Charles Nolan
  • Home
  • About
  • Non Fiction
    • FAQ
  • Blog
  • Poetry
    • Prayer (Chapbook Selections)
    • Selections from "Before There Was Language"
    • Monk in a Storm
    • The Wild Party
    • Pig
    • Runaway Slave
  • Songwriting
    • Song Lyrics
  • Contact

Cathedral Rock, Revisted

6/25/2019

2 Comments

 
Picture
A few days ago, I posted an account of my encounter with the Cathedral Rock “vortex” in Sedona, Arizona. I had assumed prior to my visit that the reports of “swirling energy” at the vortex sites were simply New Age tourism. To my surprise, when I made my way to the top of the mountain trail and put my palms against the looming rock face, I felt a totally unexpected “vibe” – some kind of energy I couldn’t account for.

Never one to just let things alone, I went out of my way over the next couple of days to climb two similar mountain trails with large rock formations on top that are NOT identified as vortex sites, just to check for vibes.

Nothing.
​

When I put my palms against the formations on top of both Bear Mountain (AZ not NY) and Chimney Rock, I could feel the roughness of the rock face, some feedback from my own heartbeat, still pulsing after the climb - but no trace of the “hum” that had come off Cathedral Rock.

Only one thing to do – scientific method – look for replication. So, early this morning, I hauled my aching bones up Cathedral Rock for a second time, arriving at the “End of Trail” sign on top of the mountain a little after 8 AM. I wanted to allow myself a little time with the spirits before the Arizona heat kicked in. ​

Picture
This time I made sure to rest and rehydrate for a few minutes before approaching the rock face. My biggest anxiety, after going through all this sweat and trouble, was that I’d feel nothing and would have to conclude that my first encounter had been some kind of fluke or my overactive imagination.

No problem. The vibe was still there.

It’s hard to describe – the closest I can come to it is the idea of an electric fan running on a table top and what you might feel if you lightly squeezed the leg of the table – vibration without movement, hum without sound. This time I also noticed a slight feeling of warmth from my palms to my elbows. So here I am standing on the edge of a cliff with my palms pressed against an unknown energy source (the rock face is to the right of the "End of Trail" sign in the picture).

​Now what?


After I posted my first experience with “the rock”, I was advised to try seeing it with my “third eye”, which is, to those who know, located in the middle of your forehead (every day I learn something). So, having nothing to lose, I pressed my forehead against the rock and waited. The vibration was, if anything, more intense. I held my position for about a minute, then went back to pressing with my palms, just waiting to see if anything would “happen”. For no particular reason, I closed my eyes.

Click.


In my mind’s eye I could see a swirling cloud of dust and twigs. A face emerged out of the swirl, an old face, at first threatening, then smiling. The swirling cloud expanded till it seemed to be hanging over the valley at my feet. Then the whole cloud silently exploded over everything (as in “swept to the four winds”) and was gone. I opened my eyes. It had only taken a few seconds. Everything was the same around me. Oddly enough, I had no sense of fear or the  “what the hell was that?” feeling  like I’d had on my first encounter. I guess I’m getting used to chatting with the spirits. I leaned my back against the rock face for a few minutes to rest and then began the long trek down the mountain.

Unfortunately, I have no words of wisdom or message for mankind to report, at least not yet. After making the first report, I felt it was only right to share the follow up. The official pamphlets on the vortex tours (in little pink jeeps, with professional guides) urge the participants to have no specific expectations, but to simply be open to whatever comes or doesn’t.

​Went there, did that. Twice.
​

2 Comments

The Vibes on Cathedral Rock

6/20/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
I can always be surprised. In case I’d forgotten it, I was handed a reminder this morning a couple of thousand feet up on the side of an Arizona Mountain.
​
For readers who have not been keeping up with my day to day affairs, I’ve been spending the last few months in Sedona, Arizona, house sitting for an old (and generous) friend. I’ve taken frequent hikes along the trails through the Red Rock Mountains for which the town is famous. The Sedona area is also famous as a center for New Age activity, due in great part to the fact that the scenery lends itself to a sense of awe – awe being defined as “there’s something a whole lot bigger than me going on here”. Psychics, Astrologers, Alternative Healing Practitioners, and Spiritual Centers abound, as well as tours to several local sites described as “vortexes”.
 
What a vortex is is somewhat ambiguous, though the broadest definition is “a swirling center of energy that is conducive to healing, meditation and self-exploration”. Some go a bit further and suggest that a vortex represents a gateway to other dimensions, but that’s another discussion.
 
At any rate, it occurred to me the other day that I had been hiking around the trails for weeks but had never checked out any of the vortexes. As a lifelong student of philosophy and religion, this felt like an oversight. My basic position on such things is that they manifest the human need to believe. The Red Rock mountains were formed millions of years ago by massive geologic forces. Reportedly the entire region was once under an inland sea – hence the mountains’ resemblance to giant coral reefs. But there’s something about the austere beauty of it all that suggests to many that some other force is at work, some center of energy that an open heart and mind can tap into. The similarity to kneeling in a candle-lit church is inescapable (been there, done that - a lot).
 
With that similarity in mind, I set off early this morning  to climb the trail to Cathedral Rock, a reported vortex site which looms like a …well… Cathedral over route 179 just Southwest of Sedona Center. Getting to the rock involved a steep and sometimes tricky climb up 500 feet of ascending boulders and red gravel. I wasn’t alone. The Rock is a well known local attraction and there were several climbing groups and a couple of young families joining me on my trek. The kids had an easier time in some of the tight spots.
 
When I finally got to the spot marked “end of trail” I found myself very high in the air, with the Cathedral walls on my right and a smaller pinnacle on my left. The view of the surrounding hills, valleys and mountains were worth the sweat and effort, not to mention the serious contribution to my weight loss program. After a few minutes to catch my breath and some necessary hydration, I decided to check out the Rock up close. So far, aside from relief at having made it to the top, I hadn’t noticed any special “vibes” or feelings at the site.  But since I’d been drinking Gatorade instead of meditating, I thought a closer inspection was in order. So I went right up to the rock face, leaned forward and put both palms flat against it.  Surprise time.
 
When I put my palms to the rock, I could feel a deep, quiet vibration that reverberated down to my elbows – the "felt" equivalent of a low hum but with no sound. It was constant, with no change or variations. I took my hands off the rock and it stopped. Nothing had changed around me. After a few seconds of “What the hell was that?”, I put my palms on the rock again. Vibration is back. I held my position for a few minutes but nothing changed, no increase or decrease. I went back to my pack for another hit of Gatorade. My mind was distracted by some of the climbing challenges I expected on the way down and the day was getting hotter by the minute, so I didn’t stay around long. I mentioned the “vibe” to a few of my fellow climbers at the top and they gave the Rock a try. The vibes were still there (probably have been for a million years or so). They weren’t as surprised as I was. They’d hauled themselves up the side of a cliff to see a vortex and they got their money’s worth.
 
So – I made it down the cliff in one piece. No mood changes or visions yet, but I’ll let you know. It wasn’t a great big occurrence, no burning bush or anything, but since I was expecting nothing a vibrating wall rock that looks like a Cathedral is worth reporting.
 
And my New Age friends can have their “I told you so”  laugh.
 
 

0 Comments

The Grapes of Wrath, Retrampled

6/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
 We’re all familiar with “The Grapes of Wrath”, the iconic American film based on John Steinbeck’s novel about 1930’s Dust Bowl Refugees trying to find a new life in California.  I’ve seen it couple of times over the years but a few days ago an insistent  little voice in the back of my head said “You need to watch this movie NOW”. So, for $3.99 on YouTube, I revisited Tom Joad, Preacher Casey and the Joad family’s bumpy odyssey across America. I was stopped in my tracks like an overloaded Ford truck. It could have been filmed yesterday.

            Just to hit the main points:
         
        
Thousands of ordinary working people have their ability to make a living pulled out from under them by a combination of climate change and a market crash they had no control over.

          Having heard of “enough work for everybody” in a far off State, they pack up their meager belongings and make their way with great risk and difficulty across highways, mountains and deserts to reach the “promised land” of California.

          When the migrants finally arrive at “the promised land” they are stopped by police at the border and treated like unwelcome refugees.

          They manage to gain entry to the promised land, but can only survive by working long hours for meager wages and living in deplorable conditions in camps designated for them.
 

          When a Government Agency offers them decent living conditions, the locals accuse them of being “Reds” and attempt to use violence to make the migrants “go back where they came from”.

          For further details, turn on CNN.

          With a change in language, and a switch in direction from West to North, this scenario is playing out with a vengeance along America’s southern border. Instead of southwestern and midwestern states, whole countries in Central America are no longer able to economically sustain their populations due to a combination of climate change, population growth, crime and government corruption. Thousands of people are making the long and dangerous trek north in hopes of finding some way to survive in the “promised land” of America. Americans, fearing that the refugees will take jobs away from U.S. citizens and bring disease, crime and overcrowding with them, are tightening border controls and setting up internment camps.

          Fact check: there wasn’t enough work in California for all the migrants seeking it, any more than there are jobs and housing waiting with open arms for the tens of thousands of refugees teeming at our southern borders. In both cases the migrants are acting out of a combination of desperation and misinformation.

          Second fact check: In neither case were or are the migrants an invading force. There is no orchestrated evil intent behind either these movement, just ordinary people trying to survive and feed their children.

          Third fact check: existing government policy either here or in Central America is insufficient to deal with this situation. The great Depression and the effects of the Dust Bowl droughts were only “fixed” by the radical shift in American Political Policy referred to as the New Deal (and referred to as a “Red” conspiracy by its detractors), as well as changes in farming methodology to conserve topsoil and the eventual return of rain to the Midwest in 1939. The New Deal happened because the American people voted for the president who pushed it through.

          In his second inaugural address, Franklyn Delano Roosevelt said:
“I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished . . . the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”  

         At this point in history, over a third of the world is “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished”. Across the world, whole continents are approaching that situation. We can’t hide from it any more than California could hide from the stream of fellow citizens coming down Route 66.

          A major part of America’s identity has been our image of ourselves as a refuge for those seeking a better life. At this point, that image is wearing thin. The call for a wall to “keep them out” was supported by enough Americans to elect a President who promised to build it for them. This isn’t just racism, any more than it was in the Dust Bowl days, when people on both sides of the border were white. In both rural and urban areas, American poverty is on the rise, despite statistical postings of a “surging” economy. Our sense of our country as a place of abundance where there’s enough for everybody no longer matches the facts.

      That being said, attempting to see the fate of today’s refugees as “not our problem” and thinking we can “send them back where they came from” is a serious failure to see the big picture. Borders are at best artificial, especially in today’s interlinked world. A political solution will be impossible to come by without a human solution to create it.

       In the last scene of the “Grapes of Wrath” film, Mother Joad, despite the hardships her family has suffered, affirms that they will survive because “we are the people”. The people did survive. The Dust Bowl came and went.

​      Our new twenty first century Dust Bowl is bigger, deeper, and threatens all of us. It will take all of us to survive it. All of us or none of us.


      Tom Joad for president.
 
         
 
         
 

0 Comments

    Author

    Charles Nolan regularly blogs about the ideas expressed in "The Holy Bluff".

    New blogs are added about every few weeks, and previous ones are archived for the interested reader.

    Charles Nolan welcomes comments and questions from readers and can be reached through the Contact page of this website.

    Archives

    April 2023
    December 2020
    September 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    June 2018
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    June 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Categories

    All
    Belief In God
    Communism
    Pope
    Priest
    Tacloban City
    Typhoon Haiyan

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly