Realign with spirit—even if your wings are a little battered, they will still work...
Reassert priorities. Realign the inner world and the outer world.
Face what comes with dignity and maturity, but do not get overly attached to what may transpire in the lives of others or the world around you. Now is a time of shift. And, as always, shift comes differently to different people. And people react in different ways during times of transition and change. Keep this in mind as you hold yourself in balance, grounded in your inner knowing of life’s truths and challenges.
Stay connected to the journey of the inner self as life itself offers transition in the coming days. Allow the self to be with what comes, confident that all that transpires is as it should be, leading the way for the next phase of life.
Accept life’s challenges and changes. Flow with the energy of the spirit self, making choices based on what is right for now.
Change is coming. It is nothing to fear. It is time. Accept that and accept the path you are on. Let inner vision, wisdom, and maturity guide you.
All is well. Find your love inside you and give it to yourself. It’s what you need now.
I wake up each morning and directly out the window I see a triangular shape of branches. I see this every morning and every morning I wonder what it means. The triangle is important, significant, and its image hovers in my thoughts throughout the day. This morning I noticed something else. I saw a cluster of leaves and light creating a wheel at the top of the triangle in the way the light was hitting the tree. “Oh, the dharma,” I thought, the wheel representing the teachings of Buddha. I knew I was being asked, as I often am, to spread the dharma, that which I have been learning. “Okay,” I thought, “today is the day I write my blog. What will it be about?” And so, since then, it has evolved into the following message.
An old idea has come circling around again, into my conscious thoughts, appropriately so, for it is nature itself calling. It is Mother Earth calling out to the women of the world, asking us to remember who we are, for we are the source.
As a channel, I cannot ignore what comes through me; it would be neglectful and perhaps even disastrous to do so. I’ve had enough experience to know that it’s important to speak of what comes. I am not being inflated. I have learned over the past decade that what comes through me energetically is usually right on the money, it has value, and so I ask: Who are we? Do the women of the world truly value and utilize all that we hold inside us? Do the women of the world realize how intimately connected we are to nature, to the flow of energy, to the innate powers of healing and nurturance?
Thyme...from the earth...
Last night, as I was preparing dinner, Chuck asked: “Is this all ours?” Meaning, did we grow this? “Yes, it’s all ours,” I said. “Wow, you did this!” he said. “This is all you!” And I had to acknowledge that, yes, the food we are eating these days is all due to the efforts I put into making a garden so that we may eat directly from our own soil. At that moment, I realized that we all have the power within us to bring forth healthy goodness, to nurture ourselves and others in so many ways. Men and women alike, we are all capable of creating a beautiful, peaceful, healthy world, for I will not leave men out of my message today. However, I direct my words to women, because I feel that we have increasingly gotten distracted from, and discouraged from being, who we truly are.
In truth, we women are deeply connected to the source of all life, to the rhythms and flow of nature, to the moon and stars, to the deep rumblings of the earth, to the mystical, ethereal realms of the heavens. We are the beings who have the greatest opportunity to bring interconnectedness back into life, into everyday life. We are many, and we are fully capable of changing the world, but our power is, as of yet, largely untapped. Though many women are already aware and involved in awakening feminine energy, many more women need to get involved, in whatever way feels right and comfortable.
We all want the world to be a better, safer place. We can start to make that happen in small ways, simply by letting our spirits speak through us, by letting ourselves channel the good energy inherent in all of us. As we send our children and those nearest to us out into the world every day, as we meet people every day, we must not forget to tell them that they are good, kind beings, and that they should live their lives that way too, because life itself deserves this kind of energy, life is calling all of us to be this way.
We must remind ourselves of this goodness and kindness within ourselves and live it fully as well. We must all discover that we are all the same and that we all want the same things. Not money, not riches, not more stuff, but that we all want to love and be loved, to feel good about ourselves and others, to feel happy and contented. But how many people can really say that they are those things? How many people can truly say they are happy and contented in their lives?
Happiness, as we all know, does not come from having more. Greed, as we see all over the nation and the world, has wreaked havoc for decades, spoiling our earth, our water, our food, our bodies, our politics, our religions, our educational systems, and so much more. We are all out of balance because of greed, whether we have been directly involved or not.
Greed is definitely masculine energy unleashed, overpowering the feminine. It’s time for the feminine to rise up in a new way now, not in the masculine way, not by turning into that which we have learned does not work, but in an energetic way. We women, and men too, must turn to energetic interconnectedness on a conscious and deeply spiritual level, bringing change into the world in whatever way we have at our fingertips, for I believe we all have the power of interconnectedness at our fingertips right now.
The dharma...the teachings of spirit and life itself...
I realized that I made the choice many years ago to bring what I am learning to others, what I might call the dharma one day, which is really just about discovering what it means that we are all energetic, interconnected beings. I spend a good deal of my time each week writing blogs, not because my ego needs the work, but because the spirit inside me and the energy of that which I channel challenges me to be open and giving. After a lifetime of hiding behind shyness—which is another side of ego too, I might add—I now know that the rest of my life is taking me in a new direction and I am letting it guide me. I will not stand in its way. And I can tell you, it’s never too late to change. It’s really all about allowing the energy of change, connected to the flow of nature, the energy of all things, to take over, and daring to go with it.
I notice, especially over the past few months, how strikingly desperate we all are for change and how many people feel helpless, lost, and even hopeless in the face of what we have done to our planet and our species. Have we indeed turned into zombie creatures that just roam the earth destroying uncontrollably, without any connection to the sacredness of life? Have we come so far from caring about others that we cannot see that we are all in the same boat, desperately fighting for our next clean breath of air, our next sip of clear water, our next bite of pure food? Are we so far gone that we do not care if our earth gets fracked and drained of its resources, further destroying that which we have already destroyed to the point of no return?
So what do we do now? Where do we go from here? Well, I have a few ideas, simple ideas that I’ve been utilizing myself for a long time. I know they work. It all depends on who you are and how you personally decide to investigate changing your own lifestyle. Each of us must make personal decisions to change how we live in order for others to do the same. We can’t ask of others what we are not willing to do ourselves. But I can attest that making even simple changes begins a process of change. Keep in mind, however, that although change can happen on a simple scale, even the most simple of changes requires discipline, but not so much that balance is lost. Balance, as we see in nature, is of utmost importance.
Learning to do simple meditation on the conditions of the earth and humanity, breathing in the pain and destruction that we see and breathing out healing, nurturing energy is extremely easy. Everyone breathes. So what if we all set the intention to breathe in a new way, asking that each inhale we take be a breath focused on what is wrong in the world and each exhale be a breath of healing energy? Can we do it?
Try it. Set the intent that each normal breath, whether consciously focused on or not, have meaning. Set the intent for the self first, then for those closest, then for the world. Ask that the energy of healing and nurturance flow through you and that it heal you, those closest to you, and that it flow beyond you to the rest of the world. Watch what happens as you set this intent and then go into your day and just breath naturally.
We all have it...Can we dare to use it for good, for all beings?
For a more focused meditation, breathe in personal issues and conflicts and breathe out healing, for the self and others. Breathe in fear and greed, and breathe out compassion and balance. This is a very simple energetic act of kindness, love, and compassion for all beings. Breathe in sorrow and grief, and breathe out happiness and contentment, for self, those closest, even those you are at odds with, and then to the greater world, and see what happens.
To those who are gardeners, as I am, send this same kind of good and nurturing energy into your soil, even into the pots on your balcony or deck. Ask the earth to heal by spreading healing energy from your little plot of ground, down into its interconnected byways, spreading to your neighbors’ yards and beyond. Ask your earth to provide you with what you need to heal your body and your soul and ask that it go outward to others as you garden, as you put your hands into it, as you walk barefoot upon it.
Do this in water as well. If you have access to streams, river, or ocean, ask the waters to interconnect with healing energy, bringing it far beyond your own dipping spot. You can even do this in the shower and bathtub. Send your healing energy around the world. In these simple askings—in intending that the air we breathe, the earth we grow our food in, the water we drink, be interconnected channels of energy—we implement an energetic intent to change, offering it to everyone.
As simple as these things may seem, as naive as they may sound, anyone who has experienced energetic interaction knows that this is not hogwash. It is what the great healers, saints, and holy people have been teaching us forever. Love heals, love changes, love is the way. Love begins within each of us. It is feminine energy, the deep pool residing inside all of us, waiting to be tapped into, not just in women, though I send a plea to all women to return to it now and use it to change the self, and then the world. We all have this source within us, and though it may feel distant and unfamiliar, I ask you to tap into it again. Like an innocent child, bring it back into your life.
It has become increasingly clear to me that all of us women must step up now. We must take over the energy of change, shifting it in a new direction. As much as the men of the world have struggled to change the world, they too must admit that things are not looking too good. We have to all tap into the feminine source now, and return to our deeper roots. We must all become humanitarians and utilize our full human potential to love, to heal, to evolve our species to a new level of interconnectedness.
Breathing for all of you, with humbleness and love,
Jan
Be kind to the self, but do not hold back that which you know should be done.
Be accommodating in your kindness, but do not overcompensate.
Be aware, but be also introspective.
Be alert to the signs now so prolific and meaningful, for this is indeed a time of great significance.
Crack the outer shell and find the deeper meaning inside...
Watch your tempers, your reactions, and your immediate responses to that which comes from without. Do not act upon your sensitive feelings, but let them sink beneath the skin of your outer self to the core of your inner self and from there seek meaning. This process of outer reaction turned inward must now become your constant practice. In this manner will you reach enlightenment.
Enlightenment comes in increments that you can handle, that you can take in and fully absorb.
Little enlightenments come every day. Experience them as part of a meaningful practice, building toward full acceptance of the self as a being of awareness.
Where are you today? What is your outer world pointing out? Feel within your body for that which is most important to contemplate and learn from. Turn eyes inward now and study the self. This is where the greatest enlightenment lies.
Be kind, but be fully responsible. Be an adult fully committed to finding the way in a world that is not conducive to such deep inner work. It doesn’t matter. Do it anyway.
All beings who do this work of taking responsibility for the self on a deeper level evolve all beings. This is where the energy of now is calling you, inward to a deeper understanding of life. Take the inward journey. It’s really all that matters. You will discover this the deeper you go.
Be inwardly brave and daring.
Be inwardly kind and forgiving.
Be inwardly strong and responsible.
Be inwardly loving and compassionate.
Be inwardly aware and alert.
Be inwardly alive to where your path wants you to go next.
“When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world…healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world.” —Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the great Tibetan meditation master and founder of Shambhala
We can’t stop nature from doing what it will and so we must learn to flow with it, to take action to protect ourselves within our knowledge of how nature works. On the other hand, we are responsible for what is happening in nature now. Although we are not directly responsible for thunderstorms, lightning strikes, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., there is plenty that we, the human race, have, by our very existence, altered forever on this planet. One of those things is poison ivy.
Leaves of three, let it be...
Several years ago, I heard a report on NPR about the proliferation of a new strain of poison ivy. This strain, I heard, was more potent than the kind of poison ivy I remember as a kid. This new strain of poison ivy grew into trees, as tall as six or ten feet, and it could kill. Now that was alarming to hear!
Having grown up in a rural environment, I learned early what poison ivy looked like. I knew its reddish hue in the spring meant beware, and I also knew that its bright green leaves later in the summer meant stay away. I had an eye for identifying plants early in life—it was just a knack. I knew to stay away from the flowers and berries of deadly nightshade from the time I was small and I’d often warn my friends that something was dangerous without even knowing how I knew it. I’d thought about becoming a botanist at one time, so fond and curious was I of what grew around me. Instead I became an illustrator and did, on many an occasion, get to draw the intricacies of the plant world for one book or magazine article or another.
If I got poison ivy, it was normally a minimal rash, easily dealt with. I never got covered like some people. I didn’t seem especially allergic to it, though I knew not to fool with it either, not to rub it or scratch, but to wash the oils off as soon as possible and let it dry out. I’d cover it with calamine and let it be and before long it would dry up without too much discomfort. I remember as a little kid having it on my face and at the time I just could not help but scratch, and boy did I suffer, but that also taught me a lesson. After that I learned to bear the tension of the itch and just get through the pain that nature itself had inflicted on me, knowing that it would soon be gone. That being said, even I was recently fooled.
One morning, Chuck and I were sitting in the yard enjoying a cup of coffee when I felt an itch. Thinking a bug was crawling up my arm, I lifted my sleeve to discover that my entire arm was covered in an ugly rash. “Oh my, look at that! Poison ivy! Where did that come from? I’m usually so careful!” I said. By the afternoon it had spread. Another, less vicious looking rash showed up on my other arm, my stomach broke out in angry red spots. Later an itch on the back of my neck showed up, another behind my ear, and was that one by my eye too? Suffice it to say, I had a bad case of poison ivy.
“This is exactly what I’d heard about years ago,” I said to Chuck, “poison ivy in a new, especially toxic strain, and it looks like I have it!”
Poison ivy: Global warming in our own backyard...
In reading up on that new strain of poison ivy, I note that in the few years since I first heard about it, its notoriety has spread along with it. Now it’s certain that we are largely responsible for this new potent strain of poison ivy, and there is no longer just one new potent strain, but many. The vines are rapidly spreading and the resulting contact itch much more difficult to treat.
With global warming has come an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a trapped greenhouse gas that is especially well liked by vines, especially the two that we see in the Northeast: Virginia creeper and poison ivy. That’s another thing I noticed not long ago. When I was a kid, Virginia creeper did just that, it crept along the ground, the floor of the forests covered with it, but I rarely saw it climbing trees the way it does now. Now both Virginia creeper and poison ivy, along with a host of other carbon dioxide-loving vines, are climbing higher and higher, overtaking other vegetation, seriously affecting the survival of our forests. Apparently this new poison ivy—that is rapidly inhaling our humanly-induced increase in carbon dioxide—carries a more toxic form of urushiol, the oil that causes the pesky itch.
As soon as I saw how quickly the rash was spreading, I knew I was in trouble. This was no ordinary case of poison ivy, this is what I saw on other people who were highly allergic, this was serious. I took immediate action. Changing my clothes, showering, and dousing myself with calamine and taking homeopathic rhus-tox were the first steps. Careful not to aggravate it, I let the rash air dry as much as possible, but it got worse. And then it got even worse. Now covered in angry blisters, I constantly had to fight the urge to scratch.
Now, anyone who has had poison ivy knows that there is nothing more satisfying than giving in to the urge to scratch away. Boy does that feel good! On the other hand, no amount of scratching will ever relieve the suffering, as scratching only spreads the rash and calls for yet more scratching.
The urge to scratch...boy does that feel good...
I found some relief in showering frequently, vicariously experiencing itch relief by letting the hot spiky water from the shower head do the scratching for me. I soon found that this was not a good idea, the heat of the water actually opening my pores to more of the poison. I knew I had to “grin and bear it,” as they say. I would not scratch in any way. I would use the itchiness to go into stillness. And so began my week of deepening my mindfulness practice, with poison ivy as my guide. In so doing, I learned something new about myself and each time I learned something new I took it deeper, intent on learning something else, not only about myself, but also about the greater world that I live in.
I’d wake up at night itchy. Surely a tiny little scratch here or there won’t hurt? Don’t do it! Bear the tension. Let it be. Go into meditation. Go beyond the skin. Go deeper inside. I will not scratch because I do not itch. I do not feel itchy at all. I am the Buddha. Flies are landing on my face and yet I do not flinch. I am the Buddha. Mosquitoes are buzzing in my eyes and yet I simply ignore them. I do not give them any energy. I am the Buddha. The snake is coming closer in the grass and yet I am not afraid. I sit in stillness and I disappear. I am the Buddha. In stillness I do not exist in this body. I am merely energy and thus the sensations of this body are meaningless. I can let them go.
I gradually leave my itchy body behind as I do this mindfulness practice, successfully removing myself from it enough as the night goes on that eventually I don’t attach. In the morning I wake up tired, but I have succeeded in avoiding the deathtrap, the itchiness that invites me to partake in the vicious cycle of relief and more agony, relief and more agony. I avoid the cycle of samsara, suffering, for one more night. And I must continue this practice during the day as well. I must not lift my hand to scratch behind my ear. I am the Buddha. I must leave my hand down, sit with the sensation, detaching from it, cooling it with my thoughts at the same time that I seek external remedies for my suffering.
Like the Buddha I must suffer through the onslaughts...
I suffer through five days of extreme discomfort before the rash subsides. Chuck looks at it one day and declares it done. I’ve conquered it. There is still an occasional itchiness, but the blisters have dried, the redness has diminished, the spread halted. I have learned what it means to suffer through an onslaught of nature, a manmade disaster as I now see it, and I hope that others may come through such an attack in good form too.
My mindfulness practice with poison ivy as my guide led me many places, to many journeys within and without, to greater understanding and acceptance of my role as a user on this planet. The world is changing and we are largely responsible for many of these changes. That is clear to me now. Every one of us, by our very breathing, effect and are affected by these changes. Whether it’s a bad case of poison ivy or a nuclear disaster like Fukushima, we are all part of the problem and we will all suffer, our bodies especially.
I had to ask some hard questions. So, how are we going to handle the inevitable crisis we have inflicted on ourselves? Are we going to make it worse by scratching and complaining about others, about the poisons put into our atmosphere by others? It’s easy to give up, to indulge in bad behaviors, to wallow in self-pity and to blame. It’s much harder to take full responsibility and change ourselves.
The challenge we face now is to accept what our human greed has done and—in full knowledge of our personal participation in the disasters we create and continue to create—take everything to a new level. We must accept our human limitations and work to deepen our connection to our energetic selves, personally and as an interconnected species, taking everything far beyond the human energy that we so value and indulge in to a greater understanding of our energy as no different than that of the fly or the mosquito that pesters us. We are all life’s energy having experiences here on earth.
Everyday now, I accept that I am part of the changing world. My mindfulness practice has deepened my awareness of what it means that I live here too, that I impact everything too. I too have poisoned the fish in the ocean. I too have dirtied the waters and contaminated the soil. I too have contributed to the greenhouse gases. I too am responsible for the wars and the terrible massacres that are happening around the globe. I too am an abuser. I too am greedy. I too am an addict.
I cannot change what has happened. It has already happened. The only thing I can do now is, from this moment on, make a decision to live my life differently, with awareness and mindfulness, committed to making better personal choices. The time of change is now. 2012 is upon us and, by the potent state of things, has been for a long time. Are we going to stay splintered, unaccepting of our personal human role in all of this that we have created? Or are we going to each individually take the next step to deepening our interconnected awareness and really changing ourselves so that we may change our world too? That’s the only challenge I see ahead of us now.
The earth will survive, but I don’t think we, as a species, will—unless we take some drastic measures to insure that our planet will be able to support us. With even the most basic requirements of air and water in jeopardy, let alone everything else we need to survive in even the most primitive conditions, how do we expect to evolve as a species?
I challenge myself to constantly create better balance in my own life while seeking to live in greater harmony with the world I find myself in.
