It’s dark in the evenings now, time to go inward… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The first deep frost has come. The last flowers that had been staunchly holding on, that had still brightened the garden, have lost their energy. They are wilted and browning, their stems dipping to the ground. Time to trim back and prepare the beds for next spring. Time to prepare for winter.
This is inward turning time. Usually I look forward to it, but this year I sense a sadness that I haven’t experienced before. Maybe because the fall has been long and mild, the days sunny for the most part, the nights cool, but still warm enough to keep a window open in the bedroom. I like listening to the sounds of the night, the coyotes, foxes and owls, the animals that scurry past the house in the night. One night we heard something chewing voraciously at a large cardboard box we had stowed beneath the deck. Soon after we discovered that a hole had been chewed into the side of it and that a nest of bees had taken up residence. The animal we’d heard, probably a opossum, had gone after the bees.
Another night we heard a cat being attacked, fighting wildly for its life. We could barely stand the excruciating sounds of its cries. We thought of going out and yelling, of scaring off the predator, but knew that it was not right, was not in alignment with nature. One animal eats another. It happens all the time. Look at us humans, we do the same. None of it is pleasant to ponder, especially when you actually hear death approaching, when you hear the last cries coming from the strangled animal’s throat, but death is a fact of life. Winter closing in is a fact of life too.
And so I face the inevitability, making the final preparations for its coming. I accept that I must be in alignment with nature; I can’t escape the truth of winter! I can’t imagine shoveling snow just yet, but the snow shovels are ready. The snow blower has been cleaned of the acorns stored in it by mice in the shed. The leaves are being raked and mulched, the wood and pellet stoves already in use and the daily hauling of logs and pellets begun.
With the end of daylight savings time—which I hate, by the way, as it interrupts the flow of spring’s awakening each year, forcing us out of a most natural alignment with nature—fall ends. The darkness, which we had been staving off is really here now. We noticed immediately how natural it felt to be back on nature’s time, the extra hour of sleep readjusting our inner clocks to nature’s clock, the only clock that we should be attentive to. We once spent time on an island, away from civilization, the lone inhabitants. We naturally lived by the rising and setting sun, and it felt so right. Without the constraints of the world, it’s easy to live that way, but I feel compelled to live in alignment with nature as much as possible, and so I am paying particular attention to this time of year now, especially as I’ve felt such resistance to it this year.
The outdoor chairs are abandoned for the warm fire… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
In stark contrast to evenings spent on the deck, we’ve had to be inside now, before the fire or at the dinner table. Rather than watching the sunset, feeling its last warm rays, or taking a walk on a warm evening, we must adjust our habits. It’s a good time to make some changes, to prepare to face this winter differently from other years. It’s a good time to take up those creative endeavors, or those things we’ve been meaning to do, but just haven’t gotten to yet.
In inward turning time we can turn even deeper inward, as well, into ourselves. We can opt to study ourselves and our behaviors on a deeper level, asking ourselves to make some beneficial changes, whether in diet, sleep patterns, exercise, or at the deepest inner level, in how we act and react, how we behave and how we expect others to behave towards us. We can confront our projections and ask ourselves to be responsible for ourselves in a new way. We can go inward and ask ourselves to change something that needs changing and give ourselves the task, this winter, to finally make it happen.
It’s a good time of year to let the changes happen that have been brewing for a long time, to acquiesce to the inevitability of life moving on, of life in constant flux, just as nature does. As I listen to the cries that come from outside during the night—the owl catching a meal, the coyote on the scent—I must keep myself as alive and hungry as those creatures of nature do. I must remain alert and aware, always on the lookout for where my spirit wants to go, to where my inner world is pointing me.
I must not fall into slumber or into the complacency of the season, into the routine of holidays and events as usual. It’s time to do it differently, because the entire world is doing it differently now, the seasons have changed! And so should we!
I am aware that I am fully responsible for myself, for my mental, physical, and spiritual health. I am aware that life on this plane, on earth, constantly offers every opportunity to experience all that I seek. I am also aware that life constantly offers the opportunity to change myself, and my circumstances, but that it’s up to me to take the leap, to decide that now is the time to take a leap of faith and trust that life and the universe will support me.
Through a great part of this life I sought something outside of myself to bring me into balance: a lifestyle, a partner, children, a career, a spiritual practice, nature and the surety of the unfolding of each day as each sun rises and each moon sets and each moment leads to the next. All of these things are positive and important events in the life of an evolving being seeking wholeness, but as I journeyed further I began to discover that I no longer needed to look outside of myself so much anymore, for I held much of the balance I sought within. But even so, as I journeyed on, new things constantly arose, blips on the horizon that signaled something coming into my world, perhaps good, perhaps bad, perhaps nothing important at all. But I still had to decide what to do with what approached, whatever it might be.
What approaches most significantly now is anticipation itself, a restless wondering. It has been on the horizon for a long time now, in the coming of the Winter solstice on 12/21/12. We’ve all heard about it, as well as a lot of hoopla about the world ending. On the other hand, I cannot dismiss that hoopla, for I understand how important it is, how even hoopla can wake us up so that we take notice of something. Even hoopla offers opportunities: to regroup, to get into balance, to face the truths of ourselves and really change, finally becoming who we know we really are, allowing what we are capable of at the deepest level to emerge and fully live.
I also know what holds us back: FEAR—fear of making a fool of ourselves, fear of failure, fear of facing the honest truth of the choices and decisions we’ve made and why, fear of what others might think of us, fear that we are doing it all wrong. Fear that someone outside of us will judge, condemn, ridicule or taunt us burdens us so greatly that we let lots of opportunities go by. Oh, I couldn’t do that! What would people say!
What do we fear and why?
If we take all that energy that is going into being afraid, into wondering what will happen on 12/21/12, and instead of projecting it outwardly decide to focus on ourselves, we might begin to feel that great anticipation in a different way. If we pause and sit with what is inside us, as Jeanne suggests in Monday’s message, we might realize that our spirit is indeed anticipating change, eagerly awaiting our decisions. And not just on that date, but in general, for we live in a time of great change all the time. Jeanne has told us this many times and this statement is repeated often, not only among the spiritual communities, but in the mass media as well. It all depends on how you elect to interpret what that means. Does it mean someone else is responsible for that change? Or does it mean, as I am suggesting, that we are all responsible for daring to change ourselves. Now is a good time to sit and contemplate the change that our spirits might be anticipating, actually yearning for.
The solstice marks the ending of one season and the beginning of another, and it happens every year, twice a year to be exact, in summer and winter, as the sun reaches its highest and its lowest points relative to the equator. This is a natural occurrence that marks a shift; it always has and it always will. That’s nature working as nature does. Have we humans become so disconnected from nature that we don’t naturally feel this shift anymore? And why is this one supposedly so different? Is it in fact any different from this year’s summer solstice, or last year’s winter solstice? Is it only different because we’ve been told it is? Do we have to be shaken out of our complacency by the anticipation of something big occurring before we dare to take responsibility for ourselves, for thinking for ourselves, for acting independently in our best interests as citizens of the natural world, and as spiritually interconnected beings?
What is on the horizon for us all?
Many of us go through life afraid to change. We must be forced into it. Forced change comes in many forms: illness, divorce, death, birth, accident, loss, sudden and unexpected shifts in our world. In my case, forced change came in a barrage of unrelenting flashbacks that I could no longer ignore. Those flashbacks were synchronistically supported by the universe presenting me with all kinds of situations and truths. And so I knew that the only relief I would get was in facing my deepest issues and releasing myself from the hold they had on me. That was the catalyst to my doing a shamanic recapitulation: I could no longer hide from what was naturally occurring inside my own psyche! The psyche in imbalance, just as nature in imbalance, has its own ways of alerting us to change.
This is the other aspect of what we are all facing now as 12/21/12 looms on the horizon: the truth of the great imbalance that we humans have wrought upon this earth. We are out of balance with nature and have been for a long time. And yet, this natural phenomenon, a yearly solstice, portends to shake us up. The hoopla around this event is created by us, but in order to balance all that hoopla brewing outside of us, we must dare to face what is rising up inside of us first.
Keeping in mind that we are responsible for our progress in life—for our maturity, our spiritual growth, our ability to successfully navigate life—and if we remain open to changing ourselves now, we might succeed in giving ourselves the catalyst we need to make this next step of change really matter. Begin where you are. Begin where you are in your inner world and in your personal outer world.
I have long sought balance, achieving it quite successfully for long periods of time, and yet life does not let us get complacent. It seeks to shake us up. How many times must it shake us awake before we realize that it’s offering us the answers we’ve been seeking, and the only way to receive the gifts that life offers is to trust that they will be there for us? It’s an ethereal thing, this life, for in reality it’s nothing more than an illusion of moments, piles of moments. What makes those moments important and significantly meaningful is what we choose to do with them. Do we choose to face our issues and accept them as our catalysts to change? Can we all accept 12/21/12 as our personal wakeup call, no matter what happens outside of us? Can we dare ourselves to take the next step to a new level of existence, coexistence, mutual consideration and caring for all beings, and bear our truths, just as we ask our planet to bear what we have done to it?
It’s time to beat a different drum…
If we change ourselves, part of the world has changed. The more people who elect to change themselves, the more the world will change. There is power in that kind of change, in numbers of people electing to change themselves for the right reasons: because all living beings are equal, because our planet is a living thing too.
The solstice will arrive. I suggest trusting nature and the universe to guide us, to show us the way to true balance, as we each acquiesce to our own truths and take full responsibility for ourselves as individuals and as citizens of the world. Nature balances by constantly giving and taking, in tension and release, in yin and yang, in contraction and expansion.
What must we take and what must we give up in order to regain our personal balance, to relieve our personal imbalance? The only way to truly figure this out is to pull inward and release what is holding us back from our true experiences as living beings.
Remember, it’s a process, so don’t be too rigid; keep in mind that balance requires flexibility. Nature is challenging us to get in balance, because it’s time.
I study Tao. I pull into my center, into the mandala of self, closing out all else. One morning I read the following: Always complete your actions.
I read further: When you do something, don’t hold back. Shoot for it all, go for it all. Don’t wait for a “better time,” because the better times are built on what you do today. Don’t be selfish with your skills, because the skills of tomorrow are built upon the performances of today.
To be with Tao is to live a creative life, I continue reading. To live a creative life always means that you express who you are. And expression is never helped by suppression. Expression always benefits from coming out. Then more inspiration will come from that source.
When you act, the advice is, act completely. Follow through. Do everything that has to be done. Be like the fire that burns completely clean: only from this pure stage can you then take the next step.
My early morning reading stays with me throughout the day. I ponder myself. Am I fully expressing myself every day, not holding back? Am I truly burning the fires within completely clean, so that I am free to take the next step unattached to the old? I recapitulate recent life events, and without hubris know that I am fallible, yet I am also intent on continually studying how to be more aware each day, even as I repeat old mistakes. Lessons are learned every day. I know this. I set my intent to give my all, to live and express to the fullest, to constantly follow through and complete my actions.
In the afternoon, I write. Working on the second book in The Recapitulation Diaries series, I face my old self of ten years ago. I see how much I have changed, and I also see where I still fall back into some old habits, not too often, I humbly say, and not too deeply, but just enough to let me know I have not completely burned through some rather tiresome old issues.
Inner fire...
Paying attention to the Tao reading I have gotten earlier in the day, I sit in stillness and go deeply into my present self. I sit in the center of my being, at the center of my mandala of self, and build a little fire. I intend to completely burn away the old self still lingering, to fully express it so that I may return to balance, to the mandala of self with its geometrical symmetry in calmness once again. I intend that new expression birth out of the old.
I am an observer. I can’t help it. It is my nature. I am a sensation type. Like a camera, I constantly take photographs of the world around me. I report on what I see. The world has always been “out there,” separate from my inner world. As an artist the two meet nicely, my talent offering a means of expression for how my outer world observations meet my inner world.
During my recapitulation, I learned how to turn my observer self inward upon myself, to train my camera on my past and zoom in on everything that came from deep within. My inner world turned cauldron-like as I recapitulated, as my camera honed in on the truths that lay at my core. The embers of the fire within flared up repeatedly until a nice fire was burning. Eventually, I burned off enough of the past that I was able to emerge out of the flames of recapitulation into new life, transformed, a totally different person.
During the fiery process, I discovered that recapitulation is not a one-time thing, but a lifelong process of study. Like Tao, it requires constant attention to deep inner truths, constant release and constant rebalancing, to achieve new, fresh life.
While pondering all of this, I hear a loud racket outside the window. Observer that I am, I cannot help but get up from my inner ponderings and take my camera self outside. Standing on the deck, I see my inner world, my morning’s study of Tao, in action. Nature, the grandest guide of all is playing out the very reading I have spent my day studying innerly.
Fluffy baby robins nesting under the deck...
As I watch, a shiny black crow swoops down into a tree and snatches a baby robin. I watch the robin parents and many others—birds of all kinds, even the tiny wrens—come to the rescue. An army of birds dive-bombs the crow, attempting to knock the fluff of baby bird from its beak. Shrieking and screaming, they fly at the crow repeatedly. Instinctively knowing that every second counts, they do not hold back. The crow, seemingly oblivious to the attacks, flies up to a branch and holding the baby beneath its claws, gives a loud and sharp CAW! Then it picks the baby up again and flies off with it in its beak. Flying directly over my head, I see the baby bird firmly clenched, most likely dead already. I accept this fact. It’s dead. The robins will never get it back. They have to give up, I think, just let it go. But do they “just let it go?” No! They chase after the crow! They do not accept defeat yet.
Shrieking, they fly after the crow, furiously attacking with sharp beaks. With stiffened wings, like knife cuts, they attempt to knock the baby loose. They do not give up, but complete their attempts to save the baby. They give it their all! And then, only when it is truly clear that there is nothing left to do, when the crow has flown off, do they then take the next step. Even now, they don’t simply “let it go.” Not yet!
There is still something else to do in order to complete this most traumatic event in their lives. Now they grieve! I hear them crying loudly. Horrific, heart-wrenching sobs of grief and mourning, the most gut-wrenching sounds of sorrow, erupt from their wide-open beaks. Their deep sadness, like a moaning Greek chorus, reaches the heavens and then back to me where I stand on the deck. I take in this profoundly moving process. The robins of nature are not holding back, not suppressing a thing, they are fully expressing their loss and the great depths of their sadness.
This deeply affecting wailing goes on for several minutes. Only when they are completely done, when they have fully expressed themselves and fully emptied themselves of their sorrow, do the robins return to their nest, to the tree where their baby was snatched from, perhaps back to tending other babies that may still remain, or to take the next step. There is always a next step, new life to experience.
Return to Tao...
In shock, I step back inside. In awe, I realize I have been given an example of Tao in action, of ALL. This is how to complete a task, how to give all to a situation, and then, only when truly done, to move on. In fighting as fiercely as they did, in not giving up, until there was no longer any reason to fight, then in grieving fully, the robins completed their task. Now new life can happen.
In Tao, in life, everything is meaningful. Everything is directed toward evolving. I take my experience seriously. I return to my inner circle of self, turn my camera inward again, and sitting in my calm mandala center, I go ever deeper. I understand more fully now what it means to take everything to its completion, to not hold back, to give my all. I am thankful for nature, once again showing me the way. I am thankful for Tao.
Give ALL. Always complete your intent, express fully, live fully, evolve.
In Tao,
Jan
NOTE: Excerpts are from Everyday Tao, by Deng Ming-Dao
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
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.
