The geese have been ribboning their ways through the sky the past several days and in the spaces between downpours the small birds cover the ground all around us, chatting while they dash intently from bug to seed back to bug. As long as I stay with THAT, it’s OK.
But of course one strays from pastoral joys, doesn’t one? The world is an ever stranger place now and the Partner and I often wonder whether the sense of dislocation and unreality we feel is just the way it is now. More so, even, than the sense of exile we used to think of it as being. It is still a surprise to us both when we go off this hill how blazingly strange this place seems. Or perhaps more correctly, how strange the social aspects of this place seem. The land itself seems to have a mind of its own, not really related to what’s been built on it or the humans muddling about. This mind from time to time speaks, and it does so in a way one doesn’t really experience in a city. It is overpoweringly strong.
So the truth of it, I think, is that yes. Everything is changing and we do appear to be headed for an armageddon-ish sort of result. At the same time there are stirrings and a larger movement in another direction. This direction may simply be what cosmic development through time creates; we’re along for the ride. The ride can be either more or less liveable, depending on (yes. again.) how we think as we’re going through it.
The Partner says I am someone who needs a VERY simple life. I wouldn’t have thought so if you’d asked me at some other point in time. But now I see he is quite right. As long as I can stand on the actual earth, look at the actual stars and skies, smell the ground and the plants- that is enough. It reminds me that in fact there is a larger “thing” going on here. Our purpose then may be more getting ourselves in line with this movement than anything else. It isn’t really about tangibles somehow, but about how you FEEL and THINK. That creates the reality that you move within and accordingly, the things you create or manifest or do or whatever word you want to use.
For example. Lately I have been in a rather deep hole, and one way I recognize these locales is that nothing “talks” to me. It becomes really difficult to do anything such as, say, cook dinner. Or work. The ingredients for either activity sit on the butcher block, inertly, and reveal none of their secrets. In terms of work, it spells time off which has an associated drop in moolah. In terms of cooking? There was some very unappealing broccoli that came out of this iteration and I was beginning to wonder if I’d just finally shorted myself out for good. But then! Suddenly murmurings came through my head again and there were intriguing sandwiches (ham, lettuce, green onions in a lavash with cream cheese, a bit of dijon mustard, mayo, and second batch cranberry deliciousness from Thanksgiving) and even a batch of cinnamon rolls that came out perfectly. Although I had a moment of horror when, having been distracted, I returned to the work table and realized I couldn’t remember if I’d put the salt in with the sugar or not. Vestiges of the Deep Hole Space. But somehow it dawned on me that the two white granulations in question were actually different colors, shades of white. Crisis resolved. I hadn’t put the salt in yet, as I saw when depositing a few crystals next to the sugar in the bowl revealed their visual dissimilarity. Contact restored.
The big thing, in the end, is staying with yourself so you understand what it is you are really experiencing. Then, you can either build on it or let it go. It’s not easy but it is, in the end, a matter of remembering that however bumpy this ride gets, the primary mover in all of it is grace and love. Our regular minds don’t allow themselves to go into the vast space required to see how tiny and integral a part we are of everything. But it can be done, you can learn, and you can heal. Then comes the project of going outside. More on that later. Meanwhile, greetings to all in this season of change!
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 