“Earth may become on an instant all faery . . . and earth and air resound with the music of its invisible people… You may see the palace chambers of nature where the wise ones dwell in secret . . . and know an eternal love is within and around you, pressing upon you and sustaining with infinite tenderness your body, soul and spirit.” – A.E.***
(from Mara Freeman’s blog)
***AE, pseudonym of George William Russell (born April 10, 1867, Lurgan, County Armagh, Ire.—died July 17, 1935, Bournemouth, Hampshire, Eng.), poet, artist, and mystic, a leading figure in the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Russell took his pseudonym from a proofreader’s query about his earlier pseudonym, “AEon.”
9.27.14– In the early morning hours, I woke up to an awareness of the fairies in my being, as if they were playing a song within me. I heard/felt a tune. It didn’t sound quite human. I forget it now. I wish I had gotten up and played it on the piano– but I guess this wasn’t meant to be. This has never happened to me before.
“Mother Trees” Use Fungal Communication Systems to Preserve Forests
Suzanne Simard, forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, and her colleagues have made the major discovery that trees and plants really do communicate and interact with each other. She discovered an underground web of fungi connecting the trees and plants of an ecosystem. This symbiosis enables the purposeful sharing of resources, consequently helping the whole system of trees and plants to flourish.
Simard was lead to the discovery by the observation of webs of bright white and yellow fungal threads in the forest floor. Many of these fungi were mycorrhizal, meaning they have a beneficial, symbiotic relationship with a a host plant, in this case tree roots. Microscopic experimentation revealed that the fungi actually moves carbon, water and nutrients between trees, depending upon their needs.
is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is not stasis but the essence of giving and receiving. Rest is an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also physiologically and physically. To rest is to become present in a different way than through action, and especially to give up on the will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we put it right; to rest is to fall back, literally or figuratively from outer targets, not even to a sense of inner accomplishment or an imagined state of attained stillness, but to a different kind of meeting place, a living, breathing state of natural exchange…
Birches just after equinox (Anchorage, Alaska, 9.24.14)
What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.
One day she found a poem that really spoke to her heart…
“Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced,
no father
who won’t let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up for them,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can’t be done.
Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.
You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.”
~Mark Nepo
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
– W.B. Yeats
Birch leaves on the grass (9.30.14, Anchorage, AK)
Our practice is to find our true home. When we breathe, we breathe in such a way that we can find our true home. When we make a step, we make a step in such a way that we touch our true home with our feet.
I have been meditating on nature for 5 minutes each morning for about 5 years now. In this meditation, I go outside (or sometimes stay inside and look out the window when its cold). I set the timer. I go through a series of steps that bring me into fuller Self awareness.
Pause. Anchor. Soften. Breathe. Enter the Heart. Breathe through the Heart, including the heart of Mother Earth (Pachamama). Maintaining this breathing, I say to myself, “This a uniquely palpable moment.” I say to myself (not the exact words here, as they are a special teaching given to me), “I am experiencing fully who I am from the core of my being– right here, right now, in this precious world.”
I continue until the timer goes off, watching my breath go in and out, through my entire being and through Pachamama. At the same time, I focus on something I see, hear, or sense on my skin (smell may come and go). I maintain the breath awareness at the same time that I focus on and internalize (merge my experience with) something my senses are focusing on.
At the end of the 5 minutes, I must come up with a word (sometimes a phrase) that accurately describes my experience. For example, one morning I saw a feather floating down from the crabapple tree. I could feel inside myself the sensation of the feather floating down. The phrase was “gently settling.”
Because I have fully imbibed the experience, I can return to it during the day at set times or at times when I “wake up.” I can quickly and with ease return to the experience of being in meditation in the world, meditating with the eyes open.
This morning ritual has deeply influenced my daily spiritual practice. It is a substantial building block upon which my developing Self awareness is built. Because it is done with integrity, it is like a gem to carry in my pocket throughout the day, beckoning me back again and again to Self awareness. Additionally, it is the foundational practice that my artwork is based upon.
This meditation is short and simple, although not always easy. First thing in the morning is the best time to do it, before I fully engage in everyday activities. At this time, I feel moist and open like the dewy vegetation. The mind is not yet racing and is less of an obstacle.
It is with great gratitude to my spiritual lineage that I continue this fruitful practice. Through the grace of this lineage, I am open to my own inner guidance. Through the grace of this lineage I am able to make self effort toward being fully awake in this world.
