BE HERE NOW

 
Hello friends of the Rainbow Cloud!  I have been on quite a journey since I last made a post!  At the end of March I returned home from 6 weeks traveling in India, from the Himalayan valleys all the way to the Bay of Bengal, and many places in between.  We visited temples and holy sites, met saints and sadhus, seekers and searchers of this thing called enlightenment.  I also met human beings, of all walks, with different philosophies and practices, views and paths.  I ate chappati and drank chai tea cooked over the fire in plastic shacks with monks who slept on the ground, under the stars amidst the jungle where tigers and monkeys roam, and even a wild elephant that walks by every night to drink water out of the sacred Ganges river.

India is a psychedelic trip- no drugs necessary.  It is the highest of the high masked within the lowest of the low.  The poverty and overall standards of living are eye opening to someone used to having garbage cans, toilet seats, drinkable tap water and a relatively "rich" material well being. That's right, we in America are RICH, materially speaking.  The cows roam the streets and eat garbage and scraps, while over a billion people nudge elbows on the tight streets, filthy train stations, and dusty roads.  Yet what this country lacks in material abundance it makes up for in spiritual wealth.  India is the guru of the World- the birthplace of Sanataan Dharma, Hinduism, Buddism, Yoga, high insights and Advaita- the underlying reality of oneness, masked in this dualistic realm of vibrating opposites.

There are many "paths" to Self-Realization.  Many gurus, many teachings, and many pitfalls.  It is quite easy to be overwhelmed by which "path" to take, who's teachings to follow, and which way to go about finding the answers to these fundamental questions: "Who am I?"  "Why are we here?"  "Is there a God?"  "What is the Purpose?"  I am not a guru, and yet I am in many ways a teacher.  We are all teachers.  I can only speak from my own experience and can not profess to know THE way.  Perhaps all ways are valid.  However, I can tell you, that what you seek is right inside of you.  It is HERE and NOW.  Go inside of yourself to seek the truth of Reality.  And the Reality is, life is what you make it.  The powers of all creation lie within yourself.  The entire universe lies within your fingertips, and you are made of the same stuff as the Stars, the Earth, and the Space in between.  The inner Self is the ultimate guide.  You don't "have" the knowledge. You Are the Knowledge. All is One.

Regardless of whether you subscribe to an organized religion, meditation or other spiritual practice, it is helpful to find ways to come back to the HERE and NOW, where the soul resides and the magic happens.  Any way that gets you HERE is the Way for you.  All you have to Realize is you ARE ALREADY HERE, there is nothing to "attain," nowhere to get to. NowHere to get to.   This world is pathological.  The consciousness of Humanity is dis-eased, anxiety ridden, and out of harmony with Reality.  We have divided up "time" and "space" into this month, this hour, this fiscal quarter.  We consume stimulants to keep up with our fast cars, busy jobs, and facebook and newsweek and cable TV.  A busy mind is the result.  A distracted mind takes us away from Here and Now.

I recommend finding any practice that helps you remember that life is beautiful, that this moment is sacred, that this life is a GIFT, in all of it's happiness and sadness and beauty and ugliness.  And perhaps there is nothing to truly be afraid of.  We are in Transit, from one plane to the next.  Associate with people who uplift your spirits and nourish your soul.  Become the guru, and realize that EVERYONE has SOMETHING to teach.  Spend time in nature, and have gratitude for this experience, because it will all pass.  IT WILL ALL PASS.

I am truly grateful for all I have been given to experience in this lifetime.  Even the hard moments, even my sorrows, heartbreaks, moments of truth and divine realization.  It's time we all take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror and accept who we are Here and Now.  From accepting the Present Moment, we can create any Reality we choose, moment by moment.  In doing so, we will create a better world for everyone and everything.

The Dalai Lama says:

“The planet does not need more ‘successful’ people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. It needs people to live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the struggle to make the world habitable and humane and these qualities have little to do with ‘success’ as our culture is the set."

Love, Light and Blessings!  YOU are the GURU!

-Matthew G. Eklund

Rainbow Cloud Kombucha

Recent Realizations on Kombucha, Health, and Harmony

I had a vision last June on the summer solstice (our first day at the farmer's market) that we as humanity had just begun the process of remembering about the importance of diet and health on the micro level- probiotics and enzymes. In the past we had known this information and were much healthier than most are today! Really health begins on the atomic level- on the level of vibration. As we know, vibration is sound and sound can either be in harmony or disharmony. Our physical forms are literally a dense vibration of atoms and molecules!

 We can look at good health- mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual- as a state of harmonic balance within the vibration of our being. When we fall of out harmony, again, either mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, we begin to vibrate on a disharmonic frequency, and this causes trouble! Trouble for our beings, and trouble for others, as we broadcast our disharmonic frequencies outward to the world. We can totally pick up on the "vibes" of someone who is healthy and happy, just as we can pick up on the vibes of someone who is stressed and "dis-eased." And we can break down the word disease as dis-ease, or out of ease, out of harmony. Stress is a disease in every sense of the term. 

I know in my being that we as humanity are entering a phase of reharmonization. With our inner selves, with our environment, and with each other. For any change to happen, there is going to be a period of disorganization before things finally settle back into harmonic balance. That said, the consciousness on earth is changing, very quickly!

Bringing this back to relevance of how kombucha plays into all this- there is now becoming popular a raw, fermented beverage that contains these probiotics and enzymes that help re-harmonize the body on a microbe-level. Kombucha breweries are popping up left and right in America! We all seem to have this emphasis on promoting regeneration, revitalization, health, and purifying our beings. The Intention is focused on raising the harmonic vibration, with an emphasis on health and quality. This is far different from our classical soda beverage industries! I just saw this kombucha company in Portland called SOMA, and they make theirs with mantra, or a prayer or phrase repeated over and over to infuse the vibratory frequency of that intention into the kombucha itself! And then the customer is not only consuming a healthy beverage but one what has been blessed with the specific intention of raising that person's consciousness! How amazing!

Our own brew is infused with the vibrations of ancient Tibetan singing bowls, played up on the property in the Skokomish Valley where we make our brew. These bowls are hundreds of years old and come from temples and monasteries in Nepal, Tibet, and India, and resonate sacred vibrations when played. Also, our labels on our bottles are intended to infuse the kombucha with a vibration of harmony, unity, and love. If you have a bottle, take a moment to read the inscriptions on the side, and at the end take a moment of silence and examine how it makes you feel. We hope it brings some light and ease into your day! The symbol we have used to represent Rainbow Cloud is a sacred geometric pattern that is found in ancient cultures across the globe. Within the matrix of the thirteen circles contains the 5 platonic solids, or the building blocks of material reality. 

It's not to say that kombucha with these extra things is better than somebody's who doesn't have Tibetan bowls or chants with a mantra over their brew, or places Quartz crystals around their brewing devices, though it is beautiful that people are putting that kinds of intention into their processes. In my opinion, anybody who is making kombucha is doing a service to society, especially the biggest company in the world, Dave's G.T. Synergy. Dave's G.T. has introduced by far the most people to kombucha, including myself, and sells incredible amounts of kombucha nationwide!

 
I don't look at these other companies as "competition," rather as co-creators of an environment to facilitate the changes within ourselves to resonate at a more healthily, happy, harmonic state of being! Finally the quality of things, and their consequence of consumption are more important than making something that tastes good but is unhealthy! The more kombucha, kefir, soma, herbucha, Jun (another live culture fermented beverage), and healthy local organic food is in the public presence, the more people will turn to these healthy alternatives and the more harmony they will see within themselves and as a result in the world outside themselves. It's all one!

PS: Yoga is great too, and the recent burst of popularity of yoga fits right in with the current time of ascending to greater states of harmony! Aum shanti!

-Matthew G. Eklund
Rainbow Cloud Kombucha

Rainbow Cloud Travels and Adventures

Hello everyone!  Happy New Year!  It has been a fun and exciting December!  I took the month off to do some traveling of the outer and inner realms.  My journey took me first to Todos Santos, Baja California, Mexico to the Yandara Yoga Institute.  I enrolled in a 16 day 200 hour yoga teacher training course there, living in a tent and studying yoga for 15 hours a day on white sandy beaches with palm trees, crystal blue water, and huge whales!  I have been a student of yoga for a little over 2 and a half years, and it has changed my life!  In 2010 I healed my severely contorted spinal cord within a few months of daily practice and have since not only straightened out my spine, but have developed a new way of looking at life through a more relaxed and limber mind.

At first I was curious as to how the school would compare to my previous yoga studies.  In January of 2012 I began studying Raja Yoga (see "transcendental meditation")  with Ananda Sangha in Seattle, WA, and over 11 months developed a daily routine of meditation, pranayama (breath/energy control) techniques, plus the authentic, meaty yogic philosophies of India.  In November 2012 I received initiation into Kriya yoga, a powerful breath technique brought to the West by the Indian guru Paramahansa Yogananda.  Needless to say, my standards for the "spiritual yoga" were set high.  With so many contemporary yoga schools emphasizing mere postures and calisthenics, and skipping the "real" stuff, it was something of a gamble to choose a school just because it happened to be in the same city I was visiting a friend in Mexico!

Yandara is "all that" and more!  I couldn't have asked for a more comprehensive yoga school.  We read the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, covered the 8 fold Ashtanga Path (raja yoga), and sang Indian kirtan chants every night with the school band, Jaya!  I have left yandara with more than the knowledge necessary to teach yoga confidently, with emphasis on adjusting and alignments, as well as many lifelong friends.  I am currently teaching private lessons in Tacoma, and would love to give you a lesson!  I have incorporated my didgeridoo playing into the end of yoga routines to give people relaxing and vibrationally revitalizing sound massages as well!  Think of the feeling when you are in close contact to a huge bass subwoofer, and then concentrated and condensed into a tube!  Something you would have to experience to truly be able to grasp!

 I am in love with teaching yoga to people, as even one hour can significantly reduce stress, and teaching people how to breath deeply and diaphragmatic is important in this age of traffic, bills, appointments and expectations!  If you would like a private lesson, email me at matek03@aol.com or feel free to call 253-732-8166 (Rainbow Cloud Kombucha.)

Upon graduation from Yandara, I found myself in the jungles of Southern Mexico, near the famous Mayan ruins of Palenque.  Just outside of the city in the jungle gathered a few thousand people from all around the world in celebration of the end of the Mayan Calender, the December 21, 2012 solstice and the beginning of the New Age of Peace!  The 2012 World Rainbow Gathering was one of the most inspiring and enchanting peaceful gatherings of people celebrating these galactic changes with community food, music, drum circles, swimming in the waterfalls and pools of the meandering jungle rivers, and Mayan shaman and elders performing their ceremonies in the public view!  I was able myself to participate in 2 ceremonies with some Mayan elders and many other people from all around the world!  I taught yoga to groups of people in the mornings around the main circle, and sang and danced all night the names of Shiva, Ganesha, and Krishna.  Thousands of us formed circles and chanted AUM with intentions of healing the planet and the hearts of humanity!  It was truly a transformational experience!

I flew home to be with my family on Christmas eve, and marked the end of an enormous and inspiring journey!  I took the last week of 2012 to sit back, reflect, and jot down as much of my experiences as possible in my journal!  I feel rested and recharged, and ready to man the helm at Rainbow Cloud Kombucha once more.  Though I cannot get too comfortable with the business world just yet!

In February I will take hiatus again one more time for a 6 week yoga pilgrimage all across India with Ananda Sangha.  We will be meditating our way around the places where the great guru Paramahansa Yogananda and his teachers lived and served God.  I am sure there will be great adventures awaiting in the East!  I return March 22nd, and will be ready for another season at the Downtown Tacoma Farmer's Market, and hopefully the Proctor district farmer's market!  During the time I will be gone Rainbow Cloud Kombucha will be available at the Tacoma Food Co Op, and maybe a couple more stores, stay tuned!

The people of India greet each other by the word NAMASTE, meaning "The light in me, sees and recognizes the light in you."  Namaste, friends!

-Matthew G. Eklund.