Nature Communicates in Many Ways

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REMINDER from Mano:

Nature is always aware of your presence. We all wish that you were more aware of us.

REMARKS from Barbara:

Each morning as I sit with the redwood tree, I now realize that a gentle wind spirit joins me.

REMEMBERING Mary Jane:

The blog excerpt from 2013 shares how Mano orchestrated Mary Jane’s moving to a house next door to Julie, a woman who had learned, and was teaching people to communicate with wild flowers.
All of Mary Jane’s words are written in italics.

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Nature Communicates in Many Ways

Blog #77

As I prepare the August blog, it is the middle of July, so I have only had two weeks of adventuring with Mano’s invitation to sit daily with one place in nature to connect with Mother Earth. My daily trip is to sit with the redwood tree in my front yard in order to commune and abide with Mother Nature.  So far she has been very silent, there is no whiff of communication floating into my mind. At first I would arrive at my destination with computer in hand preparing to record any dialogue that might occur. Nothing happened. So now I leave the computer in the house and have a little notebook ready, just in case. What I have noticed, and sincerely cherish, is that an empty, expanded space in the center of my chest cavity has been filled with a sweet presence that was not there a month ago. I had spent a lot of time last winter sitting at my computer in front of the fire organizing binders and journals. Although this is an activity I love doing, my mind was so full I didn’t notice that my feeling body was empty. I now leave the computer in the house and take another companion to sit with the redwood tree each morning.

In the past few years I have fallen in love with sipping loose tea out of a bowl each morning. I love the warmth on my two hands as I hold the bowl. I love watching the leaves unfold as the hot water loosens and softens the small dried bits of tea. As they unfurl they reveal a whole leaf, with veins and spine and magically I experience an amazing sense of presence of the great aged tea trees growing in the high mountains of China. It is said the mystical and magic qualities of tea were first discovered thousands of years ago by shamans wandering through the forest searching for healing herbs to take back to the villages to nurture and heal their community. Next the wandering monks discovered the ancient tea trees and built their small hermitages next to an ancient tea tree, to live their lives in prayer and drinking tea.

As I sit with the bowl of tea in my hands, my back to the redwood tree, feeling the warmth of the earth on my bare feet and enjoying the fragrance of jasmine floating on a warm fresh breeze, I realize I am actually experiencing Mother Nature with all of my senses, when I finally relax my mind into a heartful silence rather than straining to pick up a message. Mother Earth’s elements and elementals of air, earth, fire, and water bless and nurture me wordlessly.

Last winter while taking a one-day tea retreat, a sweet flow of words drifted through my mind:

It is no surprise 
It is easy to see
That tea has become 
A Great Mother to me

During these summer days I have been opening my book, Living with the Spirits of the Land, at random and reading a page or two. I am always amazed how Mano has guided my life for such a long time before I even knew he existed. This, I feel, is actually true for each person. I feel our souls came to earth with a plan to awaken, to remember, to be of service. My experience is, that it unfolds out of the daily life we are guided to live, the interests we are inspired to follow.  I see this happening in Mary Jane’s story how her friend Julie was guided to talk with the flowers.

Excerpt from Blog #10, “From Plant Talk to Gnome Talk“, first presented on 10/2013 by Mary Jane

Here in my Nevada City pine woods I have a new friend and neighbor, Julie, who is a botanist. Her arrival at that title—with Latin names and scientific expertise—came after her heart’s awakening to wild flowers. And so we have begun meeting for a couple of hours each week to pursue this heart direction of crossing communication thresholds to connect with elementals, plants, animals, and the beings of earth, water, air, and fire.

Julie’s intense interest in and love for plants blossomed when she found herself with a unique opportunity: she had moved and suddenly had the freedom to walk out her back door into the wild mountains and meadows of Tahoe, just wandering and soaking up their beauty. She might take a nap under a tree and wake up to see fox kits playing by their den, or spend a day exploring a meadow of buttercups and violets, touched by their sweet fragrance drifting in the morning air. She worried at first that this was not a particularly responsible way for a wife and mother to spend her time, but she was compelled into a new spaciousness, and, as it turned out, into her life’s work.

Soon she began writing a wildflower column for the local newspapers, which sparked her to go more deeply into the wildflowers, and then to teaching wildflower field classes. One day, getting ready to take a class into the field, she spontaneously announced that they would be talking with the plants. She hadn’t planned to say this and immediately wanted to take it back, for fear she had promised too much. When the experiences her students had were deep and amazing, she gained the confidence to continue, developing inviting ways to introduce and guide students to hear the messages and teachings of the plants.

When asked how native people knew how to use the plants, she tells her students that many of their people say it wasn’t merely through trial and error, but that they gained this knowledge mainly through their close relationship and communication with the plants. Often Julie notes a rolling of eyes by a skeptic or two in her classes, but she addresses this skepticism straight-forwardly: “It’s true we live in a culture that doesn’t believe in such possibilities. But why close your minds and deny yourself the chance to experience something that could be life-changing?” Her kindliness, coupled with an easy way of approaching the plant talk, turns the doubt into curiosity. And the letters she has collected from children and adults about the plant messages they have received are validating and inspiring—like the 8 year old who said, “You taught me a very important lesson. You taught me I can talk to flowers through my feelings. I think this has changed my life forever.”

The two of us often go across the road to a nature preserve to be in the presence of a fine old oak growing in a granite outcropping. Last week we spent the first half hour on our backs under the vast expanse of branches, striving to connect. When we compared notes, we both had the same message (hers delivered with more embodiment than mine—more pictures and words): Go easy on the “striving”. Don’t come with an agenda. Don’t worry about doing it properly or well. Relax, doze off, sink in. Come at all times of the day and night to see what it means to be rooted in one place, within a particular context.

After this “dropping in”, we found the atmosphere shifted into quietude and intensity—something like I imagine T. S. Eliot’s “still point of the turning world.” Each word was more deliberate, fuller . . . we chattered less, left more spaces. We agreed to begin each session this way. Will we remember?