Pay Attention to the Entrance

Reminder from Mano: When possible, have your feet on the soil as you walk. When on concrete, see your feet going beneath, to the surface of the earth. Send love through your feet to the earth and through your eyes to all of nature around you.

Another admirable January event in Nevada City/Grass Valley (in addition to the Wild and Scenic Film Festival I mentioned last month) is the Food and Farm Conference. Among the local presenters was a mom I sometimes see at my grandson’s preschool, a beekeeper. I noticed she was on the conference program and mentioned to her that I was coming. She told me how scared she was, because she’s only been working with bees for 6 years and others have much more experience. She was staying up until midnight working on her power point presentation, worrying. And then she stopped abruptly and said: “But what I really want to tell people is to talk to the bees and listen to them. They have been around for thousands of years and know what we need to do to help them.” I laughed and told her I thought that would be a courageous thing to do.

The morning of her presentation in the high school library, the wild rain had slowed things down, the ceiling was dripping, and the tech guys were not able to project her power point. When she realized she was on her own, she visibly straightened up and began to speak from her heart. She didn’t just mention the talking-to-the-bees part, as she might have, possibly with a trace of embarrassment. She made it the framework for her entire talk, beginning with how the bees sing the world with the resonances of their constant humming— which summon the flowers to open and create life forces of well being. She wove in so much knowledge about natural beekeeping, including the need for responsible practices and interfacing with commercial beekeepers, that her expertise seemed to pave the way for, and merge seamlessly with, her deep, respectful relationship with the bees. Every morning she takes her tea to the hives and tells the bees about her life, what is happening and what she is thinking. “What kind of response do you receive in return?” I ask. Well, during the day she gets intuitions, she says, a sudden idea, an urge to call someone, a knowing that she needs to tend to something.

She has sung into place this other layer of reality with the bees, based on mimicking the way bees live in nature and on the folklore of beekeeping. The old beekeepers, for example, didn’t go into the hives (didn’t have the removable frames that would make this possible), so they had to have other ways to discern the health of the hive; they watched the entrance and learned to read bee behavior. This young beekeeper balances going into the hive with observing from the outside; she incorporates the old with the new and distinguishes between frantic out-of-health hives and those where the bees are organized and have their wits about them. It’s humbling—she lives in that space of humility and gratitude. She sometimes loses hives, and then, in the other direction, she discovers a swarm and thrills to the bees’ natural way of birthing the new hive.

This idea of learning to watch the entrance, the gateways, from outer to inner, to feel the pulses, pertains as well to working with the devas of the garden, the gnomes, and other nature spirits—with what’s under the earth, what’s inside the tree, and even what’s deep in our own cellular structure. I intuit my way through the membrane of consciousness, the imaginative and true journey, but I don’t have to reject the microscope, the magnifying lens, the thinking path. Working with the heart AND the intellect is a discipline worthy of my complete attention.

Barbara notes that the beekeeper’s way of receiving sudden knowing, through intuition, is the way Mano impresses her to action or to receive a teaching. “If I follow a sudden idea by writing it into the computer,” she says, “pages of teaching may follow.”

The elementals give constant encouragement, and Barbara documents it with the quickness and efficiency of modern technology (that is, her laptop). “When I once told my team I felt like I was slipping backward in my connection,” Barbara remembers, “Mano encouraged me not to fret over these lapses. ‘It is all part of the learning process,’ he said. ‘To fret and feel dissatisfied with yourself only depletes your energy. Move into self-love. This is a big project and shift, not only for you but for the collective. Love yourself and set intention for the desire of your heart. When you live in gratitude and appreciation the joy will follow. Just breathe love in and out and the rest will fall into place. We are ever here supporting this integrative process. Sit in silence, Barbara. We do not want to feed your mind. You know the answers. We want to feed your heart so you can connect with your passion for this work.’ ”

The Council of Gnomes also provides context for Barbara, bringing the old into alignment with the new. One day, several years ago, the council wanted to talk about her personal history, over lifetimes. “You were part of a wave of consciousness that came to the planet to bring forth a new consciousness. This energy came into the earth’s etheric in Lemurian times. After the flood it was decided that many would enter the earth physically, while others of us would remain in the etheric. We, the Council of Gnomes, have stayed in the etheric. You chose to enter the physical. We work with the consciousness of the planet as you work with the consciousness of humanity by specifically working with your own physical consciousness.” 

“The big experiment was to individualize, using your God consciousness of creativity to embody a form. You were to stay connected with the God source and the consciousness of Earth Mother, uniting the two as one—two sides of the whole, like Janus, the god who could see in both directions at the same time. You also, in this present time, walk in the physical world of personality while being overshadowed by your higher consciousness.” 

Barbara reflects on the wealth of information that has come to her over the years, “as my team and teachers try to give me the big picture, encouraging me to wake up. Each one of us who wakes up sends out an energy that will go out through human consciousness and assist others to wake up to their own connection with their guardians, guides, teachers, and soul. A major teaching is for me to live from the inside out and give up my old ways of living from the outside in, always thinking I know what would be good for others and trying to match my thinking to fit with their beliefs. The night my husband Jim died, as I went back to bed, I heard the inner voice say, ‘Will the real Barbara Thomas please step forward.’ I felt this as a challenge and an invitation. I accepted and now am led to share publicly my relationship with gnomes, angels, and the spirit beings on my land. I choose to live by what I know is true for me, a single individual. I don’t have to wonder if what I share is right for others; they will know.”