Harvest of the Heart

A Harvest sf the Heart

Even in SoCal, the feel of fall is palpable. It is a time of pumpkins and marine layered mornings that call for something warm to meet the Earth’s move into a cooler season. In this land of evergreen palms, there are trees turning color here and there to remind us of the cycling of seasons. In this harvest time, I feel a pull to pay homage to both the Earth and the heart, sources of sustenance and renewal for our lives.

As the ‘word’ has been said to make the ‘world,’ it is a continuing koan for me to consider why these two key elements of life have the same letters in different arrangements. There is some divine alignment with these same letters of Earth and heart being used to point us to the center of our existence, of caring and cultivating life. A higher recognition of the Earth home and being at home in our hearts are both meant to point us in the direction of oneness, of unity–to realize an inclusive place where we all belong.

With this I would like to introduce more signs of caring for change and of a growing measure of compassion and kindredness among the populace of Earth creatures. I would like to highlight a wildlife sanctuary in Idaho, initiated by Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D., and Jean Simpson, who founded the Earthfire Institute. This sanctuary’s name is inspired by a “passionate earth-mother wolf with a fire in her belly to protect anything vulnerable.” This is also the fire that is in a good human mother’s belly to protect the young and affirm life. The work of this heart-strong group of humans is exactly the point of what is leading edge at this time, to realize a greater perspective in how we define kinship and belonging and it is doing evolutionary work to expand our connections of the heart on Earth.

Founded on 40 acres in Eastern Idaho, this ancient land is home for wild creatures who have been rescued for one reason or another. Earthfire serves as a portal, either physically or through the Internet, to allow an opening for exchange between species, and for new ways of interacting and communicating.

In their words, it is a “unique model of ecological advocacy {that} begins with a personal awakening and leads to a renewed commitment to protect planetary systems on which all life depends.” These are words that really resonate with me. It is time for there to be cross species communication that calls us to explore and expand our shared sense of community and come home to a greater understanding of our true nature personally and as a species.

As a species, we are presently caught up in economic and social systems that are poisoning and polluting the environment in a massive manner that is putting many other forms of life at risk, not to mention many of our own kind. There seems to be some heretical idea that nature is devoid of God or the Big Unity Factor in the Universe. I say someone’s genes seem to have gotten cross wired along the way. Nature expressed in the myriad forms of intelligent life upon the planet has existed for eons before we came upon the scene as a new form of creation. Whatever form we recognize as some higher intelligence, it is woven throughout all the fabric of life that makes up this spinning orb called Earth.

It is time for us to wake up and see the intelligence in plain view on the faces of other creatures inhabiting the domain known as planet Earth. For this reason, Earthfire Institute is a place to recognize and celebrate for its expansive and inclusive initiatives to live together, to push the edges of what we humans recognize as the known world of what is intelligent, even if differently oriented than the set of filters we have as humans to organize useful sensory information. It is definitely time to cross the aisles among the different kingdoms of life on this planet, with the recognition that creation neither began or ended with us, and that there is a vast community of sentient intelligence and this time is a bright opportunity for us to awaken to belong on this planet in a way that we have forgotten. Our ancestors knew what it was like to live among the other members of creation and recognize their contributions to life. It is time that we heard the call in a way that is appropriate for our perilous time on the planet that is also ripe with opportunity for expansion.

If we can quiet a bit, take the time to be present and look without too many layered judgments, there are ample animal beings that are willing to communicate with us and extend our awareness of life. Even gazing in the eyes of your cat or dog will begin a new journey. Animals are so much more aware than most of us have allowed ourselves to consider and we need to become more open in this time to all the intelligence of creation. Nature is not devoid of God or unity. It is our species that needs to take steps in the direction of reuniting with the chorus of creation. Caring and opening and being curious and inclusive are qualities that are much needed among humankind. Indeed, we should do our best to cultivate the kinder side of our nature, following words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama, who has said “my religion is kindness.”

In this season of celebrating the abundance that the Earth provides to sustain our lives, may we pause and give thanks.  Humans have lived upon this planet for a short time compared to the diversity of intelligent forms of nature that provide us sustenance. It is time to wake up to the great gifts we have been given from the divine and recognize that we are citizens among the community of creation. Through care and compassion and right action, humanity will keep the sacred trust that is ours to accomplish as a collective. The wise action on this planet now is to turn away from the prevalent paradigm of suffering that abounds.

We live in times with great tension of the opposites. As the old crumbles and dissolves we are hurtling into a new era, and it is our work to bring forth a new currency upon the Earth, a new medium of exchange that is sustainable and expansive. The currency of a fluid open heart is among the best forms of abundance we might experience, and the greatest gift that we can share.

May we connect with the inner sacred fire that is clear in its role to protect life. May we use the sacred light in our hearts as a beacon, and share our intelligent light with others of our ‘kind’ as well as those of other kindred species who are doing their best to live and thrive and know some form of bonding and care for their members as well. May we make peace and harmony where we go by joining through the heart and letting this light our way. The revelations of understanding could change the course of our lives for the good as we learn to share life on Earth, realizing a harvest of the heart. This time is a ripe opportunity to find new meaning in the words ‘All our Relations.’ May we become celebrants of the sacred as we find a new way of relating to the world that honors the diverse forms of creation that inhabit this planet.

Months of Magnitude; More Wake Up Events

A line from John Lennon’s song is circling in my brain as waves of overwhelm wash over. Inside I hear “Nobody told me there would be days like these….” I watch pictures of the BP spill devastation—what it has done to maim and kill marine wildlife in its home, the ocean known as the Gulf of Mexico. Life has been spawned from the ocean water of the Earth and it should be considered sacred—it is truly the Mother Water of Life. With destruction levels causing increasing dead zones over larger and larger swathes of Earth’s global girth, the level of shock that is registering across the planet is its own agenda to attend to.

At the 911 event, we had human hatred aimed at one of the most concentrated zones of habitation and economic exchange in the West. In the wake of this chaos, lives were irrevocably changed from the ripple effect of shock waves moving out from Ground Zero in New York.

The British Petroleum Gulf Debacle is another marker of magnitude on the scale of human invoked devastation through carelessness. On April 20, 2010, corruption and greed converged to set up a system failure of unprecedented proportions, and tidal waves of oil began to plume out from deep within the Earth, despoiling the ocean and engulfing systems in ‘crude’ and toxic oil. While the eleven lives lost in the human realm compared to 911 is smaller in scale, this mistake is one of the most costly oversights recorded in modern history. This is a point of reaching a new Ground Zero, for this is an Earth Environmental Zero Point. Do we really need any bigger wake up calls as a human species than this?

The news is doing its best to tabulate the economic cost of mediating the mess, but it is the environmental cost of remediation that needs to be addressed most significantly at the present moment. We need these questions to move to the forefront of public exchange; “How much poison will we allow in our lives and the planet that is our home? How much more barrage of chemical toxicity can we withstand?” “Are we really going to stand by and watch the decimation of the ocean habitat for countless species of life on this planet due to the corporate drive to profit without responsibility? The Gulf already has one dead zone, now there are two. Why don’t we see this as an uncaring act of terrorism to blindly wipe out ecosystems, lives of many species and livelihoods?

The intelligent operating system that maintains a bandwidth to sustain life is disappearing in our lifetime. As well, our human immune systems are crumbling as evidenced by increasing heart disease and cancer rates that have become epidemic. Around the world we have systems collapse, with species die off from environmental and climate changes that are a result of the rampant and ruthless initiatives to exploit the Earth for whatever short term economic gain can be achieved without thought for any circle of life reciprocity and care.

In America, we are in deep fear of terrorism from foreign infidels. The root meaning of this word derives from terre, a word denoting earth. It is time to re-define ‘terrorism’ to be concerned with any life endangerment to the foundation of life—the Earth, including the other creatures that have inhabited this planet long before we stood upright as a species and began to wield new tools of power. We need to mobilize our collective focus on identifying actions that are destructive to life on the planet and putting our creative vision and passion to changing the direction of these sabotaging forces wherever they hail from.

We are moving toward a ground zero shift through this all. The status quo seeks to maintain its privilege at the expense of other forms of life—human and other members of creation that inhabit this beautiful blue-green globe. Amidst all that is opportunistically seeking to destroy anything in its path for greed and power, we have virtue in action where mercy meets misery. There are networks of activity that are acting like the immune system at its best, mobilizing in favor of life and engaging in an expression of compassion in action. These networks of light may not be holding sway in the news, but they are part of the quantum momentum that is expressing and building its own new paradigm. Those that are joining to act in favor of life, whether as an ‘everyday champion’ as some are being called, or quietly minding the networks of prayer and meditation like tiny diamond dew drops sparkling around the planet, all these actions express the virtues of soul nature, and are participating in the wave of light that is increasing to change the way of life in the direction of expanded evolution, interspecies cooperation and bringing peace to our planet.

While the tension of the opposites is reaching untold levels of pressure, new pathways are emerging even as life as we know it is continuing to dissolve before our eyes. It is time to forge in new directions and to awaken to the intelligent systems of design already inherent in our orb of life on this planet. It is time for the human species to recognize we are not alone, and we are not meant to be so near-sighted about our species or a very small number of those privileged with money and status to think any group can survive without preserving the very foundation of life support systems. It is time to remember these words in our democracy, “We the people…” It is time for those in positions of power to fulfill their oaths of responsibility to act in favor of life in a broader context than the very narrow interests that too many are enmeshed with. It is time to remember as well, ‘we’ as a collective are the planet, each and everyone of us is part of the grid that is meant to support and sustain life, not just take from it. Each one of us has a destiny to fulfill that comes from the soul. As humans, if we are made in the likeness of God, then we need to stand more upright in fulfilling our responsibility, and showing the true strength, vision and courage that we are capable of.

At its core, the Gulf crisis is about systems that have lost their focus on any substance and are operating from interests so narrow as to lack the ability to sustain life. It is time to move our attention to acting in favor of life through care and compassion. Through involvement in demonstrating our true nature, we will tap into untold forms of spiritual synergy that can transform any crisis into an opportunity for lasting change. The enduring power of creation to renew itself already exists, and it is time for us to learn to call upon these qualities in our lives and work with this deep sustaining power on the planet.

In the coming weeks I will highlight where there is ‘caring for a change’ in action, where people of the planet are fostering a sustainable way of living that embraces other species as having rights to live and flourish, not just a privileged few humans who would be willing to destroy anything for their addiction to power.

As Lennon said, “all we are saying, is give peace a chance…” This blogger would say that a fairly substantial number are fervently acting in some manner to give life a chance to be nurtured and flourish so that we really embrace the grace we are meant to know as a divine gift.

Cultivating New Ways to Enrich our Lives and the Earth

We are in a time of transition, a place of flux between outmoded ways of life and another’s fresh emergence. Collectively, we are beginning to adopt green as a paradigm for living, a new design map for how to make daily choices on sustainability, ways of being and behavior that honor the balance of living systems within both natural and human social communities. In sensing the new emergence, it is an opportunity to think more ‘resourcefully’ and to re-envision our lives and make the world anew, to join with others and with nature, and find the common ground of enduring bonds of mutuality.

Changing the paradigm to one of green sustainability underscores one of the most urgent issues of our time for we humans to accept that creative expression is our true nature. It is a major challenge of our times to use our creative faculties for the good of human life, and other forms of life on the planet as well. Our true nature is expressed as an urge to grow and become more fuller and refined versions of ourselves; in much the way a seed fulfills its own blueprint and becomes the inviting sun-infused lushness of fruit, the unforgettable fragrance of a flower or the stately majesty of a towering tree. We are all local sites of ‘creation.’ As sparks of the divine, we are all ‘works in progress’ with purposeful urgency to become true to our pattern integrity and to grow to our own full stature.

Visionary astrologer Robert Wilkinson has a term for hunkering down into what he calls a ‘narrow destiny.’ A narrow destiny might feel safe, but it won’t stop feeling cramped, nor will it ultimately satisfy, as it creates a penchant to live in a compensatory manner, rather than the satisfaction of doing what’s in us, and offering our real value to the world.

In a world undergoing vast metamorphosis at all levels and among all groups, we need to take our understanding of creativity out of its narrow designation as something an artist does and is, and begin to embrace a more fully faceted awareness of our authenticity in daily life. In the unfolding era we are entering, we should be identifying all the aspects of our creative faculties as a human group, and become fully engaged in realizing what is this true nature. As a testimony to the importance of developing this capacity in the current time, Orange County real estate developer of green and recycled centers Shaheen Sadeghi made a comment recently that “Creativity is as important as literacy” in the future that is unfolding.

Two facets of creativity that we need to readily employ include the ability to adapt to changing conditions in a way that is germane as our sensing informs us, and to think outside the box, in order to leave stale ways of seeing the world behind. As with any creative process, the greater the ability to be resilient enough to shift perspective, an aspect of design mind, is an indication of an openness to allows more possibilities to emerge.

While moving into the unknown can bring a degree of uncertainty and edginess, it also offers a fresh juiciness and an ability to claim our true citizenship as activists in authenticity. Like all artists in life, we are being called to engage with passion and purpose, meeting challenges of our times as creative opportunities to show the potency of being authentic in meeting the moment. We have the capacity to renew the world that we inhabit through the greening power of our creative faculties of imagination, ingenuity, curiosity, synthesis, innovation and intelligence. Although the times are precarious, there is also a promise of a new beginning, as we step into finding both the individual and group genius of being our best.

Here in the United States, we had a time during the challenge of World War I to plant Liberty Gardens. During World War II, it was important to plant Victory Gardens. We now have an opportunity to cultivate another form of victorious garden; one of free expression; by planting the seeds of our own individual and collective greatness. The greening power of expressing our pattern integrity has enormous capacity to transform our lives in ways we don’t expect and that can open new vistas of perception.

Like the flowers, it is time to bloom where we are planted, to join in the celebration of a world that we glimpse through participating in a garden form of life and developing more sensitivity and sensibility. A garden is common ground where interdependence among different species, a degree of harmony and beneficial relations may thrive. As flourishing members of the garden way of life, flowers can show us that we should unfurl our authentic nature, showing off the uniqueness and beauty that is ours to share for a while as we travel through form.

A piece from nineteenth century gardener and writer Celia Thaxter, who wrote a book called The Island Garden, expresses her profuse loving awareness of the plants inhabiting the garden. She shares her adoration of poppies:

To stand by the beds at sunrise and see the flowers awake is heavenly delight. As the first long, low rays of sun strike the buds, you know they feel the signal! A light air stirs among them; you lift your eyes, perhaps to look at a rosy cloud or follow the flight of a caroling bird, and when you look back again, lo! the calyx has fallen from the largest bud and lies on the ground, two half transparent, light green shells, leaving the flower petals wrinkled in a thousand folds, just released from their close pressure. A moment more and they are unclosing before your eyes. They flutter out on the gentle breeze like silken banners to the sun, and such color! (pgs. 83-4)

The flowering plants have been on the planet for more than 100 million years. They hold an enormous volume of evolutionary understanding that we may access as we engage more fully in realizing they are part of the community of life as much as we are.

Through exercising our capacity for imagination and synthesizing intelligence, while showing interest in developing new ways of perceiving the diverse natural forms of life, we are greening our current awareness and simultaneously seeding a future with more colorful possibilities inherent in widening our perception. As we acknowledge and honor the intelligence and beauty that we enjoy as citizens of Earth, we are cultivating a harvest of understanding to enrich and expand the kinship circle of life on the planet.

Moments of Magnitude; Slipping, Sliding and Seismic Shaking

Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, the Nazca and South American tectonic plates have been gnashing in blocked rock friction for centuries.  On February 27, in an area off the coast of Chile, about 70 miles West of the City of Concepcion, the fault line of friction where the two plates meet gave way, and in a moment of great magnitude, centuries of tectonic pressure was released.  As the Nazca plate slipped further under the South American plate it caused a huge surge in the ocean bed above it, sending water out from the center in a walloping wave.  Continuing throughout the day Chile had some devastating shocks as a long string of quakes echoed along the fault line.  Smaller quakes have registered into Southern California where I live and as far north as Alaska.  Whether literally or figuratively, many have felt it ‘rock’ us, at least a bit.

We live in weird and wobbly times.  In recent years turbulence has been expressed in social and economic events within the collective, and at other times it is a very physical reminder that the ground that we count on as the very measure of security is not as rock solid as we would like it to be.  Usually a major quake of this magnitude (8.8) occurs once a year globally, but in the first two months of 2010, we have already had one a month, as the Earth Mother continues on her own path of re-organizing.  Shifting of the core crust is normally so slow as to escape appearance to the human eye, and it is more rare than not that its movement and momentum is accelerated enough to stir our attention.  Yet February was another big blip on the screen of 2010’s unfolding.

Now that it has gotten attention around the globe, I would suggest that it is a good time to consider the process of reorganizing that is an inherent part of creation.  The realm of creation changes and in the process, matter is re-configured, and life as we know it may be irrevocably altered.  In our human of life, we have barely a glimpse into any span of how these shifts occur.  Yet we need to turn our attention to understanding the process of reorganizing, as we live in times of vastly expanding and accelerating change–the shift of re-creation.

In the human world at present, we know more about the word ‘recreation’ popular pastimes enjoyed during our leisure hours.  Play is important, but I think it is different from what recreation has become in modern life.  It is time for a shift from distracting thrill-seeking to soul-seeking revelations that occur as a natural process of spirit synergy, the process that occurs as we become adept in reorganizing as part of our inherent divine design.

We are on the planet at an extraordinary time.  The shocks of rapidly shifting ground in our lives can bring sadness, grief, pain, confusion and disorientation. Our time here is precious, we don’t know how long we have in our human form, or how long the people and creatures we love will be with us. The more we can feel the Olympic torch of our spirit lighting the flame of inspiration to move forward and keep taking the next steps, we will be on track, regardless of how it looks.

Through the synergy of aligning with our soul while letting go from knowing the outcome, we are practicing the yoga of faith, of surrendering to oneness and opening to allow inner re-creation to occur.  Soul infusion happens as we stretch beyond the known and limited perspectives and believe in the infinite possibility of the sacred to green our lives and bring spiritual renewal.  It is time to become adept in meeting moments of magnitude with understanding that is more grounded in the eternal, shining a beam on the world in front of our eyes as it changes, like a kaleidoscope of rapidly shifting patterns of color, light and sound.

Coming Home

The blog begins with some reflection about what it is to come home.  My first book, Coming Home to Calm, has been the path I’ve taken, or it has taken me, to come to a place that I recognize as ‘home.’  As someone with Cancer astrology, I have been true to my crab-like astrological heritage, carrying from a young age, all the most important treasures around with me, because I always wanted them close.  As a child, it wasn’t the blanket, it was a book.  As an adult it has become a heavy carryall bag, filled with the most important prints of articles, magazines and the notebook of the most recent writing journal that I haul around and whatever work is in progress.

To me, ‘home’ has meant a particular connection of association with things I hold dear, but not as much, as I have aged, a particular house filled with domestic objects.  I still love having a sense of physical home, but I had a big house, with a lot of land (relatively) and it became too cumbersome to take care of, much as I loved it and ached from parting from it.

Now the ‘coming home’ is about moving into more authenticity.  I am refining my sense, with greater urgency as I age, to get on with it.  Admittedly, I have spent too much time bogged down in my own emotions.  Yet now I’ve resolved much that used to seriously sidetrack me for aeons of time, and I feel the calling to come home to who I am with a firey ferocity.  This urge to come home is now about living as closely to my true nature as possible, unfettered by distractions, obsessions, addictions and compulsions.  This ‘home’ is indeed cleaner and is becoming far less cluttered.  There’s more room for serenity, curiosity, being in someone else’s shoes, i.e., compassion, and there’s more room to breathe here, as the burden bags of what I’ve carried are surrendered.

While I celebrate that the heaviness of emotional and mental baggage is lessening, the bags of current writing and inspiration treasures are still acting as their own form of fitness workout, as I carry them up and down a hefty flight of stairs with my laptop at least twice a day.  Evidently some weight can be a good thing.

So what does it mean to ‘come home’ to one’s true nature, authenticity, purpose and passion?  This will be a subject that we will pursue in this blog, along with many others.

For now, blessings to one and all!