Economic Crisis?...or...Extraordinary Opportunity!

               (photo courtesy of Asher Yaron's bike tire patch)

I have a solution to the current economic challenges and it is based on the simple statement, "All that we need we already have."  The citizens and corporations of this country have been accumulating,  amassing, and hoarding stuff for generations and it is sitting, underused and under appreciated, in storage facilities everywhere.  It is time to use the teaching of the story of Joseph and to tap into the stored resources in these times of famine and hardship.

         
How can we access this abundance of resources? 
I suggest we come together in small communities and neighborhoods and create weekly gatherings that are Gift Exchanges.
 

Close Communities are Happy Communities

By giving our attention a local focus we can create possibilities for prosperity and success right in our own backyards.  Get 10 neighbors together and have everyone list their individual gifts and you will be amazed at the depth of resources available.  The human desire to give compassionately is vast and deep.  Tapping that resource and multiplying and expanding it is creating a powerful movement towards abundance and prosperity. 

         
What constitutes a Gift?  A song or poem, appreciation, a motorhome, currency.  A Gift should be thoughtful and authentic to the person who is giving it and it should end up with the person who will appreciate it the most!

Practically...this is how it would work.

•  Once a week, preferably on a weekend, a Gift Exchange is created whereby community members gather together (at a site that is Gifted) to meet, socialize, and bring their Gifts to share.  Community members are encouraged to bring their instruments to the weekly event, or to participate fully in whatever way they feel moved.  The Gift Exchange is meant to be FUN and JOYFUL!

• At the end of the day there will most likely be an excess of Gifts that become the temporary assets of the local Gift Exchange organization.  These Gifts can then be cataloged, by a volunteer, stored (at a facility that is Gifted), and listed online.

•  After just a few weeks the amount of excess assets will have multiplied and community members can check locally first before making a purchase.  After several months a communities' assets may have grown to the point where they can Gift to other communities in need.

No individual can fix our current problems...and certainly no politician!  WE, THE PEOPLE, can create abundance and prosperity by coming together, by sharing, and by discovering that we are more united in our similarities than we are divided by our differences.
         

The Ruch Gift Exchange - Opening Day!

A special thanks to our host, Chris Beekman, for providing a perfect space for our first happening!  We played music, ate, drank, and connected with new friends discussing and exploring new creative endeavors and possibilities while we exchanged our Gifts!  Some of the Gifted items included:       

• Freshly baked bread from Rise-Up!                     

• Goat Chevre from Siskiyou Crest                        

• Freshly roasted coffees from Wake-Up!               

• Incense and incense holder                                   

• chocolate covered Goji berries                             

• A $15 Food For Less Gift Card                           

• US Currency

Thanks again to all participants......we will be gathering again this coming Sunday, weather permitting, in an ever expanding way.....more fun...more joy...more sharing...more gifting...and more abundance!

Same time - 9 am - 1 pm,    Same place - Crystal Clear Satellite parking lot.  See you there.....

Trees of Knowledge

This past week I received a Chinese Acupuncture 5 Elements treatment with my friend and talented healer Lee Showerman. Lee suggests a minimum of 4 treatments a year around the time of the change of seasons. She explained how the earth, uncomfortably, shifts from one season to the next. After summertime, which is the most Yang (active) time of the year, the shift to Autumn brings with it a time of withdrawing from the intense activity in the physical world.

For the past week I had been feeling slightly depleted of energy and desiring to rest and sleep more. Knowing intuitively that all life is experiencing these same feelings, because we all are connected to the earth and to each other, I called Lee to make an appointment for my seasonal energy balancing of my 5 elements.

Lee described our lives like that of a tree whose focus changes from flowering outwardly to withdrawing and bringing the energy back to its roots.

I loved this metaphor and spent meditation time dwelling in returning to my own roots, as a spiritual being having a human incarnation. Of letting go of the daily worrisome thoughts about survival and competition, and directing my focus and thoughts about creating wonder, love, and joy.

It's easy for us to get offtrack and be pulled down by the gravity of the human experience especially at this season of reflection and introspection. When all we can see is the physical world our vision of a great future is diminished. Now is the time to return within and re-energize our dreams and visions. We may not see the physical results until the springtime, but we will feel and know that we are growing and preparing to burst forth 6 months from now.

Wake-Up! Coffee Coming to Buncom!

What: Roadside Coffee Service (featuring my fresh roasted organic cold pressed coffee, served hot!)


Where: Buncom (where Sterling Creek Rd. meets Little Applegate Rd.)

When: Tuesdays and Thursdays (from 7 am - 8:30 am).

Please bring a travel cup to use....see you there!

Media Blitz, I am now the Biodiesel posterboy!

Local coffeemaker pours his soul into perfect cup.

By Greg Stiles
Mail Tribune
July 15, 2009

Asher Yaron has sought the perfect cup of coffee as if it were the holy grail. From drip to espresso, he pursued the consummate cuppa joe with fervor. Yet he found little satisfaction. "Everything always fell short," Yaron says, until he began roasting beans on his barbecue, one pound at a time. "I couldn't believe how good it was."

He soon discovered merely home roasting wasn't enough. "About three or four days after roasting the beans begin to deteriorate and the taste starts to change," Yaron says.

The confluence of events ranging from the global recession to his own awakening led Yaron to transform his simple interest in fresh brews to a commercial venture called Wake-Up! He delivers both freshly roasted beans and cold-pressed coffee to customers out of an Ashland office.

For a dozen years Yaron and his wife, Avara, produced fine jewelry from gold obtained during two-dozen treks to Bali and upscale handbags that retailed for $150 in stores around the world.
"The high-end luxury business went down a while ago and we started looking for something else," Yaron says. "I had the inspiration to do the coffee roasting thing — Wake-Up! — as I was waking up to an expanded state of consciousness one morning."

He began selling his beans at the Ashland Food Co-op in October, but prefers delivering straight to the customer. He also makes a cold pressed coffee, soaked in water for 24 hours, and sells it in 1 quart containers. "You don't want to use boiling water," he says. "Hot water extracts the acid and kills the subtle flavors. That's why in dark roast coffee you get a bitter kick at the end."

Yaron roasts 50 pounds of beans a week and has the capacity to handle 200 pounds. For now, he's limited his service area within a triangle taking in Ashland, Medford and the Applegate Valley — announcing his arrival with a traditional Jewish shofar ram's horn blast.

Eventually, he hopes to franchise the approach, rather than extend his own travel. "I want to be as sustainable and green as possible," says Yaron, who fuels his van with biodiesel and uses fair trade organic beans. "I don't ship through the mail, because that means you're relying on fossil fuel. Besides you don't want a coffee's best days spent sitting in a post office."

Along the way, Yaron teamed up with fellow Applegate resident Rourke Ball, who manufactured a personal roaster known as JavaRoast, which roasts 5 pounds at a time and sells for $2,200.
"Home-roasting is the fastest growing part of the industry," Yaron says. "There's been a mystique, like you need an artful way of roasting coffee, but if you can make popcorn and stop it before it burns, you can roast coffee."

Yaron can be reached at 944-0600.

Once In A Lifetime!

A couple of weeks ago, my wife, Avara, told me about the challenges she was having in facing her biggest demon (aka the coagulated thoughtform that was preventing her from receiving). Avara’s biggest demon is the demon of disappointment. “This one is dogging me!” she exclaimed at one point. I knew what she meant. I, too, at times, felt like this same demon was dogging me! The way this showed up in our lives was a feeling (a low level vibration constantly in the background) of never fulfilling our dreams, falling short of the mark.

Avara had been doing inner work with her demons for a few months. Her good friend (and powerful healer) Lee Showerman had given her the book, “Feeding Your Demons, ancient wisdom for resolving inner conflict”, by Tsultrim Allione. This inner work, combined with Avara’s new passion for a vegan raw food diet, had made a dramatic effect on Avara’s being. She is becoming more full of light day by day...cleaning out the old and allowing in the new. I am a beneficiary of this expanded way of living from the passion, creativity, and excellence in which Avara took on this latest phase in her, and now my, evolution.

This past Thursday night, May 21st around 11:30 pm, we were lying in bed and Avara said she was feeling tightness and discomfort in her back and upper arms. Independently we both had the thought that these were possible signals of a heart attack but did not give voice to those thoughts. Nevertheless, we both knew that this was something that Avara had never felt before.

The next day on Friday May 22nd Avara spent the day cleaning, gardening, and food preparing for Shabbat. During the day Avara was listening to music and spiritual teachings while surrounded by nature in the midst of its spring song and celebration. She later told me that she had again felt tightness in her body on two occasions.

After our shabbat dinner guests arrived, Avara gave them a tour of her large new organic garden. As we were about to begin shabbat, Avara, who was in our kitchen doing the last salad preparation suddenly fainted. I caught her and saw that she was leaving her body, losing consciousness. Her eyes rolled up and what happened next was like a scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Her facial features began transforming before my eyes into a scary, grotesque, and powerful entity. I immediately knew that I was face-to-face with her biggest demon who took the form of a bitterly disappointed and resentful old krone. One side of her face completely distorted into a look I would not have thought possible! I eased her onto the floor and we put a pillow under her head. Avara clenched her teeth, made animal groans and curled up her hands and feet in seizure-like fashion. I whispered into her ear, “let it go...it’s not who you are...let it go...”. She had now stopped breathing and began to turn blue. My CPR training had me intuitively announce, “call 9-1-1” and I started doing CPR. As I breathed a few breaths into her, in-between compressions, she began to respond and breathe on her own. The natural color of her face returned and she began to regain consciousness. Not knowing where she was or what had happened I whispered into her ear, “You did it! You let go of your biggest demon, it left your body!”. I stayed with her on our kitchen floor until the paramedics arrived. They quickly hooked her up to a heart machine which appeared to show a normal healthy heart. An ambulance arrived next and a bigger machine was brought in to monitor her heartrate. After a few minutes the technician announced that Avara had had a heart attack and that, according to the information at hand, there was a blockage that needed to be removed. He recommended calling for a helicopter airlift to take her to the hospital (we live in a fairly remote place with the nearest hospital about a 40 minute drive) so they could begin operative procedures immediately to open up the blocked area of her heart.

Avara and I both felt that the healing had already taken place but there was no arguing with 6 well trained, and well meaning, paramedics. A helicopter was flown in and Avara was placed on a gurney. She was alert and awake and laughed as I half jokingly announced, “Honey, enjoy every minute of the ride because this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience!”

When we arrived at the hospital we were greeted by our friend and cardiologist Todd Kotler. Todd had examined Avara’s condition and first remarked on how clean and pristine Avara’s arteries were. He confirmed that she had a heart attack but that the place in her heart where the blockage was was so small and remote that they could not even put in a stint or open it up. Basically, there was no operational procedure they had to fix the “problem”.

Two days later, on Sunday May 24th, the head cardiologist on duty told Avara she was leaving the hospital because she wasn’t sick. In fact, it was his opinion that the event that happened had most likely removed the blockage. He drew a diagram for Avara to show her the exact place on her heart where the blockage was. Avara later learned that this exact spot is called the “heart of hearts” and is known as the “holy of holies”.

Mystical traditions have different names for experiences such as this. In Judaism it is called a “Dybbuk”. This entity may not be a foreign entity that invades our bodies, but an entity of our own human creation! An entity that is created through years of negative beliefs and thoughts. The dark, some say evil, side of human creativity. We are powerful creators and always have the choice through our consciousness to create peace, love, joy, and harmony, or hate, destruction, and disappointment through our fears.

As humans we all have our own demons that we contend with. Are we facing them, or are we allowing them to control our lives and choices? Avara’s demon could no longer inhabit her body temple that was being purified by the light of consciousness. What old beliefs and thoughtforms do we continue to hold onto that creates a blockage to our own divinity?

A heartfelt thank you to all the amazingly wonderful staff at the Rogue Valley Medical Center in Medford, OR. You are all dedicated and committed to your jobs of helping others and it shows in your love and affection for your patients. Thank you for being!

Seeds of Change

This morning I had an incredible experience on my 2 hr. bike commute to Ashland from my home (must be one of the top ten bike commutes in the world!).

I started out in a state of awareness that was very present and focused. I could hear the individual songs of the birds, and noticed how many there were! While listening intently, I could feel the trees celebrating as light breezes caressed the pine needles. I attuned my awareness to this energy of appreciation and celebration.

Next, I experienced myself as a seed or nut of a tree going through its metamorphosis. Allowing my outer shell to break apart and seeing my essence exploding outward, upward, and in all directions. I focused on feeling this transmutation and expansion taking place inside my own being and becoming a mighty tree. I then caught a visual of myself looking at our "Japanese Money" tree yesterday and contemplated the explosive new growth occurring horizontally. I linked up, energetically, the new directional growth on the tree with my own dying and re-becoming in new directions. And now that it has happened in consciousness, I simply allow it to be and say, "And So It Is, Especially Now!"

Cold Pressed Coffee - A Healthy Elixir!

Recently I was introduced to a process of making coffee called, cold pressed. I was so im-pressed by the delicious flavor and smoothness that I have made it a significant part of my business. Cold pressed coffee stays fresh for weeks in the refrigerator and you can't beat the convenience. Just take it out of the fridge and either heat it up or add ice. No equipment necessary!

I am now making and delivering cold pressed coffee in 1 qt. containers for $8 each. Cold pressed coffee is a concentrate and is usually diluted with water (1 part cold pressed to 3-5 parts water). It is ideal for entertaining and perfect for iced blended coffee drinks on a hot summer day.

Like many other cold pressed food processes it is a healthier option. Cold pressed coffee contains 60% less acid and 50% less caffeine. It is very smooth with no bitter aftertaste. If you are a coffee lover and have never tried it, I highly recommend it!

Here is how I create this delicious elixir:

1. The first step is to obtain freshly roasted coffee beans (I know where you can get some!).

2. I grind the beans on a coarse setting (I use 5 lbs. of beans for each batch and 3 gallons of water).

3. I then place the coarsely ground coffee in a large container that has a super-sized coffee filter.

4. Fresh well water is then sprinkled on the grounds (use 1/2 - 3/4 of a gallon of water for each pound of coffee).

5. Allow the water and grounds to soak for 24 hours.

6. Drain the liquid and keep stored in the refrigerator.

Give it a try.....and remember, fresh roasted always tastes better!

The Wake-Up! Van - Art & Sacred Commerce in Motion

Today The Van received its finishing touches.....being clothed in Avara's Wake-Up! Coffee logo designs.

It's now ready for the audio portion of the project, the sound of the shofar beckoning us all to WAKE-UP! Tekiah...Shevarim...Tekiah...Tekiah...Shevarim...Tekiah G'dola...

Wake-Up! Coffee Debuts at The Ashland Food Coop

The first UPC labels being applied to my first delivery of coffee....Yay!!!

Wake-Up! Coffee is now available at The Ashland Food Coop. Freshly roasted same day delivery days are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

My first demonstration/sampling will be on Monday May 11th, 2 - 5 pm.

A special thanks to Sanya Brown for her support and encouragement!