During 1978-79 Brian and I attended the fourth course at Claymont Court (http://www.claymontseminars.com/). It was one of a series of nine month courses at Claymont which had been initiated by John G. Bennett, who anchored it in the “Fourth Way” teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Our teacher was Pierre Elliot, and one of the first weekly themes he assigned to us was “noticing.” We spent a week contemplating that word as we went about our daily work, which was also underpinned by various inner exercises designed to help us to be fully present in the moment.

For some reason, this is one of the themes that stuck with me all of these years. Now I am mining it further. It seems to be the golden key for me right now, as I improve in my ability to sacrifice mental reverie for noticing the details around me, from the space of the Heart.

I also find that when I am focusing on noticing, I see things that need to be done that I otherwise may have missed. It increases my opportunity to be helpful.

And if we are praying with the body as well as the heart and mind, then we can also pray to the pine tree, the moon, and the stars. The pine tree is quite solid, the moon is always there on time, and the stars are always there for us, free and bright. If we can be deeply in touch with the pine tree, we are able to be in touch  with the one mind, with God. If touching means that God is able to transmit energy to us, then the pine tree can also transmit energy to us…

… so being in touch the almond tree (St. Francis story) is a way of being in touch with God. You will not find God in an abstract idea. This is something very important. God is here for us through very concrete things.

— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Energy of Prayer, p.70

This morning I was rummaging for a notebook when I happened upon an article previously mentioned in this blog. In the New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2012, Kim Tingley wrote in “The Whisper of the Wild” about a sound recording project in Denali National Park and Preserve. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html?pagewanted=all)

This location, especially in winter,  is a vast and silent world. When there are no planes overhead, only the sounds of nature are heard– if only the sound of one’s own breath and heartbeat. Coming back from an expedition to install a recording station, and collect recording results, he described an experience he had at the recording site:

Night fell as we retraced our steps along the trail. The sky turned from lavender to indigo while the snow on the ground and the mountains glowed even when the last of the sun was gone. We headed for Jupiter, hanging low above the trees, and as we walked, I pictured the station back on the ridge, wrapped in the same darkness. When Betchkal harvests the audio, he will find us repacking our packs, exclaiming over our frozen apparatuses and sliding down the hillside into the willow field below. He will also, for three minutes, witness us still our movements and attune our ears to one of the quietest places left on Earth. In that window, I could hear the vastness of the valley — no sound marks materialized, like buoys bobbing on an empty ocean, to segment the sense of infinity. The landscape enveloped me, as Betchkal said it would, and I felt I was the landscape, where mountains and glaciers rose and shifted eons before the first heartbeats came to life.

“Standing in that place right there,” Betchkal told me later, “I had a complete sense that I was standing in that place right there and not drawn or distracted from it at all.”

There is a place close to the Blue Heron mining community ( http://www.nps.gov/biso/historyculture/blueheron.htm) in Kentucky, a short hike to the edge of a vast gorge. I love to go to this spot and absorb the silence. It feels like a healing balm. In this spot it is easy to become one with the landscape. It is as if the very silence sucks all of the thoughts from the mind.

However, Nature is everywhere. A weed pushes its way through a crack in a city sidewalk. It is easier to become one with the landscape in a wild place. Knowing that and craving that– I wish to become one with the landscape wherever I am.

This morning when I did my nature meditation, I continued in the mode of appreciating details, or, as Natalie Goldberg says, “caressing the divine details.” I was able to put my attention on one thing and just rest there with the object of attention: the daffodils, a birch tree top, the mailboxes at the neighbors’ house (never noticed before!), the Land Rover parked across the street. I felt satisfied and content to rest my attention wherever it fell.

All of my life I have avoided many details, have not wanted to get trapped in them, and thus become a prisoner of the senses. Now I find that I can rest in the details, that I have a space in the Heart for them to reside. I believe this is what I mean when I use the term “ensouling the world.” When we transcend judgement and duality we enter the world with an open heart and there is then the possibility for true compassion to grow within us. The polarization/negativity that seems to be so stark these days is, I hope,  in its death throes at the end of a long age of darkness. I hope that this is the dawn of a new age of non-dual perception.

Peace mounts to the heavens,

The heavens descend to earth,

Earth lies under the heavens,

Everyone is strong.

–Victory Song of the Morrigan, Book of Fermoy

Within the light that out of spirit depths

Weaves germinating power into space

And manifests the gods’ creative work:

Within its shine, the soul’s true being

Is widened into worldwide life

And resurrected

From narrow selfhood’s inner power.

— Rudolph Steiner, The Calendar of the Soul (5th week, May 5-11)

Birch

Birch is regarded as a feminine tree and Deities associated with Birch are mostly love and fertility goddesses. It is one of the first trees to show its leaf in Spring. Eostre/Ostara, the Celtic goddess of Spring was celebrated in festivities and dancing around and through the birch tree between the Spring Equinox and Beltane. Birch twigs were traditionally used to make besoms (a new broom sweeps clean). Maypoles were often made from birch and birch wreaths were given as lover’s gifts.

http://www.goddessandgreenman.co.uk/beltane

I am coming to understand more clearly why these two drawing series assignments needed to be done with pen. I have a tendency to perceive things energetically and to avoid details. When drawing or painting I like to have broad sweeps of energy with a few significant details. There’s nothing wrong with this. However, I am learning to give my complete attention and appreciation to details rather than avoiding them. In that way I am learning not to be overwhelmed by or “shorted out” by details. I can give myself to them completely.

This assignment is helping to “rewire” my system so that I can fully incarnate, own my physical senses, and allow them to become spiritualized. I believe I mentioned Red Riding Hood and the wolf in an earlier post… and that the Huntsman has come, making the rescue. Details do not need to trap me in a materialistic prison any more. I begin to perceive details with new eyes, the eyes of the Heart. This has been an ardent wish of mine, and it is being actualized.

The heart is the hub of all sacred places; go there and roam.

~Bhagawan Nityananda

Maypole dancing (http://www.egreenway.com/months/monmay.htm)

“For thee, sweet month; the groves green liveries wear.
If not the first, the fairest of the year;
For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours,
And Nature’s ready pencil paints the flowers.
When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.”
–  John Dryden