Meeting the Woman on the Mountain

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REMINDER from Mano:

Each time you step outside and feel the fresh air, say hello to the air elementals; greet the fire elemental when you feel the warmth of the sun, and the earth and water elementals in the plants and ground under your feet.

REMARKS from Barbara:

As I integrate my writing style with Mary Jane’s writing I got the funny thought, my style is like mashed potatoes while Mary Jane’s style is like a lovely French soufflé.

REMEMBERING Mary Jane:

As I build a new story out of an old story I have identified Mary Jane’s words in italics. Her words were first presented on this blog on July 26th, 2013.

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MEETING THE WOMAN ON THE MOUNTAIN

Blog #72

Sometimes, looking back after years, I am startled to see a map that leads to an outcome I would never have dreamed. The route is never the super highway one but is oddly disjointed. But then I can see how a theme picks its way through the landscape, and I am dimly aware that under the surface of events, things are happening that are not entirely of my doing. It has been so with this work I am now undertaking, as I begin a blog with and about Barbara Thomas, the Woman on the Mountain.

 I met Barbara some 30 years ago. At first, it was not so much the woman who attracted me as it was the sacred amphitheater I discovered on the mountain.  It seemed magical, the tall no-nonsense redwoods mixing with the curved mature Madrone, and both cheered from below by a sprinkling of deciduous trees and shrubs, that allowed a special spirit to filter through the space.  

In 2005, when an old friend and I had both left the Waldorf School at the same time, we chose the amphitheater as the place to hold a labyrinth ceremony. With other friends we laid the Chartres form in forest debris and 1,000 tea lights.

Barbara was there with us that night, and at the end she declared that the fire spirits had never been so pleased or felt so acknowledged. A few weeks later, in appreciation (a more timid soul than Barbara might have vetoed the candles as a fire hazard), I brought her a photograph of the ceremony and we had our first real conversation.

I started doing small retreats at the guest cottage, spending hours in the amphitheater alone, in the rain, early in the morning, at night, sitting in tree hollows, gazing, longing to see angels and elementals, and I knew this must be one of their portals.

I had formed a belief through the years that such clairvoyance or “second sight” was not my gift nor my task in this lifetime. Nevertheless, this belief did not keep me from feeling a sense of loss that I had no palpable access to the extra-sensory realms I have solidly supported for so long.

On my retreats I would always visit Barbara, and she began telling me about her long-cultivated relationships with the nature spirits on her land. What grew in me was the consideration that, like other forms of spiritual discipline, the back-and-forth communication she described was a practice and a process, not a propensity that one either does or does not have. My acceptance that such “bells and whistles” were not for me shifted to questions: Why not me? Why not anyone who is willing to do the work? And therefore, why hadn’t I so far been willing or able to do the work successfully?

About a year later, I went down to the amphitheater after a conversation with Barbara and decided to put this new possibility to a test.  I lay down on the ground and declared: I’m not going to leave until I have a message from one of you elementals!  It was a warm day and I loved being there with the sun dappling through the tree branches; I could wait. After a short time, the line came into my head: “Go home and talk to your own elementals!” I laughed, because, indeed, at the moment I am living in an ensouled place myself—another one of those portals—and it made eminent sense to start there. Still, definitive success on my own turf has eluded me, and so I am pleased that Barbara, the amphitheater, and its nature spirits are now coming into my life in a new, more purposeful way.

Mary Jane got her message. She did everything right. She set her mental intention. She made herself available. She opened her heart to enjoy the nature around her. She waited and “in a short time, the line came into my head: “Go home and talk to your own elementals.”

When I asked Mary Jane if she did go home and talk to the nature spirits that lived on her own special land, she said ‘no’. I don’t know what it is, I have had the same experience this past winter, clearly hearing the request to simply step outside to greet the rising sun, to say hello to Gaia, and her angels and elementals. Over and over I did not want to go outside in the cold or wet even though in my heart I know it is a real privilege and it always feels so good.

Seeing my resistance to act on the council’s requests, Mano has asked me to take the first 21 days in March as a retreat to review all that has come to completion in 2018. My book, Living with the Spirits of the Land, was published. I had an art show, an overview of my 60 years of painting. Mary Jane’s transition brought an end to her writing the Blog. All of that needs to be tucked away in files and binders so I can be open to the new the council wants to bring forth in my life and service. 

Mother Nature and the elements are in great need for human support and intervention. There was a time ‘in the beginning’ when human, angel, and elemental worked consciously in harmony to support Gaia and each stream of consciousness to advance and develop from a 3^rd dimensional world of duality to a 5^th dimensional world of unity and perfection. Named by some the Aquarian Age or the 7th Golden Age.

Mano tells me the angels, elementals, the spirits of the land we live on, watch us come and go. They want to create a relationship with us, they are actually in need of encouragement from loving human beings.  The unrest, emotional imbalances on the planet right now are having a harmful interaction with the elemental world as seen in the flooding of the waters, fires in the forests, strong winds in hurricanes and tornadoes. 

Just to say hello and send love would mean so much to them. In addition, they want us to receive and recognize their love when we feel the freshness of the air, see the blossom of a flower, the ‘feel good’ of a favorite hiking path or camping spot. There are so many ways they reach out to us yearning to communicate, to be recognized, respected and responded to. 

Mano constantly reminds me that the easiest way to start is simply to send love and say hello. I feel him smile and add, “try it you may like it.”