It’s a glorious morning here overlooking the San Francisco Bay as I sip my Kona coffee and enjoy the warm sun on my back. Sea gulls and migrating geese fly overhead and a seal swims near the shore. Jasmine scents the air and gentle waves lap the shore below. I am so grateful to access all this peace and beauty in the midst of the political and financial turmoil which is rocking the US and the world. I’m sure none of you need me to tell you that we’re living in amazing times! Just about a year ago I suggested that we might be witnessing the end of an era, and by now it must be obvious to everyone. As I feel the shock waves radiating out around me, I’m reminded that cultivating appreciation, especially for the love and caring we share with friends, lovers, coworkers, and neighbors is one of the most powerful actions we can take. Why? Because if we manage to navigate our way through this crisis to the peaceful and harmonious life we all want in our heart of hearts, it will based on a shift from the current pervasive state of fear, anxiety, and competition to a newfound awareness of love, communion and Oneness. These words have been tossed around so often, sometimes in the absence of congruent actions, some have tuned them out. Don’t allow cynicism to disempower you! There is still much healing needed on both personal and collective levels, and learning to access the support available, internally and externally, to free ourselves from the weight of the past, will serve us all well.

Speaking of support, just one short week ago I was enjoying a wonderful visit to Yamagata in rural northeastern Japan. The hospitality of my old friend Maiyim and her husband Teru, combined with the grandeur of this exquisite countryside, and the beauty of a largely intact society and culture which has given us Zen, the art of bathing, a unique aesthetic of simplicity and appreciation for nature, healthy food, respect, honoring, and loyalty as virtues, as well as technological wonders, was absolutely awesome. Teru grew up in this idyllic, fertile area with family roots going back many generations and his generous and insightful sharing about local traditions, history, and sacred places was an incredible gift. And one I hope to share with some of you in the future!

There is so much I admire in Japanese culture, some of it familiar from my time in Hawaii where the Japanese influence is strong. For example, nearly everyone bows to each other at the conclusion of any social interaction. This is not an act for tourists, or a dying custom as it seems to be in some countries. This is what I viewed from the back seat as gas tank of the car was filled, at the local market, at soba houses, at the many onsen or natural hot springs I visited, and of course at the Shinto/Buddhist shrines. But according to everyone I talked with, there is this one little glitch, and that has to do with the intimacy – or lack thereof – between men and women. The Japanese seem more evolved than Americans in many ways, but they are struggling with a legacy of rigid gender and family roles along with strong conditioning against expressing emotions and sexual desires. In fact, in the course of teaching a little introduction to chakras, I learned that there is no word in the Japanese language for “clitoris”! I also learned that one of the sacred places Maiyim and Teru had taken me to, a mountain with a huge reddish rock with hot water cascading over it, had been forbidden for women to visit within living memory. Now if ever there was a sign of the Goddess on Earth, this was it! No coincidence that it was the very place women had not been allowed to worship!

Unlike many countries I visited this year, Japan is totally ripe for a rapid sexual evolution! The people are educated, sophisticated, and prosperous. They are not struggling with survival issues, have leisure time to ponder life’s big questions, and want more fulfilling sexualoving relationships. The seed of an inspiration to produce a Goddess Festival in Yamagata was born! I can remember attending one such event in the San Francisco Bay Area maybe twenty years ago when my youngest daughter was a baby. This gathering still stands out in my memory as a space which was inviting, inspirational, and comfortable for men, women, and children alike. In a quiet and gentle way, it changed me forever.

One lovely afternoon we found ourselves eating lunch at a picturesque traditional Inn overlooking a River. I asked the owner (with the help of my bilingual friends), a friendly man in his late sixties who runs in the Honolulu marathon about the possibility of hosting a small workshop or house concert in his dining room and got a short tour of the rooms and the onsen (hot springs) area and surrounding walnut orchards. He directed us to a nearby newly constructed modern auditorium, with several restaurants attached, and I knew this was the site for the event I envisioned! This is a big vision, and will not happen overnight, but I figure the first step will be returning to Yamagata with a small group of fellow travelers, perhaps in 2009. If this sounds appealing to you, let me know, so you can be included in the planning!

Much love and aloha,

Deborah Taj Anapol

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to do so much traveling this year, in part because it’s made me more aware of how personal stuff and cultural conditioning often intermingle. On some level they are the same but because the cultural stuff is shared with so many others, we consider it normal, ie the norm. The good news is that when you are in another country, you are often cut some slack simply because you are a foreigner. Depending upon how xenophobic a person, or a society is, you’re likely to be viewed as an ignorant barbaric foreigner, or as an amusingly foolish innocent. Either way, there’s a good chance people will realize you’re not being deliberately rude when you’ve just done something totally unacceptable.

 The thing that most confuses people about relationships is that when something doesn’t feel good, when you are hurting, it’s hard to know whether a “legitimate” boundary has been crossed or whether a pet neurosis is being challenged. I put “legitimate” in quotes to suggest that while we generally think that if we’re triggered it’s because someone has violated us in some way, most often we’re triggered because we have misinterpreted or misunderstood another’s behavior. Very often the other person has innocently, out of ignorance, not disrespect, failed to comply with our expectations. We all know these kinds of misunderstandings are very common between people from different cultures. When you’re in another country, it’s quite obvious, but the USA is a melting pot where most of us are of mixed ancestry, and/or living somewhere and among people – sometimes even within our own families – who do not share our culture but we persist in thinking that they should. And because we live in the 21^st Century with so many constructed identities and subcultures, there are even more opportunities for confusion. Our beloveds, our friends, our family members may not share our cultural programming and yet we assume that they do.

 For example, when I was in Japan my American friend was telling me about the challenges she was experiencing with her Japanese mother-in-law. One incident had to do with the mother-in-law getting angry because my friend had not placed her shoes in the right direction outside the entry to her house. Now even foreigners who know nothing about Japanese ways quickly learn that shoes are left at the door. To wear shoes into someone’s home would be just as offensive as entering a temple without removing your shoes, or covering your head, or your bare arms and legs, or whatever the local custom. My friend knew a great deal about Japanese customs, but had no clue that there were proper and improper ways to place your shoes. Apparently, this fine point was not a big enough deal to anyone else for them to have corrected her. Most likely, for the mother-in-law this minor transgression became justification for her unhappiness about the perceived misfortune of having a non-Japanese daughter-in-law. From my friend’s perspective, it was very helpful for her to learn that it’s traditional for the Japanese mother-in-law to treat the daughter-in-law very harshly. This helped her not to take it so personally, and yet, she still felt hurt by the mother-in-law’s frequent attacks. What to do?

 When you’re not sure whether you’re dealing with a natural, healthy response or a neurotic reaction in yourself or another, it’s a good time to get an outside opinion – hopefully an enlightened, or at least objective, opinion. It does no good at all to share your dilemma with someone who has the same problematic conditioning and so mistakes your warped point of view for reality. But someone who is relatively free of cultural blinders can help clarify whether it would be best to yield as gracefully as possible or to say “no” to the other’s attempt to pass their issues off as your problem. Of course, yielding in the face of an insurmountable obstacle is usually the wisest course (and those of you who know me, know that this has been a hard lesson for me to learn), but there is no need to search your soul for the source of the conflict, or worse yet, blame yourself, when it has nothing to do with you.