.  For years. Kept one foot out the door, held against the jam for leverage, in case I got stuck.  It got me through the day, but never left me feeling good. It required a constant denial of the worth of what I felt, where it was trying to move me.  I may have kept with it, though, if what had emerged was a sense of ease, or even true indifference.  Instead, the conflict in me became quieter and quieter, until it became turbulent ground into which both joy and condolence disappeared.

    I started to burn out.  Not simply because I was attempting to live in violation of what my patients needed from me, leaving us both dissatisfied, but because the squelching of emotion was not confined to hospital halls: it pulled colour from the most vivid parts of my life.  Friends, loves, my private joys. I said goodbye to these, and told myself I didn’t feel a thing.

    Not to say that those times were only grey. There were days, strings of them even, when I enjoyed myself enthusiastically.  When the conditions were right, or I was participating in something that intensely reflected my values. During those moments, something like satisfaction would emerge, purpose even. The spaces between, though, seemed bare of everything except a deep and private ennui.  So, I got rid of the spaces.

    Sound familiar?

    To the many demands that pull our attention from the subtle inputs of our emotional body, we add alerts and songs in our ears, thrill ourselves to the point of distraction until it is time for sleep, then wonder why we feel disconnected.  Like Blaise Pascal suggested, unable to sit quietly, alone in a room, our human problems bloom.

    Lost in ones I couldn’t even place, I found this practice.  Or it found me. I started to sit. First, in the corner of my apartment, staring  at the wall, counting breaths. Then, one winter, I joined Jeff chasing whales around Mexico. While cacti whizzed by, we listened to an audiobook, about science and enlightenment.  Soon, it was weeks of silent retreats with Shinzen, where I was taught to pore over all aspects of experience.  Inner. Outer. Sights, images… feelings.  That last bit was so drab I could barely bother, so familiar was I with burying the signal.  Slowly, though, inexorably: colour.

    I began to know my experience, the full bloom of it, and love its depth, even if its content was difficult. Maybe even more, then.  The moments of true feeling I had tried so carefully to avoid became where I touched most deeply what was making me, and with it, the insistent advice ringing through my body about how to live, when to rest.

    I also better understood my job.  It was never to just deliver medicines in the correct quantities to people as quickly as possible.  It is to be emotionally present with them, or their family, however they need me to be so we can stand on common ground, at least for a moment. It is the most subtle, and integral move because it catalyzes wellbeing for us both.  It is what survived of the medical act the thousands of years until penicillin: a true sharing of the human condition, its joys and predicaments.

    That’s what the oncologist missed, trying to keep herself safe from the enormity of what that little room held, or worn down by a growing list of tasks.  Not just the forever blooming love of a daughter for a father, the wise counsel of an old man and his answers to deep, final questions, but the passionate truth that one day she, and everyone she knows, will be the patient leaning forward, trying to catch every word. With that loss, so too the full joy of seeing her own children, young and bursting, later that same afternoon, because though that day would come, it was not there yet.

    So, I read stories about AI on the doorstep, about to winnow my job away, and instead of fear, I feel this weird hope that it might allow me more of what I like to do best, spend time knowing people, and through them, myself.  It is that communion that renews me, where I get to tangle with the beauty and tragedy of my little life, and touch the feeling of being truly alive.

    That’s what we do at CEC: create the conditions for that feeling to emerge, by aligning our hearts and minds to what beats through us.  With practice, we thread the arrow of our attention into that place where all maps meet: our living heart, and the river that rushes through it.
    **

    DATE: June 4
    TEACHER: James Maskalyk
    THEME: A map of the territory
    MEDITATION: What I thought was me was just a tension behind my eyes
    INTERACTIVE:Heaven and hell
    James: This is the first step onto the shifting ground of our emotional body, where it’s held, what it feels like.  During the first part of the sit, we are going to parse out some of the territory, the general conditions of its creation, and in the interactive, we are going to sit with some of the emotions, colour them onto a map of ourselves, and see where they fit.

    DATE: June 11
    TEACHER: Jeff Warren
    THEME: Primordial Tugs
    MEDITATION: Ease
    INTERACTIVE:Paintball! Or not.
    Jeff: There is some interesting new researchemerging from the field of smart-people-in-lab-coats that suggests we have more agency around our emotions than many of us realize. The key isn’t in the suppression; it’s in the reframing. We can choose HOW we want to experience our various tugs and tingles. And if we choose to experience them in an empowering light, it seems they no longer cause us the same kind of suffering. Hey – that’s not meditation, that’s neuroscience! This Monday night, we’ll boil down all our body sensations and thoughts and emotional tugs into two primordial categories, and give them each a new name.  Like Allan.  Or Perry. Perry is nice.

    DATE: June 18
    TEACHER: Erin Oke
    THEME: Head lines and Heart Lines and Laugh Lines
    MEDITATION:Thinking and Feeling
    INTERACTIVE:Laugh It Up
    Erin: In palmistry, which i know very little about, each hand has a head line to represent our intellectual path  and a heart line to show the emotional path. Except my hand, which has the head and the heart lines merged as one, a deep slash across each palm. Meaning, I’m told by very reputable internet sites, that my thoughts and feelings are inexorably linked. Like everybody else, I’m pretty sure, no matter what the lines on their hands have to say about it. For this meditation, we’ll tune into the connection between our thoughts and our feels, our heads and our hearts, noticing how they work together and where (if) they come apart. Then we’ll get our giggle on in part two’s group laughing meditation because, among other things, life can be pretty darn hilarious, especially when you find yourself in a room filled with other people laughing uproariously. Come equipped with  your best/worst jokes to fuel the fun.

    DATE: June 25
    TEACHER: James Maskalyk
    THEME: Sings my body electric
    MEDITATION:  All the feels
    INTERACTIVE: Mixtapes Vol VIII
    James: It is well that you’ve come this far, treading territory terrifyingly familiar or dazzling new lands.  Or shit, maybe you’ve felt hollow as a gourd, waiting for something to spring into that space in your chest, the one with once held all the quivers, like a cat at an empty mouse hole.  Trust on this one: the work’s the same.  It’s about loving what you got.  This sit, we are going to keep our eye on that tender place, and do what we can to love its mystery.  Then, we are going to spill about on the floor, let all the work fall away, and be swept into sound.