Marking points. Don’t you love them? You know how it is… you start a new venture, then a series of things happen to remind you that it’s on track. With a baby, one marking point is a smile that is sociable, recognising you and replying with excitement. When there’s a new puppy, maybe it’s the first night it sleeps through without waking you. Or what about when you can actually draw a wage in your new business for the first time?
For me, another marking point happened in our garden venture just the other day. After a year here, I turned over a mulch pile and found it to be in beautiful condition, rotted down to rich, friable mulch, all recognisable components gone. This beautifully decomposed had-been-greenery was now ready for use on a garden, so is now spread at the base of a syzigium and some vireya rhododendrons.
It’s another marking point as we progress in our grand plan of a botanic garden. And it’s the completion of the full cycle from growth to dying off, to decay, then on to renourishment of the next growth. You’ve gotta love the garden. Is there anything that reminds you of the fullness of life as much as a garden?
Getting Excited About Mulch!
My words create my world
Integrity; it’s such an ephemeral state in my life, even if I like to think otherwise.
Lately a few people have shown up in my life promising to do something, but never getting around to doing it. I could make them wrong, decide they are no-hopers and move on. Or I could look at my own life and see why lack of integrity has shown up around me.
Lack of integrity can’t appear without me calling it, inviting it in. I must have my metaphoric velcro out for its velcro counterpart to latch on to. I cannot have an energy stream of lack of integrity show up from someone else without already having that energy stream present around me. I am source of my world, so if something comes into my life, I have called it somehow.
So what’s the source of people showing up who do not do what they say they’ll do?
I think of myself as a person of integrity. Perhaps everyone thinks of themselves the same way. For me, integrity is being who I say I am. Having integrity means that when I give my word, I keep it. Having integrity means that when I have an image of myself, my possessions, my relationships in a particular state, I match the reality to the image I have created. When I set my mind to do something, I do that thing. I be who I say I be, especially when I just say it to myself and no-one else knows. That’s when my word to myself; matters most, in the dark corners where there is no-one watching.
But if someone has shown up in my life without integrity, it’s time to start searching for where my integrity is out, to bring myself back to the condition in which I want to exist.
Well, as a result of the searching, I’ve had a host of self-revelations, and not particularly pleasant ones at that. There’s also been a flurry of activity in my life. I’ve thanked people for things they’ve done for me, I’ve had conversations to complete issues. Cars have been cleaned inside and out, emails answered, small jobs finished off. And the more I search for the sources of incompletion and lack of integrity in my life, the more show up.
So I still want to have conversations with people in my life to complete issues, still need to finish the jobs on the desk, still think I will be more careful with every word I speak. Not that there’s a problem if I don’t do all this. It’s just that if I do, my life will flow more readily.
It’s a bit frustrating really to have a list of more things to do, especially when life feels full already, but it also feels powerful to be able to do it.
When my integrity is back in pristine condition, the energy around me feels sparkling, shimmering with promise, ready for creation to occur. It’s worth the effort to get to that result, even if I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all at present.
Mistflower… you’ve gotta love it
Mistflower. It sounds so beautiful, such a delight to have in the garden. In the right place, which was originally Mexico, it probably is a wonderful plant to nurture and cherish. On our patch, not so much.
Mistflower is a weed that invades vast areas of shaded, damp creek-banks, hillsides, pastures and disturbed areas. It rapidly takes over from other groundcovers, dominating the area and preventing native plants from thriving.
Mistflower has a wonderful mechanism for sustaining itself. It has stems that creep along the ground, sending down roots every few centimetres. It pops its little leaves up, covers the ground, comes into pretty white flowers, and disperses its seeds all along the creek banks and hillsides.
When it is mown over, or cut down with a brush-cutter, the plant loses its leaves in the cutting, but maintains its stems and root system. You can almost hear it laughing “Brush cutter? Who cares! Mower? So what! I can regrow as soon as I get a chance, because I have all my stems safely running along the ground and all my roots firmly established. Brush cutters and mowers? Bring them on!”
Several weeks ago, we cut out a lot when clearing a hillside for replanting. Now, two weeks later, and that’s two weeks of heavy rain and intermittent sunshine to help the weeds regenerate, the mistflower is back.
So today was spent pulling it out, piece by piece, dragging the roots out from where they were happily sending up shoots and new leaves.
As I know about resistance, I realised that telling it to go elsewhere, getting frustrated about the quantities of it, or in any other way resisting it would be counter-productive. So I spent the time thanking the spirit of the mistflower, and reminding it that mistflower is not a local plant and should go elsewhere. All the while, I was removing it by the roots. I wonder if the spirit of the mistflower will respond, or whether I’ll need to ramp the removal up a notch by spraying.
Illness as a fire siren
Sick, ill, off-colour, unwell. Unhealthy, under the weather, poorly, ailing, laid up, in poor health. So many terms for illness in our language.
Yet maybe they are all avoiding the issue. By using a label we are turning a moving, evolving situation into a static condition. It’s categorised and boxed. This gives the illusion that we have it under control and probably manageable.
Actually, illness is about reaching for another way of being. When there’s something not working in the present, and we are searching for another way, we may get ill. The ‘not-working’ may be at a conscious level, maybe not. It could be about our lifestyle, our way of being, our persona, our relationships, our spirituality, or one of many other factors. We are out of balance and attempting to adjust back to balance. So the illness shows up as a physical situation.
When a sickness shows up, it’s the end point of a process. The process has probably been hidden from us, but has been going on for some time. Rhe seeds of the imbalance have filtered through the layers of being from spiritual down, until they become fully grown as physical. So illness is a metaphor for the condition of the whole self, not merely a manifestation of some physical ailment.
So what? What are the implications of this?
Well, when we’re ill, we’ve got a choice. We can fall into the pattern of managing the illness, which puts the emphasis squarely on what’s wrong. Of course, where we focus our attention is what we create.
Or we can search for what we want, recognising that the physical manifestation of symptoms is a message to self. We are telling ourselves that all is not well in our self. We are out of accord with self, reaching for something else but not finding it.
And what does that lead to? Change. The smoke alarm is blaring, alerting us to a situation that demands our attention until we can bring ourselves back into balance.
All this theoretical look at illness is actually about a centipede bite that turned my body into a toxin-fighting machine. A week of toxin-fighting has given me plenty of opportunity to ‘be inside’, searching for the point of change, thanking the toxins, looking for the balance.
Thanks illness; you are telling me physically about a situation that has been building for some time. I may not have even been aware of it. If I am, I have clearly not taken sufficient action to bring myself back to my right course. Now you have shown up to remind me that something is out of balance. Time to go inside and find the balance, to rebalance myself.
Thanks illness.
Silence the fears and move on
Remember the days of processing fears to clear them? There was, perhaps still is, a whole industry about dealing with fears. Psychologists use debriefing to deal with the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in clients. Review teams step in to work with people caught up in natural disasters. Past-life therapists work to help people release the fears built up through the aeons over multiple lifetimes. Scientologists have made a religion of releasing these fears. Personal development seminars are used by many to get past the fears and blocks that are holding them back. And so it goes on and on.
But, actually, the time for processing fears is now over. We get much more value, these days, by stepping past the fears and silencing them.
How to do this? What causes a fear to fall silent and to have no power over us? Acknowledge the fear, notice that it’s there and has hold of you. Then set your sights on what you want, beyond the fear, beyond the block. Move on, and hold the new focus in your sights. Create the future you want, without any backward glance to the old fears. Think about what you want, imagine the emotions such an outcome will bring (Satisfaction? Excitement? Exhilaration? Release? Joy?) Then concentrate on this emotional outcome and the way the emotion has come about.
Last night I woke with a centipede biting me. The 20 cm long creature was actually in my bed, biting my hand. First job was to get the little blighter outside. I didn’t injure it, just wrapped it in a towel and threw it out the door so it became an outside creature again. Then, of course, a fear reaction set in.
“I thought my bed was a sanctuary, a place to get away from the creepy-crawlies of the world. Now I’ve been bitten while in my bed.”
“Isn’t there anywhere I can be free of the little crawlers, slitherers and creepers of life?”
“ I’m not safe in my own bed.”
And on, and on, and on. Fortunately, my man was awake enough to hold me strongly for a while until I calmed down. Then, early this morning, a very sane friend pointed out that it was only a centipede, only a bite (a bloody painful one, I might add) and being fearful was a bit of an overreaction. Later a colleague reminded me that fear is past. The time for processing any fears is long gone, and we are into an era of co-creation. What we think is what we get. Focussing on what we want will give us the next step fully and without reserve.
So today has been a day of boundary setting. All centipedes belong a long way from the house. No centipedes in the house, the garage, the shed. Ditto snakes. No snakes in the house, the roof cavity, the shed, the garage, the yard. They belong in the bush and stay there. I demand that respect from them. Spiders are welcome outside, but not inside. Insects, bugs, beetles and geckos are all outside dwellers from now on.
I’m respectful of the bush creatures, and am careful not to harm them when I take them outside. I am now demanding mutual respect, and expect them to stay out of my way, out of the house.
What am I focussing on?
“The house is clean, safe, gleaming with high energy.”
“ There are only two creatures living in this house, both humans.”
“ The house is full of beauty, freshness, cleanliness and safety.”
“ It’s a manificent mud mansion (it’s built of pise, rammed earth) and remains impeccable.”
Interestingly, the emotions that follow these statements are a sense of clarity, of having excellent boundaries, of strength. I know myself to be strong and resilient; I feel my inner peace. So I know I’ve picked powerful statements on which to focus.
So there, bugs.
What a flavour!
Acerola. A funny name for a tiny little fruit. I found one on a tree I had not yet identified in the orchard. It’s a tiny, red, cherry-sized fruit with possibly the most scrumptious flavour I’ve ever tasted. The taste is somewhat like a cherry, but slightly more tart, with a dash of apple thrown in.
Once I had identified the tree and the fruit, I was able to find some more information about them both. Apparently the acerola fruit has a very high vitamin C content, about five times the adult daily allowance in one tiny fruit.
The tree itself is quite nondescript. The fruit is tiny and not really something you’d notice. And inside is a flavour much more mouth-watering than I would have expected.
What did my Mum say about not judging a book by its cover?
Gratefully yours…
I walked in to my house after a month away, to find the whole place covered with mould. The clothes hanging in the dressing-room were mouldy, the kitchen benchtops were mouldy, the chairs and cushions were covered with a fine mould, even the desk at which I’m sitting with my computer was mouldy. And the smell permeated everything.
My immediate reaction was that I wanted to cry. It was the end of a long day’s drive, I’d had little sleep over the last few nights (a day at the Melbourne Tennis Open was worth the sleep deprivation!) and I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the mess in the house.
Fortunately, good sense cut in and I knew that there was better value in gratitude than in tears. So I wandered around the mouldy, smelly house being thankful for all that I have in life. I am deeply grateful for family, neighbours, friends who checked our place and gave us reports on our house while we were 2000 kms away at a family funeral. Grateful for having possessions that could go mouldy, grateful for having sold the house in Chelmer last year, as that house was under water to the ceiling in the recent Brisbane flood. I found gratitude that the house here hasn’t leaked in the deluge, I was grateful for having a fireplace to begin the drying out, for fans to air the house, for electricity to power the fans and for a nice hot cup of tea. I’m grateful that I have good health to be able to tackle the big job ahead. And so the gratitude changed my mood to being positive again.
For those who know their old Christian hymns, “Now Thank We All Our God” will be familiar. It was written by Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor in Germany, in the early 17th century. His walled town was a refuge for many during the Thirty Years War, and became overcrowded and riddled with disease. Starvation and bubonic plague were rife; Rinkart’s own wife died of the plague. Yet he was subsequently able to pen the hymn of gratitude that has been used in Christian Churches for centuries since. Now that’s gratitude taken to a level of mastery!
From my former life as a psychologist, I know that people who are grateful are much happier than people who have not learnt the art. And gratitude is an art, one worth practising every second of life, to hone the skills and elevate the art form. Grateful people are happy people.
Thanks, chair and desk, for being mould-free while I write this blog. Last night you looked green and furry. Now you sparkle at me. I’m profoundly thankful for life this morning. Until next time that I forget about gratitude.
Completing 2010
New Year. In our culture we make a lot of fuss about New Year’s Resolutions, what we’re planning to do and what we want to achieve. However, in the world of energy, we can’t bring these about readily in a space of incompletions from the old year.
So last night at our family dinner table we started a conversation to “Complete 2010”. It began in fine style with a wonderfully cooked meal, a beautifully set table, champagne, candles, the whole nine yards. We had a discussion about what we’ve achieved during the year, significant happenings in our lives, things we began but didn’t complete, plans that went awry and all the other flotsam and jetsam of 2010.
Someone talked of the momentous event of moving from one preschool to another, another spoke of leaving her favourite Year One teacher; some of us have moved house, one family member has left a job, one of us has learnt to play the ukulele, one is proud of his team-leading at work. Our shadehouse is complete, the garden is progressing well. Many, many happenings came up for completion.
Then the family dynamics intervened, the baby got very stroppy and too tired to go to sleep in a strange place, several of us went walking in the cool of the evening with her, and the completions were left incomplete. Such is the irony of life: an incomplete Completions Dinner!
Eclipse, full moon, solstice… that’s a lot of change
Tonight has been a full moon rising, with a full eclipse as the earth cast its shadow onto the moon by moving between the moon and the sun. And it’s the solstice, the summer solstice here in South East Queensland, Oz.
Is it any wonder that the energy of the day feels like being in a spin dryer? And of course, spin-dryer-energy brings out the tensions and flashpoints in people’s lives, flashpoints that are usually controlled and well-handled.
Thanks, Universe, for this oportunity to bring so many issues up for clearing.
Rain, again
I seem to be living in my own personal cloud at present. The house has been surrounded by fog all day and the rain continues, as it has for months now. It’s easy to be resistant to it, after non-stop rain all day, and yesterday, and the day before, and last month… But I said I’d welcome what the world brings me, without resistance, so here’s an opportunity to do just that. It’s another chance to be with life exactly as it is. It’s actually quite freeing to stop having an opinion or preference about how the weather should be. Instead, just letting it into my heart gives me the opportunity to really enjoy the rain that goes on and on and on and…
Thanks, Source.
