1 - Welcome to Lorna Koestner's world

 Greetings and welcome to my world!

I was born in 1964 in rural Minnesota. The normal ways my modern industrial civilized society understands "reality" never felt right or made sense to me. I felt like an alien amongst my species, and watched in horror the way we treat the beautiful earth we live on.

Over the years I have managed to find different puzzle pieces that fit together in a worldview that actually explains, to me at least, a lot of what I experience, and gives me a "mental life raft" to keep my bearings in this tumultuous world. The part of me that is a scientist is constantly trying to upgrade my "mental life raft" to keep it fit for the task of navigating my experience.

I don't know any single person who sees reality and navigates their experience exactly the way I do, but there isn't any part of my worldview that isn't shared by at least a couple other individuals that I know of. This is comforting and validating, but doesn't mean that this makes my view the "right" one. Just the right one for me at this time, and I'm glad I'm not alone.

This blog is a place for me to write about the experiences and epiphanies that have given rise to my worldview. My worldview would not exist inside me as a scaffolding to support me if it weren't based on what I have felt and seen in myself and in the world.

Here's a very brief introduction to my worldview: (there are so many aspects to it, that I won't try to fit them all in here, but here's a glimpse)

Beyond the three dimensions we normally experience, along with time as the 4th, there are dimensions of More that we civilized people don't normally access in our daily lives. I call them Divine dimensions.

Having at least a minimal sense of grounded connection to this More is our birthright, and is necessary to live in full vitality and feeling of being supported and at home here.

When we don't grow up around humans who have this grounded connection to More, we are not seen for who we really are when we arrive as infants.

Our bodies are designed as emotional organisms. Emotions, as expressed in our nervous system and the rest of our body, are our birthright, as much as our brains and digestion and blood flow and breathing.

In order for our emotions to flow naturally as they are designed, we need a grounded connection to that More. Emotions flow on spiritual channels. Without those channels, our emotions get initiated but aren't able to play their energy out fully and end up stuck in our bodies.

These stuck emotional energies make up the somatic, bodily content of our suppressed subconscious, and are often the primary drivers of our actions and reactions in the world, without our recognizing them for what they really are.

I'm fascinated by the relationship of suppressed emotions to every other aspect of our lives and our relationships with each other and the planet. It looks to me as though the stress of suppressed emotions is the root cause of most chronic physical ailments, as well as most of what we call mental illness. It is also at the root of our unhealthy relationships with each other and with the rest of the creation we depend on for existence.

Here's the really exciting part, to me: Intact indigenous cultures are those which have maintained a conscious connection to the divine dimensions, and consequently they have an entirely different relationship with their emotions. They also have an entirely different relationship with the other beings that they depend on for living in this world. 

What I have learned about indigenous cultures has been the most validating aspect of making sense of the world in a different way than my own society does. Learning that there are actually humans whose way of being in the world makes sense and feels right to me has given me hope for my own possibilities as a human, and hope for the future of my species. We as a species are NOT doomed to be the greedy cancerous plague that I've watched in horror and disgust my whole life!

As I said, each of these elements of my understanding has emerged as a result of things that have happened to and in me. Many, (or maybe most,) of these experiences have come as a surprise to the me that I was aware of; but also, most of them felt like something a deeply buried part of me recognized and welcomed with relief, as part of a returning home to where I always belonged.

I look forward to telling the stories of these experiences, and would love to hear what you think and feel when you read them, no matter what that happens to be!