New Pond Pearl

Chartreuse, chartreuse,

It's just no use,

You tire the eye

And hog the juice!

 
 

 

 

I finally cannot stand it any longer.

 

Not to be mean, Charlene, but I'm changing the scene. A new pond pearl now graces Fox Pond. 

This evolving kinetic art installation, Pond Pearls  changes today. We have had Charlene, the chartreuse pond pearl, for about a year now, plenty of time to contemplate the energy and effect of the color chartreuse. 

 

 Chartreuse is loud, soulless, attention grabbing, even rude. It's hardly a regular color at all! I often have to leave it out of my rainbows because it does not play well with the other colors, it is too domineering. Does this remind me of the outer world, which, at the moment seems to be coarsening somewhat?

 

I put up with it why?

Because it was there?

 

It is time for a new phase. 

Pearly. 

 

It is still early in the new pearly phase. So I don't know all that it will be about, for if I knew, there would be no point. There is always wonder.

 

But pearly is a color of undifferentiated swirling light in which all of the colors of the rainbow are hidden. A pearl stands for layers of protection. Layers, like clothing, social atmospheres, the meme-sphere, ozone layers, blankets of shared pollution, filters obscuring and bending penetrating light, insulation, shielding one another from harm, even the aura we create around ourselves with our power of attention.

 

Also, the pearly color carries the wisdom of longlasting, dark, irritation producing a beautiful thing that comes to light and is then treasured and valued. A pearl of wisdom, gained from hard experience, such as being incarnated on Earth right now.

 

"Sand irritates the oyster and the oyster responds with a beautiful pearl.

 Allow difficulties to serve your transformation in the blossoming consciousness that you are." -RB

 

Spring at the Pond and in the World

"If winter comes, can spring be far behind? - P. B. Shelley

Whenever it really comes down heavy, I get ready to head out for my walk, because the sun will soon be out. Big downpours clear the sky, I've noticed.

Change is slow, no matter which way you want it to go. But we can all agree that spring is beautiful. 

 

Will we wisen up fast enough for our ever growing technological power, I wonder.

I fret and worry that we cannot change as fast as we need to now, but a walk in the natural world in the spring harmonizes my soul. It brings up something like hope. Who cannot welcome rainbows and perfumed violets and sunshine after months of cold and gray?  

The fabulously glamorous and fancy Wood Duck pair pays a visit to the pond  Wood Ducks fly low through through the woods, visiting little ponds like this one.

 

The pond develops orange patches. On closer observation they are goldfish, perhaps fifty to seventy five of them, hovering in place together, like an orange tree, or a squadron of little florescent orange blimps in the pond sky. 

 

These are the cohort of last year's baby fish, about five inches long, that have survived the winter. This, despite me witnessing the great blue heron swooping in and gobbling several glittering bright fish only a couple of days ago. Makes me wonder why these fish are so very, very bright orange.

The orange blob of fish coheres. They seem to be into eating the newly grown green mossy plant things which drift in puffy clumps here and there, on the abundant swollen winter rain washed pond. 

I give Charlene, the Pond Pearl, a gentle kick, through the air and back over to the main pond from the seasonal side creek where the wind has blown it. As the ripple of disturbance that Charlene's arrival causes reaches the little school, the entire flotilla imperceptibly sinks in unison. Were they even really there at all? Oh yes, I took a picture of them.

 

The biophelia induced by this glorious spring day guides me to the realization of another glimpse of the vision of the flower child's garden planet for peace and love:

Don't lose heart. Even like the debut of spring, when the time is ripe for change it can be dramatically, efficiently, exuberantly fast. 

 

Only days ago, eight inches of snow was the view from my window. I could no longer even see color properly because the sunlight was so scarce. Dimness and dampness surrounded us as we huddled around the warmth of our personal devices.

  

Now it's only a couple of weeks later. The clouds part and it is as if the red curtains open, the lights go on, and spring roars onstage with dancers and flowers twirling in a sun sparking rainbow drenched kaleidoscope!

 

 

 This is like my vision for the future, the flower child's garden planet, and we can start now. Or more like, we can continue on, for it has been well underway for quite a while. 

 

In the beginning things are often bumpy and chaotic, like now. Like spring, especially before the colors come out. I write this in March, about which they say "in like a lion and out like a lamb".

 

But all of the gratuitous beauty, potential, and hope embodied in the moment of spring is also found in this moment in the world. We are not doomed to blow the whole thing up, even though we stand on many dangerous precipices. 

We have incredible natural resources in the form of our shared knowledge due to the information revolution, which has itself come of age in the  internet. Any given minute, the whole world is full of individuals who are waking up, smartening up, wising up. 

I do not care what your economic philosophy is, if it does not take into account the tremendous riches of knowledge we all suddenly now share, you have missed the bus. This is a quantum leap from arithmetic to multiplicative. 

 

Today the world is full of answers, solutions, and caring people-who can find each other. We are quite simply all wealthier when we share. We are riding a great wave of wealth composed and generated by sharing. (For example: check it out, Kindspring)

 

We are greater than the sum of our parts. But this dimension of our newly acquired abundance may not be obvious from every standpoint. People see things when they are relaxed enough to ask. 

 

It is no mean feat to relax at a time like this. But please be patient, as each individual root gathers pure snowmelt water, and abides. Your own little flower, curled up tightly in your hope of spring, is your own soul garden. Open your own petals in your own hearts' way, as you wish, and rejoice with everyone in the beauty of our shared meadow of awakening love. 

 

Alternately, this momentous time is but a flashing shaft of light as the clouds of bedazzled ignorance and manipulated fear close in around us once again for another dark and repressive age. Of course it is impossible to predict since everyone has choices. 

 

I wonder what we will choose.

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” 

- Pablo Neruda

New Colors to Bring in the Light

"Whatever you are about, be about it in everything you do"- anonymous

 

(From Omni's Colorbook:)

As a colorist artist, master of the ten thousand colors, and by the power and authority vested in me as a bellwether person, I invoke and declare some "new" clothing colors. For the healing of the people!

Dull and grey feels like an artifice at the moment. Not down to earth, not "natural". Just drab, dirty, and tired. I don't condemn your impulse to hide, and yeah, it's camo.

Black is a refuge that is so tired and overused that it is the defacto background of our daily life. The uniform of coolness that isn't. It is a cop out. 

 

The true background color is indigo like the sky. Like the many gradations of blue jeans. If Jesus walked the earth today, I bet he'd be wearing blue jeans. 

The super bright, fully saturated colors are nice. But at this moment, they shout. And shouting is the wrong tone for this time. For this moment in time, we need to strike a note that is a little softer, gentle, even loving. 

 

I mean, I certainly won't renounce those brilliant colors. They feed my soul. But everywhere I see, that seems to be all that is being made today, shouting colors with black, the most striking combo. 

 

Is it that we feel we must shout to get above the cacophony of attention sinks that constantly tug at us? I remember when society was too timid to rock a fully saturated hue. Such a loud color, how garish! Now neon jackets fly by on the running trail. A kindergarden teacher once confided to me her secret to being heard above the din: Instead of raising the volume, lower it a bit.

 

My new colors are soft, but present and clear. 

Cheerfully confidently assertive, even. 

Light infused. No shade added.

To invoke love and light. 

 

Right now, when you go around, you see way too much black and blue. Cold and dark. It is a downer! Black is dark dividing lines, black is shut, opaque, black bloc, black site, black out, locked down.

 

I do understand. Some of the things that people today have to put up with have left us vibrationally beaten down, all black and blue! You feel like you need to strap on a shield! No wonder we are tempted to retreat into the walls and shadows.

That is why it is time to wake up, turn the page, bring in some more light, some new colors. 

 

Forget white. White is too much a luxury, it would take me at least five changes of white clothes to get to the end of a day unstained. 

I scan my nice organized closet full of my collection of rags for body draping and I see none of these new colors. Wow, I've been in a funk I guess.

It is important to be true to your colors, wherever you find them, whatever they are for you. So I set out to find them for myself, in the shape of body wrapping fibers. Clothing is a form of expression and one way to feel and interact with my colors. 

I am aware of the symbolic levels too. These colors are like rays of new energies in our shared atmosphere, and clothing is but one way to invoke their presence.

 

I look around in stores. Admittedly, I go to used clothing stores that by definition aren't the latest thing, but still, find little. Seems like our whole culture is in a bit of a funk. Not that unreasonable, really. I decide to do something about it. A small thing is all I can do. But cannot one match start a roaring fire if conditions are right?

I end up bringing home a bunch of white shirts to dye myself. 

 

 Maybe you would call these the spring colors. The effect I'm going for is just a notch brighter than pastel, but without any grey added. The colors emerge when I put a dilute wash of a pure rich color over a white. A lot of light still prevails. I am delighted with the results!

 

For practical everyday use and wear, I like the feel of these colors, nestled in with the undyed naturals, the wool colors and unbleached tans. And of course, blue jeans.

Now, everywhere I go in the new colors, people come up to me to tell me how much they like them! I wonder what the butterfly wing fractal effects will be of brightening up someone's day -literally- might be....?

"Still not sure what I'm going for, but I'm gonna go for it for sure"- the Grateful Dead

PostScript: I happened to see what the New York Times was showing on its fashion page after I wrote this, and it's my colors! It is so refreshing that even the usually blank faced models are smiling:

 

Breath of Love

"Heaven is everywhere if we breathe out love like we breathe in air" -David Sunheart

(From the Tantric Tech Manual:)

A joy ride in the sky of your heart, a gift for you:

 

This a little way to clear your circuits and surround and fill yourself with love, sending it to all around you. The breath of love can be practiced just about anywhere and anytime that you are breathing and can devote a bit of your thought and attention.

 

Take a long slow in-breath, as you consciously want, know, feel, affirm, and intend your breath to inhale pure healing Love. Feel the love pouring into your heart.

 

Now, full with this Love that you are now loaded with, let your out breath gently blow out toward the way in front of you, blessing all. You can make a little blowing shape with your mouth if you wish, like maybe blowing a kiss. You can imagine that the Love shines out from your heart, even as you direct it with your breath.

 

 The next breath, and all others following, do the same thing, fill up with Love on the in-breath, and bless all on the out-breath. But this time, move your point of view forward to just in front of you, and blow the Love back mentally behind you. 

 

Now move to your mental right, and blow the next breath to your left. Move into this left Love filled area for the next one, and blow the Love to your right.

 

Then above to below, after that, below to above.

 

You are now in a radiant psychic box (or ball) of Love.

 

With this in mind, blow the love into the center of the box from the points of view of all sides at once. This completes the seven directions.

 

(Advanced Variations:)

Would you like to go on to other dimensions? Let's!

From the point of view of the center of your ball of Love, send this Love out in all directions, even as the sun....

 

This is about to get quite spacey, so here we go... 

Send the love in and out at once....

Next breath, send the Love to where it is neither in nor out....

Next breath, to all and neither!

Next, to whatever you may have somehow missed with all of the preceding. 

Make stuff up! (Or so you may think...)

 

(Advanced Breath Yoga Variation:)

Using your finger or just internal control, breathe in your first breath through your left nostril, and out through your right. Switch to the other way around on your next breath and so on.

 

(Super Advanced Method:)

Condense all of these into one breath cycle, after mastering the sequence.

 

This cleans out and supercharges your energy field. The Breath of Love blesses the whole universe, everyone you meet, and of course, you. 

 

You have the breath of life. You will never regret using it for this purpose.

 

"Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise." - Victor Hugo 

 

SunheartSunheart