Seasons of the Soul

Birds of a Feather

 

 

 

This Spring , when you see geese heading home after the winter…flying along in V formation…you might consider what science has discovered as to why they fly that way.

As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in V formation, the whole flock adds at least 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.

When a goose falls out of formation it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone…and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.

When the head goose gets tired, it rotates back in the wing, and another goose flies point. Geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep their speed.

Finally…(and this is important), when a goose gets sick, or is wounded by gunshots, and falls out of formation, two other geese fall out with that goose and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly or it dies, and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their group.

We can learn a lot from geese!

 

Portrayal of Truth

 

 

How many times have we known something that we have not said to another because we haven’t known how or we didn’t want to hurt their feelings? How many times do we get caught in self-defeating patterns that attack another out of frustration? Both of these reactions are extremes, and do not serve truth. Within relationships, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of another and consider how we would want to be told something by another. We then consider what needs to be addressed and find the way to bring that truth forward. If we don’t know the right way, we can ask for help through prayer – for the right words, and for the courage to overcome our own hesitance to speak up.

There is an art to truth and there is need to learn how to refine our methods of expression, requiring willingness to be present and conscious at all times. Denying what we know is diminishing truth. It not only diminishes the other and ourselves, it diminishes God, who reflects through us. When we become conscious in the moment of what is around us, we can feel when something is out of step – and if we address the issue or concern right then, it brings clarity to light and opens a way for greater dialogue. However, if in the moment our reaction is anger, we need to pause so that we take time to process and consider why we are angry, and find a way to express without attacking. As each of us moves into this conscious expression, we are able to come closer to one another, and we are able to overcome issues and differences because we don’t let them build through time from molehills into mountains.

Each of us is unique, and yet we are similar. We live with paradox, and part of the process is finding our way through the maze of contradiction to come to the central space where there is no differentiation. When we are able to apprehend the larger design of which we are a part, we can find our unique strand that fulfills the pattern of the tapestry. The purpose in this time is moving away from isolation and separation to find our authenticity and interconnectedness to all of life. From this space we are able to move within a sacred context and it is there that we find and portray the Beloved.

The Questions are Important

 

 

 

So many of us long to find the answers to our questions. We want to know right now. Yet, the need to take action prematurely can cause us to miss magnificent opportunities for growth and depth in our development. In a book I recently read, Fearless Creating, author Eric Maisel states that any work of art requires a period of anxiousness. In the following excerpt he talks about this process related to art, but the process can be applied to any major creative dilemma in life. He states:

“In order to bind the anxiety that naturally arises when one doesn’t know, an artist may determine to know anyway. The landscape before her is not held as a fantastic problem or a great mystery; instead, she knows what to do. She knows that if she puts down a wash like this and twists her brush like that, decent bushes will appear in the foreground. One sure way of binding anxiety is reflected in this knowing.

“But the artist who is more interested in creating deeply than in ridding herself of anxiety will refuse to know too soon. She will remain with doubts, worries, questions, and the burning desire to realize herself. She will courageously refuse to bind anxiety by knowing too soon, refuse for the sake of her art and for the sake of truth and beauty to reduce her encounter with the landscape to a matter of familiar technique and experience, beneath any surface calm, an internal war. All that not-knowing, all those doubts, all the sense data flooding her from without and within! This is the chaos of working, the necessary chaos that must not be avoided by too much knowing.”

The tendency for many of us to obtain the answer NOW releases the pressure and masks the appearance of an issue because we have “settled” it. This can be a dangerous illusion, and as a good friend wrote to me recently, in his experience “the deepest of questions are often mean and ornery; yet, in the longer run, are spiritually so inviting, potentially golden and ultimately fulfilling….hasty answers prematurely cut off great and noble questions before they naturally come to bloom. A true answer is only identifiable when the question is totally exhausted. 

 

God's Gardeners

 

The garden is such a continuing source of education for me.. The other day I was out on the patio enjoying a cup of tea, and I heard the sound of busy bees who were buzzing around the fruit trees. This year there were more blossoms than ever before, and the bees were busy doing their part to make sure every one was pollinated. Later in the day I threw some leftovers on our mulch pile, and as I turned the soil, hundreds of worms appeared in the shovel...all very industriously doing their work along with beetles and other insects whose job it is to take care of the soil.

Yesterday, we had horrible winds, and many of the blossoms were shaken from the fruit trees. Our patio was a vision of snow flaked petals forming a thin blanket over the entire area. At first I was upset… “Oh, we won’t have any fruit this year!”...but on closer inspection I noted that there were still many blossoms, and they were the strongest ones. It dawned on me that too many blossoms would mean a weakened crop. Too much fruit would cause the quality to diminish. Yet, the wind came as part of the garden crew, clearing out the weakest blossoms, dislodging old leaves that had clung through the winter to some of the trees, and clearing the air. I started to laugh with appreciation as I saw all these marvelous aspects of nature working in concert as God’s Gardeners. Human gardeners go around pruning and mowing, clearing and bundling, and then what do they do? Out come the blowers, and they swish everything away (or into the street). Nature does all of this without using noisy power tools. She is the master gardener and the great planner and restorer of Herself.

Every time I think I have to figure everything out, all I need to do is walk in nature. There before me is a handiwork that no human mind could ever fully conceive of or execute with the precision and magnitude that nature does. Everything is based on reciprocal utilization and simplicity of action. The trees and plants go through their life cycle. The seasons bring the necessary climate control, and the elements conspire to give a little more at one time, and a little less at another. Sometimes things seem out of balance, but always...always, nature returns in splendor, and the effect is a symphony of beauty that holds us all in awe of the majesty and dignity of something greater than we can possibly fully understand.

Leave Space for the Wild!

 

 (continuation of  previous post)

And that's why when people, like Penny from Lily Hills Farm, talk about the elves and that the elves say leave a space that is wild for us...what they are really seeking to let us know is that it is in the wild...what we perceive as wild…the unformed, the unframed. They are showing us that it is not in the square because nature doesn't work in squares, it works in the circle. And so as you go to those areas such as where we are sitting now in the midst of beautiful pine trees, this is where the spirit of life lives. It does not live with that same charge, with that same capacity in these planned structured straightened, narrow confined avenues.

The participation is to remember the wild. Remember the wild flowers. What you have is that the wild is not meaning something that is out of order, it means allowing the spirit of life to infuse you so that we don't put these restrictions, these blocks in the way. It is the artificial barriers that we construct that keeps us from something so marvelous and magnificent. And we do this people to people. We do this one on one, where we are very aware of our boundaries. Our heart may be doing one thing, but the head is saying no-no, that's not appropriate. And we do that in our working environments with people because we don't talk from our hearts to them because no-no...intellectually that's not appropriate. What would happen if we come into what for us as humans is our wild space...which is the heart. The heart has its own reasons, and it doesn't operate on logic. It goes by something that is prompted through this connection to spirit, to the connection to all of life. It doesn't go into what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. It just is. And that is what this wild nature is about. It does not mean something that needs to be tamed. It means something that needs to be embraced because THAT is where the passion, that's where the authenticity of life comes forward. This is where it springs from.

It's interesting too in nature how you will see that the trees all live at different levels. Different shrubbery, different life all gather in one particular altitude. And then when you go to different altitude levels you have different vegetation. The vegetation of its own nature naturally goes to where it is designed to grow. And so there is an ordering. We don't have to do it artificially. And when we see what we've done in planning of communities...many people moved to Arizona because they had allergies from the vegetation in the east. So they go to Arizona. And in Arizona, there is none of that originally because it is not part of the natural environment. So these people go to Arizona and they take their vegetation with them, and you have the same problem. The allergies spring up. The key is that when we find ourselves in one locale, it is important for us to adapt to that environment. We need to eat locally produced food because we are part of that local system of energy. When we import things from other places we are introducing elements into our system that may not be appropriate for us. And when we go to a different area, we have to adapt to what that area provides for the same reason.

The whole message here is to take off the blinders and look at the natural world. See the incredible harmony of nature at work and recognize that we are part of that world, not apart. The separation myth is what causes us distress. We aren’t meant to be isolated or to dominate all life. We are meant to partake of it…to learn from it…and to incorporate the essence of the natural world into our daily lives. When we do that in all areas of our lives, we are bringing the fulfillment of earth’s potential into full bloom. We become the co-creators on this planet, not the destroyers. And then….and only then, The Garden of Earth will flourish!

Restoring the Garden of Earth

 Excerpts from Reflections on Mt. Shasta 

 

In alluding to the Garden of Eden, if humans truly come to understand what we are a greater part of, we are going to have this unbelievable garden on the planet. And we will be so happy. We will have happiness we have never even touched upon because we are going to be integrally linked and connected to everything and everyone. There will be no separation. Sky, earth, trees, water. All of it as one incredible unified system.

We will move back into a state of fluidity that we had at one point, maybe in the times of these etheric step downs dimensionally. I think the Lemurians may have been from that group where they were really not bound in physical form as densely as we are or as grossly as we are.

But the key is to have this fluid motion in this dense state. We can do it. And as we atune, we are going to become lighter bodies. Even though we are dense physical beings, we do not have to be as solid. There will be a lighter element to us. And we will be charged with light particles. But our choices reflect whether we are going to be taking in light or whether we are retracting it, whether we are separating ourselves from it.

Every time we make a choice that separates us, that's when we want to go home and have the drink, we want to go take a hit off the cigarette, we want to go have a big meal, go out and buy new toys because we're bored. Every single time, that is the result of choices that take us further away from what we're all yearning for, which is this return to home. And home is not some place in the sky. It's not being dead, because we are already in a sense deadened, it is coming again to be enlivened and to come to the space where everything interpenetrates. It's like making love. It's like the whole idea when we're out of body and we're making love with everything. This is what we can do in body.... make love with life. We create a loving atmosphere. And as we create this atmosphere, then what we have is celebration. And life becomes not only the garden, it's the symphony. It's the dance. It's all of it.

Our Place In Nature

  

One of the reasons why the spirit of nature manifests itself in forms that are visible to humans is to remind us that ALL nature is filled with life force. When we see forms that take shape, we are aware that there is aliveness even in things that appear unfamiliar to us. It is a nudge to return to our essence, to work together WITH nature for the well-being of all life. Humans have done so much to move from our instinctive, intuitive nature. And yet we have an astounding capacity to find atunement with all of life when we redirect our focus

Why are we being asked to simplify life? Partially because we are destroying a great portion of life in our pursuit of more and bigger. And what we are really destroying is the essence of ourselves! It is as though nature is extending a hand to us, and we are being invited back into the confederation of life...into accord with this beautiful spatial connecting link. And we've lost site of this.

We've become a powerful force within the realm of this incredible earth, and we are acting unconsciously. It is a detriment to the earth, although in the long run she doesn't care. She can just shrug us off. She's done it before and can do it again. But what is disheartening to earth is that we are like an unfinished melody. We're lost notes. If we return consciously to being respectful members of the planet, we are going to create a beautiful symphony. So it isn't so much that "Gee you guys are wrecking the earth and this is awful". It is awful. But what is deeply saddening to Life Force is that we are wrecking ourselves. We are ruining what is inherently true for us, what our true nature is all about.

Reflections from Mount Shasta Vista Point

 

 

Nature

Everything that we need for soul fulfillment is given by the natural environment. And our tendency is to try to find things to fill our emptiness - we go out and buy objects, we go to special seminars, and we do all these different things to place barriers between ourselves and the real gift of life, which is found in nature.

It is very essential, especially for people who live in cities, to find nature, to create spaces that have natural beauty, where the land has been left alone. We must go to areas where the land has been allowed to grow as it was intended, cared for and nurtured by itself. And some people call this act the work of nature spirits. But it is the spirit of life that is allowed to move through without restriction and without planning. Without the imposition of human perspective, nature thrives. Our human vantage point can sometimes be extremely limiting. And when we don't trust this beauty of untamed nature, all we have to do is go into a natural environment as we are at this very moment, and look at this awesome setting which has not been designed or engineered by anyone.

This is not a planned community. It is a grouping of energy called mountains, trees, water, sky, and it comes together in this perfectly orchestrated balance of physical possibility. It is here for all of us to partake in if we will merely stop and give ourselves the space to enjoy whatever the moment is. It is called practicing the presence, the Eternal Now. And it doesn't cost us anything.

We often think that if we don't pay, it must not have value. That which is given with no strings and no agenda is part of our heritage. Nature's beauty is a gift that frees our soul.

There are places nestled in our towns or in the parks of larger cities where we can go and selectively take our time to be in nature. We are given the opportunity to choose. Life is a process of choices. And by those choices, so are we known. We are asked to select with care because it has an effect upon us. It has bearing on our being. And when we make those choices that allow us space, time, quiet, and freedom...then something can happen within that affects us at core. We are in communion with life, and we become part of this natural process. We connect to the spirit of the land.

As we make a small choice and connect to nature once a week, we can decide to make that small choice twice, maybe three times a week. Perhaps when driving home from work, instead of going the direct route, we take a side road that leads us to a place of natural beauty. We can allow ourselves to sit quietly for 5 minutes and just be at one with all that we see, reflecting in the magnificence of creation. We become humble in these moments, for there is something beyond our own comprehension that fills us.

When we partake of this moment, it is as though we are preparing ourselves to receive. There are whispers and glimmers that penetrate our receptive mind. We become receptacles because we have allowed ourselves to be quiet. And when we are in this state, we are fertile. Something can be planted within us... a creative seed can be allowed to germinate and sprout.

This doesn't mean that we go into nature once and forget about it. We don't take this as a novelty and then go back into the world from which we came. We have begun a process that enlivens us, and in forgetting this, we return to that which is deadening. The natural world calls us back again and again. Refreshed and renewed, communion with nature becomes our daily bread. Finding that and taking it within ourselves is utterly simple, and eloquently satisfying.

Life is a Harmonic Convergence

 

You keep wanting the earth to be something it is not. The frequency of earth is dependent upon all notes on the scale…ascending/descending…a continuum of vibration and tonal quality that keeps the planet in a state of balance. This is a harmonic chamber, and as the dissonance is too strong, there is countervailing balancing affect…but it is the same with what you call the “Light” body….you keep looking for Love and Light as the ONLY way, and yet, Earth is not that. It is a playground of opposites, contrasts, and multiple tones. It has scalar waves from the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, animal and human kingdom…from sea creatures and land livers. ALL are important elements of creation and the creative sound that creates the symphony that earth is. It is not a static realm of Love and Light….it has dark and shadow, terror and war also. BUT all of these elements are part of the ingredients that make earth the very special place it is. As its tone raises, it moves into a different alignment with its counterparts in the universe. As the tone lowers, it readjusts in position as well. All the constellations are tied together in a loose binding, but what tone comes from one affects another. And all are in a process of expressing their livelihood. All have a point of view, a tonal quality, a singular sound that is their own…yet when the celestial orchestration takes place, all together there is an incredible symphony of sound and light/color and movement that is quite extraordinary.

When you humans stop trying to interfere with the harmonics of nature, your separate kingdom can intersect and integrate in ways that are life enhancing to all. By using pesticides and artificial growth ingredients in your soil, you are robbing the earth of her soulful ingredients…you are artificially transplanting, and that which you do in your ignorance ends up costing life and livelihood. Then those who understand the importance of soil remediation must come forward to undo the damage done…but the loss of vibrancy takes a toll both on nature and human. It dims the light and vibrancy of both.

It's About Time

 

It's interesting to note how we make assumptions about what we perceive as fixed, and what is not. For instance, look at our view of time. We schedule our days and weeks around something that we assume is constant. Yet in the blink of an eye our assumption of what time it is changes depending on an arbitrary law. Suddenly, it's an hour later or earlier than it was at the same "time" last week. 

Seasons change, and we expect certain behavior for each of them. Yet, we've seen in the past and in the present that seasons don't always fit our image of what they "should" be. A glaring personal example is that in the 1970s in California we had a terrible drought - much like what we have experienced in the last three years. At that time, the predictions were that we were going to become a desert - that the drought was a signal of no more rain to come. Yet in the early 1980s we had huge rains and floods, and the weather shifted once again. We are experiencing that now…lots of rain after a prolonged lack of it.

Human beings seem to have a tendency to get stuck in a rut of short term memory, and yet when we look at how arbitrary many of our assumptions are, we can see that by a shift in perception, we can open ourselves to possibilities we may have kept from ourselves because they didn't fit our narrow view of what might be.

It's good to keep an open mind - to see life and experiences as fluid rather than static or repetitious. Sometimes things do repeat, but sometimes they don't. And rather than see life framed by the lens of only one moment or one season, we have to recognize that things are changeable, and so are we. Whether it's an hour earlier or an hour later, whether it's a drought or a flood, that’s what is going on in the moment – but not necessarily the way things will always be.

Where might we choose a larger view about possibilities within our own lives, and recognize that much of what we decide is based on habit? We’re like time and the weather, seemingly following a predetermined pattern, yet not necessarily. We can choose to change, and in order to remain vital and passionate about life, we must be willing to do so.