We are meeting in our circle for the well-being of all life on earth and in our weekly reiki send.
Reiki flows to all who are ready to receive it and to our participants. May you all use the boost of energy to restore your health, to refresh your life and to feel a bit more alive and a bit more appreciative of what you have going for yourself.
In my corner of the earth, a thick and heavy snow storm was in the forecast for this Friday. Sure enough, it is happening, since dawn.
Gardening has taught me to put my focus on what is achievable in the space and time that is available and to resist the urge to fight conditions beyond my control. These words go down so easily, but my upbringing —education, parental attitudes, the communities I grew up in and the stresses I lived through — taught me the opposite of that, and it was not easy to update my nervous system and my mind to what gardening was imparting to me:
that there are forces in life that are stronger than our comprehension and our desires and that even without understanding or agreeing with these forces, we must respect them.
And that we can only thrive when our focus turns to what wants to be and grow — and away from what is fading or has no chance of developing.
I wish I had had that wisdom when I made monumental life decisions and monumental life mistakes. The epiphany that what was between me and wisdom was that I was not gardening enough humbles me now.
Do not dismiss this angle, please. Many good routines change us for the better. We grow into better people, because we put these structures in place, thanks to which micro-transformations can occur. Gardening changes us with a barely perceptible persistence, and we grow into people who harvest what we have sown and who harvest an intimate awareness of the soils we are working with and who harvest the lessons that nature teaches about itself and about life. Is there a more useful teaching? If you know it, introduce me to it.
There is a huge difference in both emotional and psycho-spiritual intelligence between the person taught by nature and the person not taught by nature. Suffice to say that I would have made much, much better choices, had this wisdom been available to me earlier in life. Let me appreciate the moment and the fact that wisdom is available to me now and for the rest of my life and that growing food and plants is wonderful.
Since the snow storm is expected to keep going until Saturday, I respect the mighty forces beyond my control, and I am turning the focus to what I can achieve on a day like that. By staying indoors, I do indoors activities and polish up what needs polishing. Of course, I am doing the spiritual work I do on Fridays, and I am cleaning up my home for my birthday tomorrow.
More power to you, if you enjoy the snow. (People have different feelings about the seasons. I am not a cold weather person. If I fully leaned into what my body wants, I would hibernate for months. That is not on the table, though. I adjust by simplifying things, by decluttering and sprucing up what can be improved. I introspect. I plan. At times, escapism helps me to get through winter, too: music that suggests warmth and travels to sunnier latitudes. A combination of these measures is how I plow on in a season that hits me with cold shocks and does not inspire me.)
Happy belated birthday to Geoff Lawton @ https://www.discoverpermaculture.com/ Happy birth anniversaries to the many wonderful musicians who were born this week. A smooth passage to the people who have passed away in the last twelve months after pouring so much love into their community and into the collective consciousness. We walk on without their heart, courage and clarity to back us, and we learn to back others with the heart, the courage and the clarity that we can give.
May this Friday clear up everything that is in the way and put you in flow.
If, for you, December is still a month of gift-giving or alternative time and gift giving, consider giving to the hungry and the homeless in your region or city, or to the hungry and the homeless in a war zone. Maybe you can bring your family on board to budget and rally for a cause like that, too? A roof above your head and being fed are so basic, but, to those going without it, that roof and that food make an enormous difference! Housing the homeless and feeding the hungry are a direct expression of Love Thy Neighbour and similar spiritual principles like compassion, karuna, interbeing, cultivating merits, being of service, becoming a person that others depend on and so on.
In many spiritual circles, charity begins at home: many have relatives who are at risk of homelessness or of hunger, or the practitioners themselves live in precarious situations. Bringing more stability in whatever way you can to where it is needed and receiving what is being offered are an impactful way to change the things you can.
With santosha and love.
16 December 2022
Nanda Jurela 