“The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom.”
Brenda Ueland
Life Finds Its Own Fulfillment
A small patch on the side of the road
I was on my way to catch a bus when I saw these lovely blue flowers growing in a small patch of ‘weeds’. I went back later that day with my camera to take a few photos. That small exuberant patch is six square feet of untended wild ecosystem. In it are a half dozen different plants including grass, clover and wild lettuce along with various insects and critters living down in the soil. The plants are growing vigorously and 3 different species are flowering… all in a broad, dry field of cement, asphalt, oil residue and vehicle exhaust. There is a constant stream of vehicles in four lanes of traffic on one side, an even larger main thoroughfare on another. On a third side is a quarter acre of asphalt as part of a gas station. What an inhospitable and exposed location for this little patch of growing stuff!
Beauty offered for all to see
Even so, under the difficult circumstances, these exquisite blue flowers managed to flourish, bloom and find their fulfillment. What a beautiful color and complex, delicate structure! Though it is a hard environment, the plant has not been turned against itself. It knows its own nature and all its energies go towards its own purpose. It does not know self doubt or get caught in wishing things were other than they are. It does not blame itself for that which it has no control over. It does not carry the burden of the modern mind, with its complex and discordant layers of conditioned patterns. Such patterns are a profound hinderance to the free flow of Life energy.
What a marvel it is! This simple plant, a weed to most people, can offer such beauty for the eye to see and the fragrance of freedom to learn from.
Nature’s Community
A bird came and sat on my hand long enough to take a photo.
The whole of existence is a flowing energetic stream that is self renewing and regenerating. In contrast to the common perception of an inert mechanical universe, creative, intelligent potential is its very essence.
Sometimes, when you have a stream flowing through the landscape, some of the water flows into a side pocket. When the water level of the stream drops, that side pocket can become a small pool, cut off from the rest of the stream. Cut off from the flowing stream, that isolated pool becomes stagnant and can even become foul smelling and unsafe to drink.
This is what has happened to humanity. Disconnected from the broader stream of Life… Nature’s community… humanity is stagnant and out of balance. Everywhere we look, we see toxic pollution and disharmony… both of the outer environment and in the inner landscape.Continue Reading…
Patterns in Nature
Nature has an intrinsic wholeness humanity has lost sight of
Human society is a highly abstracted representation overlayed on top of vibrational reality. These conceptual abstractions attempt to mimic that vibrational reality. Yet just as a photograph is an inaccurate representation of a tiny slice of the full energetic experience at the time the camera was triggered, so too are these abstractions mere copies of a narrow frequency in the broad spectrum of Life.
The apparent reality of the minds constructions allows those constructions to drift away from a relational representation of Life. If one had a map of New York, and all the streets were accurately scaled and named, that map can be useful for navigating the actual streets of the city. However, if one forgets that the map is merely a map and one starts to think of it as having its own reality, then one can change the map for its own sake and its utility as a representation of the real lessens.Continue Reading…
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
J. Krishnamurti
A Walk in the Wilds
Spirits of Nature are all around, if we’ve the eye to see
It had been a few months since I had been to the woods. The daily activity had kept me occupied and living without a car makes it less likely to just go spontaneously. Now a friend had wanted to go out to learn something of the forest and the nature, animal and plant spirits. I had spoken with her a number of times about Druidry but this was her first time to be out in the forest without a group of people, music, reading material or constant activity planned. It is a different thing to go out on the spirit quest and she was enthusiastic about this new experience.
We arrived at a suitable spot to park the car. It was miles into a forest service road and there was no sound of human activity other than the occasional airplane far overhead. It was mid-afternoon and the air was very still. My friend was somewhat agitated. I could feel the grip of the conditioned social vibrations causing her to feel uncomfortable with the silence and thus hurried. She was anxious to get going, but I had us wait by the car and drink a bit of water and talk for a couple minutes while we burned some herbal incense. We spoke about moving respectfully in the forest, about stepping carefully so as not to damage plants unnecessarily, about not making excess noise and disrupting the creatures living there. Even a handful of minutes outside with the trees all around is enough for the energies of the forest to start working at the knots of social tension. The words faded away and the energy was calmer. It was time to go.Continue Reading…
The Pagan Spirit in Modern Times
The human mind has come to a pivot point. Our internal thinking process is disconnected from the rhythms of Nature. Our outer life, the physical existence, is also disconnected from Nature. This has pushed the psyche to become ingrown, incestuous, and to a significant extent unrelated to the diverse patterns and vibrations of the Life around.
To this person’s eye, we have changed the clothes enough. These times require an actual transformation. We function almost entirely in the realm of the intellect, image and presentation. Adopting new ideas and beliefs is like changing the channel on the television. The energies and electrical fields the electronic box itself puts out do not change regardless of which channel is viewed. Sitting in front of the TV all day is unhealthy. It does not matter what the channel is. Likewise, in understanding oneself directly, firsthand, it does not matter what the set of ideas and beliefs are that one carries around. What is needed today, is a measure of freedom from the intellectual process itself.Continue Reading…
