Summer storm

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Thunder in the air – rolling waves of sound felt by all living things.

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Summer clouds rolling in

Those with eyes and those without sense lightning arc across the sizzling sky. Even the tiniest vibrations of sound and light energy reach my roots as they ripple through the earth, cleansing all in their path.

The deafening sound, flashes of light, rain, and wind of a summer storm roll through clearing the air, washing the land, every leaf on my crown, every blade of grass in the woods and meadow. I quicken to the vibration of thunder, the fiery lighting that seeks the earth, often through my cottonwood kin.

Bring it on! It is the power of our amazing earth’s atmosphere, visible and audible and palpable. I thrill to the storms that sweep across this valley and set my crown shimmering and dancing to the vibrations of thunder and the rising wind.

I feel in my roots and crown the stillness before the storm, the sudden crashes of lightning. The jagged daggers arcing through the air, charging it with healing power and clearing all nonsense, all fog, all dust, all that is ready to be released.

Can you sense when a storm is brewing? Can you feel it in your body? You have experienced this powerful unfolding drama in every lifetime you’ve ever lived. The ancient thrill of thunder from before time began – the memory lies deep within your cells.

The storm obliterates the excess, leaving us fresh, clear, and sparkling, ready for what is to come. Bringing clarity.

The joy of song

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I celebrate your amazing voices, lifted together in song.

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Singing red-winged blackbird

You create a powerful uplifting current of sound energy that envelopes and permeates all. It heals and clarifies and brings those who hear closer to the powerful knowing of the oneness of all things.

I, a magnificent cottonwood do not hear, but I feel the waves of sound, I sense their harmony or disharmony. I sense the presence of the highest energies rising on the tidal wave of your joined voices. I feel them in my roots, trunk and crown.  All that is extraneous falls away before your joyful harmonious tones produced with love.

Sing from the deep heart of your being. Let your voice be heard! Let the vibration of love you express be transmitted to the web of all things to set it singing with joy.

Lazy day of letting go

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Have a lazy summer day.

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Summer grasses

Let the breeze shimmer your leaves. Rest with trust in your roots and the earth that supports you.

You can afford a day of rest, of letting go… Letting your mind be clear and blank… settling in to your body, feeling the ripples of thought and feeling that come and go. Now going deeper and feeling the blood coursing through you, the weight of muscle, the bone and skin, the breath as it expands your lungs and ribs, your eyes fluttering beneath their lids…

Let your tense muscles relax. It’s OK to let parts of you be soft and relaxed on your lazy summer day. It’s OK to do nothing but breathe and let your heart beat, your eyes blink, to feel the life course through your body.

Now, just for today, lose the agenda, the to do list, the killer instinct, the high heels, the dress for success, the act you feel you must put on. (Is this you?) Who invented suits and ties? Why?

You are so much more than what you do! Get to know yourself beneath the persona, the snappy business attire, the synthetic rules someone has imposed upon you, your place as a cog in the “system”.

Who are you really?

Cottonwood seeds

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2016-05-30 10.05.47 (640x480) (640x480)Spam or the fluff of life?

Dear ones, all of my kind bless the earth with our confetti of cotton, our gentle shower of seeds, our annual pouring forth of faith in what is yet to come. You may think the deep drifts of tiny cotton puffs along the sidewalks and streets are overkill, too much- spam if you will. (Have you seen what the silver maples did last month? Later the oaks will pelt you soundly with bushels of acorns that fall like hailstones.) But I digress.

Life is sacred and must be honored. My seeds, perhaps millions of them are each a chance at fresh new life. They are sown on the wind with trust in the process of life! Most will end up fertilizing your yard or garden, or will be washed into the creek, but some will find the right place. All factors will line up: the moon phase, the soil type, sunlight, rainfall, slope of the land, shelter from drying winds…

The lucky winners will feel the stirrings deep within, then send down tiny roots and reach sunward with bright little seed leaves. The luckiest among this select group will grow tall, avoid the mover’s blade, the hungry grazing animal, the drought or devastating flood, the gardener intent on weeding alien seedlings that appear in her flower bed, the crushing earth mover, the wayward boot or bike tire…

Several of my offspring are sure to put down roots, to grow and flourish and eventually tower gracefully above the other trees and provide a home for the diverse creatures of the creek fringe. They will take their place in the timeless cycle of life on this our beautiful green earth.

Do not curse my fluff, for it is the fluff of life!

Pay attention

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Pay attention to the here and now, for life does not happen inside your head.

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Spring ephemeral – Jack in the pulpit

 

Life does not happen on the TV, on your “smart” phone,  or in your computer. It unspools from your heart, that rhythm instrument each of you humans possess, but sometimes forget. It arises from the feelings and emotions of your body. That is life! Feel it! Be one with it!

Attune your life to the rhythms of your body– the heart and breath, your earth, your sun and moon, our seasons. So many clues exist to help you order your waking and sleeping, your eating, your quiet and active times with perfect balance and health.

Yet you allow the gadget called the clock to order your day. You march to its beat, you obey it’s dictates. You have given it power to tell you when to sit, and when to move, when to eat when to sleep. Your body is not consulted. And your health declines.

You allow the big box with moving images and the shiny hand held blinking things to arrest your attention, to take you away from your power and flow, to distract you from your life’s purpose and the precious days and nights that make up your lifespan.

Someday, as it must, your lifespan will come to a close. Will you mourn those precious moments you spent in your head, ignoring the here and now, the countless hours on your “smart” shiny thing, the days and weeks mesmerized by the moving talking images that you will forget in a moment when the power is switched off?  You yourself are ephemeral, your body will not last.  How do you choose to spend your time?

Back away from the devices. Pay attention to your body, to nature, to your feelings.  And live.

Delight and feeling

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Life is a delight for the senses.

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Playing with bubbles

Feel the flow of the life force in your bodies, your roots your leaves and stems, and in each cell that dances the dance of life with every other cell of your being.

To be in a body of any kind is to be one with all that is, to accept your reserved and special place in the tapestry of life on this earth.

You are meant to feel!!!  You are meant to adjust your actions thoughts and words when your feelings don’t feel good, until they feel better. Yes, read that again. Adjust actions, thoughts and words until you feel better! You are meant to feel good! Delight is the free flow of life-force through you.

Do you feel depressed and wish to feel happier? What words do you speak to yourself in the silence of your own mind? Words that soothe, or words that inflame? Do your thoughts match your desires? Do they match your dreams? Your incongruent energy sends a weak signal, diffuse and faltering to the web of all things. When thought, word, action, and desire align, you create your life without effort with a light a happy heart!

Let yourself feel. Let yourself enjoy.  Let yourself have. Let yourself be. Let yourself play with nothing to fuel you but pure feeling, and pure fun! If you resist your fun, your play, you resist life itself! Let your feeling delight and inspire you.

Falling seeds

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‘Tis the season for the seeds of silver maple to whirl in great masses to the earth. Each seed contains the promise of countless groves. It has been so since time began.

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Silver maple helicopter seeds

The seed swells, and tiny roots begin reaching down into the soil, pulled by the magnetic core of the earth, reaching, finding sustenance. The new shiny leaves and slender stem bend toward the sun, unrolling, soaking in life giving light. Reaching for life, stretching both down and up, rooting and reaching. Each seed a promise, the imprint of a million generations.

You plant seeds as well. Your words and actions are seeds. Your caring or turning away are seeds, your belief in the power of good or the existence of evil are seeds, your judgment or acceptance are seeds, your love or indifference are seeds and surely many of the them will grow.

What legacy do you wish to sow? Do you want the seedlings of doubt and despair growing in the hearts and minds of your family, or the legacy of love and joy and fun?

Plant your garden with each thought, word, and action. What will you sow?

Sky-mind

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One time the two-legged one went on a plane trip during a late winter storm. On the ground dense clouds blanketed the sky and high winds blew icy shards of snow. Within minutes after taking off, the plane broke through the cloud layer to an ocean of sunlight and crystal clear air.

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Late winter storm clouds

My dears, do you ever simply relax into the blue sky of your mind? It lies beyond the clouds, the storms and turbulence of your habitual thoughts and worries; the ever whirling tapes that continue to play and rewind, play and rewind.

This ocean of light is always available to you. Know it and trust that no matter how bleak the storm you can find the clarity and light that lies above and beyond it.

This light is the backdrop, the foundation of all that is. This is the still quiet sky-mind. It is beyond language, beyond thought, beyond feeling. It is simply the basis of your being.

Find this place within yourself in meditation. If meditation makes you crazy, focus on your breathing. Begin easily, focusing on your breath for five seconds, then build up to 10, 15, 30 seconds. Soon you will be able to let your attention rest on your breath for minutes at a time. As you take in and release air, know that you are one with all living things on this planet.

If your attention is hijacked by feelings or thoughts acknowledge them like clouds rolling across a blue sky and return to your breath. Your thoughts and feelings are not you, do not define you, but are simply moving energy. Like every storm they will pass and the sky will clear.

 

Be like water

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Flow

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Creek in spring – Canadian geese

Water flows without thought, without worry, without a plan. That is the nature of water, to flow where gravity pulls, to the measureless ocean, the infinity of water where all drops all flows, all streams, all rivers become one; where all merge into one incredible power.

Do you know the power that surges in yourself when you feel the oneness with all that is? The truth that you are inseparable from source is your power.

You are not alone– not a tiny weak thing that must scrape by and compete with other separate beings. We together, all living things are one organism woven together at an invisible level through the fabric of existence.  Let us learn once again to live in harmony and flow!

When you close your eyes and allow yourself to expand into the light as you meditate, you get a small taste of your oneness with all things. Once you know this, my dear, you will never un-know this fundamental truth.

Rushing

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What are you missing?

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New oak leaves

 

Why must you try to get 5 things done in an hour, rushing here and there in your shiny heat reflecting air polluting cars? As you rush do you notice the red cardinal zooming past the budding maple tree? Do you see the delicate blossoms of bleeding heart that will fade and go to seed soon, not to reappear for another 12 months? Do you hear the age old call of the mourning dove? Do you know one is nesting in your eaves?

Do you gaze at the sky, the dramatic mountainous clouds piling up in the west as you buy a ready made meal made not with love and care, but additives and an eye for the cheapest ingredients? Do you put this in your body? Do you taste and savor the real food the earth has provided for you today?

Do you pause to greet each person you meet? Or do you hurry past them as if they were a manikin in a store window while staring at your blinking shiny object? That is obviously more fascinating than your spouse or child or neighbor or your own ideas and thoughts.

You are missing your life! You are AWOL, locked up in some prison, not even realizing that enormity of what you are missing!

Slow down! Pay attention to the life, the people around you, the earth at your feet, the sensory delights of each day! Come back out of your trance and inhabit your body once again. You were given this life. It is not too late to live fully!