The Guardian for this meeting was Wester Kiranov. The comments are by Wester Kiranov.

I had a lovely conversation with Raffila Milgrove and Eliza Madrigal about different ways of being interconnected.

Wester Kiranov: hi raffi
Raffila Millgrove: hi Wester. so good to see you. You must be feeling better today?
Wester Kiranov: a bit better every day :)
Raffila Millgrove: that's good news.
Raffila Millgrove: you wrote that recovery will be a slow progress?
Wester Kiranov: it has been just that so far.
Raffila Millgrove: don't know particulars or wish to pry.. but many.. surgeries in particular.. drs. don't like to say it for fear of derpressing the patient.. but they really take a year for your body to be.. back to normal.
Wester Kiranov: But then, going from intensive care to being able to do most thins in just two months is not even that slow
Raffila Millgrove: some serious illness. same story. long recoveries.
Raffila Millgrove: no that's not slow at all!
Wester Kiranov: i am still easily tired though
Raffila Millgrove nods.
Raffila Millgrove: health things are tedious, but when you know your outcome will be good.. that you will be back again.. at least then you have lots of good things to look forward to.
Raffila Millgrove: do you have something in particular.. you plan to do.. when you are back to 100 percent?
Wester Kiranov: i am grateful i'm still alive. it's shocking how fragile the body is, really
Wester Kiranov: i don't have any particular plans, no
Raffila Millgrove: once when my husband very ill.. i spent the time planning a trip. we never went on it.. but i planned it so.. intensely. that it's almost as tho i really went ..
Wester Kiranov: that's nice
Raffila Millgrove: sometimes the anticipation of travel.. it's so exciting.. nearly as good as really going on the trip.
Raffila Millgrove: i really loved travelling with my children.. they are all excellent travellers, no whines, no complaining. up for everything.
--BELL--
Wester Kiranov: we are going to move house soon. that's something to look forward to as well
Raffila Millgrove: oh is your new house bigger or smaller, in a different place. What will be nice about it?
Wester Kiranov: it's slightly bigger, and it has a garden
Raffila Millgrove: ah.
Raffila Millgrove: you have a garden now?
Wester Kiranov: and it is in a more quiet neighborhood, so the children won't have to cross big roads to go to school
Raffila Millgrove: oh that is super. i didn't know you still have children at home.
Raffila Millgrove: oh i envy you. i miss mine so much.
Wester Kiranov: no, at the moment we just have a balcony
Raffila Millgrove: wow.. imagine .. how fun to have a garden to work in. are you good at gardening?
Raffila Millgrove: hi Eliza. we were just talking on wester's new house.. she'll have a Garden!
Eliza Madrigal: Oh, new house? wonderful, congrats
Wester Kiranov: i'm not good at gardening at all, and neither is my husband. we'll have to work something out ;-P
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Wester Kiranov: hi eliza
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Wester :))
Raffila Millgrove: mm. well maybe.. one of your children will like to be good at it. never know.
Raffila Millgrove: children like to grow carrots they are pretty easy to grow.
Wester Kiranov: it will take some time before they can do any serious work in the garden. they're only five years old
Eliza Madrigal: and peppers
Raffila Millgrove: yes peppers so. oh five is good for gardening.
Raffila Millgrove: they can do lots of stuff.. like dig the holes and pat the dirt in. and pull weeds and even water.
Wester Kiranov: my mother likes to garden with them. they have a little plot in her garden
Eliza Madrigal smiles
Raffila Millgrove: yep. they are already experienced! maybe your mom comes over to help you figure how to get going in yours.
Wester Kiranov: she probably will :-)
Raffila Millgrove: my mom.. so vigorous and enthusiastic. i had no idea til i was much older that she really didn't know what she was doing particularly and didn't make a fashionable nice garden.. we had so much pleasure. didn't recognize she wasn't all that great at it. haha
Eliza Madrigal: then she was great at it ;-)
Raffila Millgrove: exactly.
Wester Kiranov: that's lovely
Raffila Millgrove: and since we didn't know any better, how it was supposed to look.. we thought it was all great when the roses gushed forth.. as they did.
Raffila Millgrove: we had abundance of blooms and fruit so the fact that is was not done in proper "style".. oh well... we had abundance.
Eliza Madrigal: I didn't know how much I appreciated my great grandmother's gardens until I was grown... suppose as a child one just immerses
Raffila Millgrove: what did your great-granny grow Eliza?
Eliza Madrigal: ah well she was a sculptor really... many flower beds with carved out secret spots... very deliberate about times of bloomings and fragrances in places
Wester Kiranov: wow
Raffila Millgrove: ah... those are amazing gardens. when an artist eye.. and senses.. come into play.
Eliza Madrigal: she was very loving... kept birds and would let them go... they'd return
Eliza Madrigal: I was fortunate
Eliza Madrigal: I wonder if she ever 'felt' appreciated necessarily
Raffila Millgrove: we got a book to try to figure out what birds we have. i just gave up. i couldn't identify hardly any of them except for crows. we have so many kinds.
Eliza Madrigal: :)
Raffila Millgrove: and humming birds of course. 4 kinds. Well maybe she didnt' need to feel appreciated.. as she had the plants/birds already showing their gratitude.
Eliza Madrigal: she did seem to nurture connection
Eliza Madrigal: I was an adult before I saw a hummingbird... how lovely
Wester Kiranov: and she did it because she loved doing it, didn't she?
--BELL--
Wester Kiranov: I'm not sure I've ever seem a hummingbird. maybe in the zoo.
Raffila Millgrove: it took me years to get some good photos of them.. they are so fast. i love their sound of hum. so loud. i watch them all day long. they come and go on strange migration patterns. but same ones come back. one builds nest in same place each yr. her babies die. it's semi-depressing that she is not too smart.
Eliza Madrigal: she would say she felt alive with her hands in the ground
Eliza Madrigal: oh , yes that is sad
Raffila Millgrove: well.. it's strange isn't it. to watch a bird make nest in wrong place and do it 3 times already. we find it odd.
Wester Kiranov: ahh
Wester Kiranov: (I like those birdies)
Eliza Madrigal: :))
Raffila Millgrove watches the birds flying straight up. sweeet.
Eliza Madrigal: I wonder if there would be a way to make a gentle obstacle for her
Raffila Millgrove: can't do it. she's picked camelia bush and the branches aren't.. strong enough.. seem like the nest falls out every time she does it.
Wester Kiranov: maybe you should put up scaffoldings
Raffila Millgrove: maybe she doesn't know how to anchor a nest right. i dunno. i wish i could get a mentor bird in to help her. hahaha
Eliza Madrigal grins
Raffila Millgrove: also we have huge spiders who make giantic webs.. that is very interesting to see.
Raffila Millgrove: how big these webs are.. amazing.
Eliza Madrigal: oh, yes fascinating
Wester Kiranov: great
Raffila Millgrove: when my mother in law came to stay. she said to me.. i don't look at details you do.. you see so much more than i do.. i am glad you are showing me things. she was 91. i wish she could come again.
Eliza Madrigal: instinct is amazing
Raffila Millgrove: she loved seeing things she'd never looked at before. i just loved showing her.
Wester Kiranov: that's lovely, still being curious at that age
Raffila Millgrove: to be so old.. and missing things.. it was so neat to fill her in on stuff.
Raffila Millgrove: oh she's very smart and curious. she's great to take about.
Raffila Millgrove: lot of stamina. she lasted for whole one hour long hike thru camellia forest to see everything. she did better than a lot of the others.
Eliza Madrigal: sounds as though you have nurtured quite the family Raffi
Raffila Millgrove: well i am only child. all my people are dead. so what i have.. my children. my husbands families. they are important to me.
Eliza Madrigal: of course
Raffila Millgrove: it's very weird to have no family. most people have a cousin or something.
Wester Kiranov: my mother helped out a lot when I was so ill. I was very glad she was able to and wanted to do it as well
Eliza Madrigal: yes, fortunate
Eliza Madrigal: not that you fell ill of course... must have been frightening for everyone
Raffila Millgrove: if your children only five tho.. maybe they were not scared terribly. maybe they didn't know how ill you were.
Wester Kiranov: it was frightening to everbody else, but not really to me
Eliza Madrigal: my oldest daughter helped a lot when I was very ill a decade or so ago... bit sad that she did but grateful
Eliza Madrigal: no, Wester?
Wester Kiranov: my husband only took the children to see me when I was able to talk some sense again, after two or three days
Raffila Millgrove: you were not frightened .. about leaving your children alone. that is what scared me. not the illness. the fear of leaving them so young.
Eliza Madrigal nods
Wester Kiranov: I think it is because i missed the really serious part. At some point I realized I could have died, but i never was at the point where i realized I could die
Eliza Madrigal: well one realizes how we all need networks of support
Raffila Millgrove: ah.
Eliza Madrigal: ohh
Raffila Millgrove: by time you realized how serious. you were already going to be ok. that makes sense.
Wester Kiranov: the two days when i was most ill have vanished from my memory
--BELL--
Wester Kiranov: but i'm sure my daughter realized that it was really serious. She asked my husband at some point if i wasn't going to die
Eliza Madrigal: oh :(
Wester Kiranov: and she was unusually quiet in the first weeks
Raffila Millgrove: wester. while you were in hospital.. and getting better etc.. did you ... use your religious tradition.. as resource in that time. just wondering since that's our theme this week.
Raffila Millgrove: oh sorry i was typing that as you were thinking of your daughter.
Wester Kiranov: i didn't really, i'm afraid
Eliza Madrigal: sounds like family was your resource
Wester Kiranov: just a bit of meditation when I was well enough to sit up
Raffila Millgrove: when i was sick, this lady who was a co worker. she asked her whole church (very large one) to pray for me. i was kind of suprirsed and it ... cheered me. i was very touched by all those strangers saying my name and praying.
Wester Kiranov: that is touching
Eliza Madrigal: :) I was given a 'prayer cloth'... remember that feeling so comforting too
Eliza Madrigal: woman I didn't know
Raffila Millgrove: wow really. i never heard of prayer cloth. how does that work?
Eliza Madrigal: well in her tradition/church, they pray over these cloths suppose... take them to hospitals and such
Eliza Madrigal: sort of send their intentions into them in a way :)
Raffila Millgrove: ah. i can do that. imbue cloth. i didn't know they did it formally in churches. that is pretty cool.
Eliza Madrigal: I think it matters in a way... as with the karuna metta meditations... perhaps just in the sense that there is a kind of opening... resource loosened.. hard to describe... interconnectedness
Raffila Millgrove nods in agreement.
Wester Kiranov: (nods too)
Raffila Millgrove: they did a study. chickens. terrified of darkness.
Raffila Millgrove: put a robot with a light on its head into room. with crate of chickens on one side. pitch black room. Robot programmed to randomly move--but.. programmed to spend equal amount of time in each half of room. But they recorded that the robot.. spent much more time in the chicken half of room. supposed to prove that the power of the group of sentient beings could affect a machine... power of their need for light.
Wester Kiranov: that's a weird experiment
Eliza Madrigal: interesting and yes weird :) ...but.. as though they drew out something needed from the space?
--BELL--
Raffila Millgrove: they do a lot of experiments like this. and why? becasuse anecdotally they know.. some people.. they don't want them in the room when they are trying to demo new technology to a cliennt. the technology tends to misfire when them around. Same idea as the "coolers" in gamlbling. a cooler can bring down a gambler's good luck streak.. suddenly he is loosing. same ideas. they are trying to test.. prove them with scientific experiments. i'ts not Voodoo. it's some kind of energy/force. like the experiments Vera moss did on healer's hands with heat photos.
Eliza Madrigal: ah not familiar
Raffila Millgrove: they gave her.. her own lab at UCLA.
Eliza Madrigal: I was listening to these eckhart tolle audios and considering that he isn't saying much that is new... but he is such spaciousness that I think he provides that for others and therefore what is already in people is more receptive in a way... power of presence
Raffila Millgrove: probably have my name wrong.. will look for link later..
Eliza Madrigal: know people who are not interested in meditation or spirituality at all who find comfort listening to him... so thought of that with the idea of some people changing the room
Wester Kiranov: i do get very skeptical when i hear things like this. i'm sure it is partly because it doesn't fit my expectations, but also because so often people claim experiments proved something when it didn't at all.
Eliza Madrigal: many factors
Wester Kiranov: so if you have a link to the experiment itself, that would be good :-)
Raffila Millgrove: well a famous millionaire (maybe billion) wanted to prove power of prayer. established huge funding.. for a project/experiment. where cardiology patients.. unknown to them.. had peope praying for them.. and it didn't affect their outcomes. i always felt they should have had a control group of patients who DID know they were being prayed for.
Eliza Madrigal: surprised if they haven't done such an experiment by now...
Eliza Madrigal: remember a book years ago "How we die" that I think went into this a bit too
Raffila Millgrove: well he was trying to prove that prayer ALL by itself worked. and according to this study.. it doesn't.
Raffila Millgrove: but how much more effective it would have been.. if he could have proven. that people who know they are being thought about by stangers are goign to have a better outcome. i think he might have proven that possibly.
Eliza Madrigal: so telling someone that you pray for them or dedicate practice in some way may be important :)
Eliza Madrigal: or just appreciate them
Raffila Millgrove: yes.. this is like the placebo effect.. even when people KNOW that the pill is sugar but they are told.. it's going to help you.. that had statistical difference.. people seem to do better. they are considering whether or not drs. might prescribe sugar pills again as they did in old days.
Wester Kiranov: sorry, rl phone call. see you both later
Eliza Madrigal: I was given clear glasses as a child, for a while :) not sure it helped but obviously needed some attention, hah
Raffila Millgrove: bye Wester.
Eliza Madrigal: Bye Wester :) lovely to see you
Raffila Millgrove: well i am rather happy they are looking into these things in a quiet, sensible way.
Eliza Madrigal: it doesn't seem harmful but I agree that skepticism is an important tool
Raffila Millgrove: for a long time this area was a mess.. clouded by charlatans etc.. couldn't get funding for these ideas. now they are doing a lot better.
Eliza Madrigal: I think the main thing is that if one waits for a study to prove something it isn't very helpful...private intuition seems most important
Eliza Madrigal: it can be fascinating though
Raffila Millgrove: in the 1970's they had this horrible idea that patients should take responsbility for their cancer. they thought if person felt responsible for being sick. they could take also responsiblity for cure. what a nightmare. they gave that one up. that was really hamrful.
Eliza Madrigal: ack... but I suppose many helpful things go awry like that... visualizations to kill harmful cells, etc
Raffila Millgrove: yes. that was part of same process... the visulization. same kettle of fish in that one. was not good.
Raffila Millgrove: they mixed those two things together... It's taken awhile to get over that mess and start over.
Eliza Madrigal: I'm sure that some, when faced with fear, still try things like that, or blame themselves...
Eliza Madrigal: I was thinking that when healthy, things like prayer cloths seem superstitious but when really facing fear quite different
--BELL--
Raffila Millgrove: personally i am amazed and thrilled to hear of the prayer cloth. because i know that you can put healing power into textiles. i cannot heal anyone with my hands.. but i know i can put healing and protection into cloth. i do it only rarely.. and only for someone who asks for it. and believes it can work. But i dont' know what makes it work really.. and i stay away from it since i have no teacher or understanding of it.
Eliza Madrigal: I suppose in the same way that a room can be filled by someone's singing...
Eliza Madrigal: maybe "Feed Love" is a good guideline
Eliza Madrigal: :) sounds sappy... but well it is 5 am or so, hah
Raffila Millgrove: oh gosh .. so late for you.. we better jump up so you can get some rest!!!
Eliza Madrigal: :) nice to talk with you Raffi
Raffila Millgrove: you too Eliza. sleep well.
Raffila Millgrove: xoxo
Eliza Madrigal: thanks, Nite :) you too when you get there
Eliza Madrigal: xoxox