More Pond Tales

"BEFORE COMPLETION:

The little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, gets his tail in the water!"- I Ching

The adventures of the pond continue. I don't want to add fish or anything, just want to see what comes. Who has arrived? So far, in order of their appearance since last summer when we put the liner in it: dragonflies, water bugs, bees, wasps, chickadees, stellar jays, juncos, robins, deer, pets, a pair of ravens, lots more birds, tree frogs, and a great blue heron.

(above, rain on the pond)

And now a new first, creatures of size actually going into the water! A pair of mallards drop in from the sky. Ducks! I am so excited. They are the first big creatures I have until now seen, cavorting about in the water.

 All morning they swim around, diving and looking around, as if they were considering the real estate. It is so glorious to see them actually swimming around enjoying the pond. It occurs to me that they would like a bit of sheltering plants here and there, which will take time. 

Actually they are the third large creatures to be in or on the pond. When the pond froze hard, I ventured out, stepping carefully, walking on water. It was solid in the middle too, what fun, so I continued across with confidence. 

I was considering skates and sleds when, crack! And splash! Baptized in the ice water! I forgot about the place at the end of the pond where fresh runoff water is pouring in and keeping the ice thin. 

The next day a neighborhood cat decides to try her luck. Curiosity gets the better of her and she just has to try it. She creeps up the edge and puts out a tentative paw. Then another. She brazenly strides across, gets to the big hole where I fell in, and backs up. She circles, climbs onto land and goes around, dips a paw, and checks the spot. Yep. Wet. Smart kitty.

(above, Granny relaxes on the beach)

 

Invididuation and Reunion

Where there is great love there are always miracles. ~ Willa Cather

In some ways the humans from earth are reaching the limits of our separateness experiment. The separation model has given us room to grow. We got free from the village where everyone knew you, and to the big cities where nobody knows you and  you could make up who and whatever you wanted to be. 

Any single person could make it all alone, take care of themselves, be free from oppressive demands of their particular culture or family of origin. The illusion of supreme separateness could be maintained as long as one ignored one's complete dependence on the city itself and so all those other people.

We are just starting our self actualization process. It's like a spring bloom, a beautiful flowering of billions of people now, all coming up together and looking around.  And each one is unique! We are becoming ever more individuated, and in many ways more and more different. 

Yet even in this moment when the arc of the swing to separation thinking is at its fullest, there is a reunion of sorts on the horizon. For even as we grow to ever greater heights of individual expression and achievement, the view from those lofty perches reveals to us the commonality of all life, and the inter connectedness of all beings.

So when we seek to explore and push the limits, we merely do so on an ever changing and expanding scale, into new realms of learning, experience, and love. We connect back to report our new discoveries, linking us up together in ever more elegant and beautiful ways.

We need not fear being re subsumed by petty small town societal pressure to conform. Butterfly beings are emerging from dark quiet hidden places all over the world and fluttering out into the sunshine, where they are being met with delight as the first planet wide culture begins to form on the armature of the interweb.(toward a More Beautiful World:)

The Eyes Have It

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” 

― Meister Eckhart

Eyes evolve whenever we need to see. Studies show that eyes go away after some generations if the creature has no light, but they will pop up again and re-evolve when the creature lives once again in lighted conditions. The universe seems to be made of eyes.

Merely tack up a picture of eyes and people act more honest and accountable! Somehow we can even feel it when someone is looking at us, as you can easily notice when you look at someone and they turn around to see who is looking. You can actually send love and healing out through your eyes. Try it. It works!

 Who is your real watcher, your real witness? Try this experiment: spend twenty seconds in just pure observation mode. Listen without pondering the meaning or judging what you see and hear......

Now gently back up and observe who is the one observing... The one who is watching you watching...

When you dream, who is it that watches the show? Is this reality also something of a passing dream?

"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.” 

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Is All Property Theft?

"Consider the lilies of the field. They do not sow, neither do they reap. Yet who among you is arrayed in such splendor?"-Yashua

What is mine and not yours? Let's see...my precious human body, (until I drop it then it's your problem). I claim the spot where I sit or stand at this moment, but only while I'm in it. The food already in my body, the air in my lungs, temporarily. Some clothes and shoes and stuff that fits my body...

I live in a house, my name is on a piece of paper; but although I make payments to a bank so I won't be kicked out of it, I do not consider it mine. I do like having some degree of control of what is in my house and how it is set up. 

But I cringe when I hear my friends refer to it as 'the property'. 

Why? Because once, people were free to roam all over the land, from coast to coast. There were no fences and walls. (On the other hand, there were no bridges, interstates, power grids, etc, either, so we've gained a lot of 'commons' as well as losing it.)

Since that time, individuals have simply taken control of the land by force and violence or implied threat of violence. That is illegitimate, plain and simple. No, I certainly do not live upon any property!

How about my music? I write songs, I write books, I create all sorts of art. At least these are mine alone, right? I'm not so sure...maybe one percent of each song. The rest is built upon, derived from, made out of, yes, the cultural commons.

My time, right!? Yes, that is mine, and mine alone, but without you, where would be any purpose or meaning?

(Deeper discussion on this:)

Green

“He told me his last name was Green. “Green?” I asked. “Can you spell that for me? I’m colorblind.” 

― Jarod Kintz

"Green is no longer just a color. It's now the symbol of ecology and a verb."-unknown

Green is your most important color. Situated in the middle of the spectrum, green is balance. Green-gold is the most predominant color of light from the sun and so all our earth life is calibrated to it. The plant harvests the sunlight, we eat the plant, and so it sort of is the light we are made of and attuned to.

Most rainbows you see in the sky or made by a prism, have about a third portion some kind of green, ranging from yellowish to blue green. If you are painting a rainbow, remember that! We can see about seventy five different pure colors of the rainbow, and one out of every three of those is some kind of green!

Green is neither hot nor cold, or it is warmish at the yellow end, and coolish at the blue end. It is the color the Earth uses to clothe herself in furry forests. It is the color of food to eat a lot of for good health. It is the color of prosperity, money ('some green'), spring, new ventures, and freshness. To energize a new project, green light it. To harmonize with an eco lifestyle, we 'go green'. Use green to move into your center and align with the greater Self.

Green along with its complements, reds, pinks, and purples, represent the heart, and love.

 Green is the healing color. Tap the refresh button with a walk among green trees in nature. Yellow green is a good mental color. Turquoise green is rejuvenating and helps you get back in touch with your deep wisdom, abilities, and gifts from your past. Lavish large quantities of green into your life if you want to benefit from its healing, refreshing, balancing qualities.

(If your favorite color is green.....)

"Going green starts with a shift in consciousness. This shift allows you to recognize that with every choice you make, you are voting either for or against the kind of world you wish to see. ” 

― Ian Somerhalder

Money and Gifts

"The urge to own grows as a natural response to an alienating ideology that severs felt connections and leaves us alone in the universe. When we exclude world from self, the tiny, lonely identity that remains has a voracious need to claim as much as possible of that lost beingness for its own. If all the world, all of life and earth, is no longer me, I can at least compensate by making it mine. Other separate selves do the same, so we live in a world of competition and omnipresent anxiety. It is built into our self-definition. This is the deficit of being, the deficit of soul, into which we are born."-Sacred Economics

What is the story of this gift economy? Recently I meet someone who offers to do a wonderful, deep healing hourlong consultation on the phone. Her group and website expresses ideas about the emerging return to a gift economy. Wow! This inspired me to think all sorts of things I could do for her. I feel more expansive and generous which leads to thinking of good things I could give. I get creative ideas I might have not thought of otherwise. I feel playful, and excited about cocreating a more beautiful world.. I feel thankful for my new friend.

So I decide to try it, and make an appointment with her. She then insists on being paid $150.00. Wow. Ok. I have money I could give her. But now I feel different. If I do this, I am hiring her for her services, she works for me, it will be a client customer relationship. I feel respectful and supportive toward this sister in her business and her stated need to 'do this for herself'. I wish her well, but the thrill of building a new and different story is gone.

Money is a neutral, not good or bad, just a method of exchange and value. But as my thought experiment shows me, feelings and attitudes about cash money certainly run deep! And when gifting is contrasted with selling, they invoke very different responses. One is open ended, creative, and relationship building, the other neatly sews up a transaction and sends us our separate ways, with our goods, services, or cash neatly tucked under our arm. 

Is one way better than another? Is the difference all that clearcut? Not always. Does the mere existence of the corrupted money system taint the way we think of gifts? I think so. But I think of the first response I had with my friend as 'new story', creative and fun. And my response to the insistence on cash, helping my friend to feel empowered in herself in her career, taking care of herself, and contending with the messed up way the world is out there, 'old story'.  

Who do I have, when someone is friendly to me for money? A friend? Just a friendly exchange.

"Perhaps money should only be used for that which is or should be standard, quantifiable, or generic; perhaps a different kind of money, or no money at all, should be involved in the circulation of those things that are personal and unique. We can only compare prices based on standard quantities; thus, when we receive more than that, something immeasurable, we have received a bonus, something we didn’t pay for. In other words, we have received a gift. To be sure, we can buy art, but we sense that if it is mere commodity, we pay too much; and if it is true art, we pay infinitely too little. Similarly, we can buy sex but not love; we can buy calories but not real nourishment."-Sacred Economics

You Are So Loved!

"The only sin is not to love enough"- Mother Meera

You are so loved! Did you know this? Perhaps you forgot, what with all the busy scurryings about, chasing after this and that. When all else fails and you feel bad, remember that you are always and forever, and never not, even for a nano second, fully loved by the Source of all love and light.

You are literally surrounded by angels and guides, helpers and friends to be met. Everything you need is ready to fall into your hand if you would just open it to receive.

We seem to wandering around in a great maze but the walls separating us are flimsy cardboard stage props. We made the maze and we can change it when we like. The more complicated it gets, the more simple is the way back to wholeness. 

All of the great wisdom teachings of the ages are bobbing up from the hidden places, available to all people for the first time in ourstory. The first thing we notice is how similar and simple they are.

"All you need is love"-the Beatles

Frog Pond

“Leap frog over the ladybug.

Leap frog over the bee.

... then leap back home to me!” 

― Lauren Thompson

The pond with its new liner in since last summer, is now well established. Frogs are partying down at the ol' pond at night. I creep down at twilight and the cacophony is about 90 decibels, rock concert loud. Western tree frogs are stationed every couple of yards all around. I watch them swim from spot to spot, apparently making the rounds.

In years past, we had to mount tadpole rescues if the pond dried up too soon. This year, with the liner, we'll have more frogs, I'm guessing. It was tadpole rescue that first got me thinking about ponds. We had two little kid pools five feet and three feet across respectively, and the bigger one was leaky. 

So I get the idea to put one inside the other and plant the outer ring with potting soil and flowers. The little one holds water. I make a tadpole hiding place with rocks, and a place to come up in shallow water too. Most tadpoles survived; perhaps these are the ones partying down at the big pond now!

The mini pond was my test pond. Even at the micro size, it has become a real magnet for all sorts of creatures and bugs. It seems to have attracted a sample of all of the pond things in microcosm. 

And no mosquitoes thanks to safe for critter, bad for mosquitoes, 'pond dunks'. And of course, thanks to the frogs!

There is something primal and magical about developing a relationship with your local body of water. The enchantment with water that I experience creating or facilitating these micro environments was a surprise to me. We too, are the kind of creatures who are attracted to water!