Author: Mary Jane Di Piero

Brambles! An unfamiliar, uncomfortable medium to walk through. When, after several weeks, I went back to the overrun of blackberries covering a swath of this delicious new land I’m getting acquainted with, I discovered that the Conservation Corps in their work of making fire paths to the creek had cleared corridors, made inroads. The job isn’t finished, but it’s getting close to creating multiple access routes to water, to heightened connection. For many, the gnome medium is similarly difficult to negotiate and requires a certain open-mindedness and suspension…

Recently I was exploring a new piece of land (a richly faceted place I’m in the process of moving to) and, without knowing where my steps would take me, I moved deeper and deeper into an expanse of Himalayan blackberries. Soon going back seemed more chancy than pursuing my original intent of coming round to the more tended area I already knew, and I was absorbed into this world of brambles, slowing myself down to a total concentration on the terrain. I slipped through rounded branch configurations interwoven…

Barbara, through many years of concentrating on her interactions with the elemental world, has discerned a pattern of what works for her. She doesn’t assume it as the best procedure for everyone, but when Julie and I visited in November she prepared the following to help us connect. As she made this offering, she also left us in total freedom to use our own intuition and techniques. I think we both ended up using some kind of blend. I continue to refer to Barbara’s protocols, and I’m particularly…

Really, when Julie and I drove to Ben Lomand to pay our respects to Barbara I didn’t expect anything special to happen. I accept my slow trajectory and imagined I would just add a brick or two to the edifice, inching along to gnome recognition. But the weekend was more complex and quietly marvelous than that. To carve a “space out of time”, ritual is helpful, if not required, and so is the breathing in and out from group to individual, active to contemplative, reflective to expressive. Barbara…

As a long-time student of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, I was delighted with Tanis Helliwell’s story of Steiner recruiting leprechauns who would help narrow the chasm between nature spirits and humans. It added a fanciful flavor to what I have often experienced as Steiner’s stern demeanor. Picturing him in the elemental world, though still on an urgent mission, somehow allowed me to imagine him kicking up his heels and laughing—though perhaps still wearing the long black frock coat of the photographs. This seriousness and delight mingled together in…

Tanis Helliwell, in Summer with the Leprechauns, writes that she rented a cottage in the west of Ireland with the intention of staying there until she reached enlightenment. She was immediately engaged and subsequently re-routed in her goal by a leprechaun gentleman, Lloyd, whose intention was to find out about her as she already was. At one point he tells her how, as a young leprechaun, a human being had come to his realm asking for volunteers to connect with and learn about humans—a need for reconnection and…

“We are truly real. We are not a figment of your mind. Your mind has had to be developed and fine tuned to be able to do this work. Your mind is the instrument. We are the teachers. Please, please stay open, stay present, stay real.”   – Mano to Barbara Years ago, after reading Sandra Ingerman’s books on soul retrieval, I had a shaman do one for me. She brought back the news that my totem animal is the red-tailed hawk, and then she asked me to…

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…

These were Barbara’s “waking thoughts” on September 11, 2013, and I am so happy to turn this blog over to her directly. “I have concern that humanity seems to be very disconnected from nature. People think that their life needs are supplied by Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Rite Aid, and Best Buy. I saw this innocence and ignorance played out in my own life when, years ago—before I entered my spiritual path and conscious eating—my little daughter was so surprised to learn that lemonade came from real lemons and…

As I’m learning to address plants, animals and nature spirits directly—speaking, as David Abram (in Becoming Animal) advocates, “not about but to the natural world” and calling myself “into the vital presence of that world,” I often come rather quickly to a point of awkwardness. I acknowledge my progress in remembering to greet the nature spirits and trees each morning, to express my admiration and gratitude, but then what?  The following transcript from one of Barbara’s sessions with the Council of Gnomes gives a good sense of how…