the inner garden blog

we can do nothing unless we are asked

"for the first time i am dreaming with a plant.  english plantain is growing here, & I see a young woman with enormous wings sprouting from her shoulders.  somehow i know she is the plantain spirit.  i approach her & introduce myself.  she asks why i have come.

"first of all," i reply, "i want to thank you for the help you have given my friends & me over the years.  your leaves have healed many wounds.  i come to visit you for another kind of help, a deeper kind.  the cuts & scrapes of my people are nothing compared to the pain in our hearts & the pollution in our minds. can you help relieve this kind of suffering too?"

the plaintain woman hops off her leaf & flies close to me.  for a moment she hovers in front of my face & looks intently into my eyes.  then she smiles & says, "of course, i will help you.  my brothers & sisters will help you also.  we are very happy to do this.  in fact we have been waiting for two hundred years for someone to ask us for this kind of help.  we can do nothing unless we are asked"


"we can do nothing unless we are asked"  leave it to a plant to come up with the understatement of the millenium! look at what plants  do when they are asked:  all human civilization is a form of excess grain ~ the generosity of plants.  the history of our species shows us that plants furnish us with whatever we ask for. 

our society values comfort, so that is what we have gone to the plant world to get.  this is wonderful as far as it goes, which is not very far in the direction of satisfaction.  if for a momentwe could forget the quest for comfort & ask the plants to help us find joy, richness & significance in life, is there any reason to suppose they would not share those qualities with us, just as they have shared everything else? to think that plants are mere dumb creatures that do not know ecstasy is ignorance or tragic arrogant folly.

all things enjoy ecstatic union with nature.  life without ecstasy is not true life & not worth living.  without ecstasy the soul becomes shriveled & perverted, the mind becomes corrupt & the body suffers pain.  ecstatic union with nature is necessary for normal health.  it is necessary for survival."

~ eliot cowan  'plant spirit medicine"

the unbearable lightness of being

"As part of your healing, you must see each person you meet now as all of humanity ~ a mandala, with the whole universe residing within them, and they are desperate to open up and equally desperate to keep hiding, to say in pain because it feels safe.  Help them come out.  Help us all to be free . . . At every moment of every day be conscious, make effort to purify and upgrade your thoughts, vibrations, and frequency. Activate the four chambers of your heart, keep practicing that and then please tell us what it means and how we can do the same. 

Any pain, let it go, offer it up to the ocean in the dark hours before sunrise, do this over and over until you can go to the ocean with emptiness and only receive.

The universe wants to open you up completely – like a perfect lover . . . "

~new moon healing, ms propheta west 2/6/2008~

the wheatgrass is beginning to talk to me

i had woken up in the middle of the night & crawled out to juice some grass .  . . i did an implant at 2 in the morning and promptly fell back to sleep . .

i fell into that twitchy thick tremble of green that lays over sleep & i was instructed by the grass itself, through my slumber, to slow down

i had a dream of what clarity could be like

in that clarity, the grass said stop (again)

the grass said i was angry underneath & that anger made me always want more

that all this hurtling through my life had an annihilatory effect, like mowing down

but it didn't say stop with so many words

it was more like a wave

it was more cathartic, more somatic

the wind was blowing through the grass, in sheets, pressing, spreading

instead of growing up, vertically

the grass was pressing it's body closer to the earth

making love, pressing every square inch closer to each other

& somehow this pressing and expanding was connected to my breath

when my breath was deep & low the grass was pressed close to the earth

rich

when my breath was agitated the grass was growing high into the sun, getting leggy, losing chlorophyll

love

at the roots white, reaching

the grass was teaching me how to slow my breath (& through that everything else) and this was creating a horizontal effect that brought peace

it was a flat line, something that i would have related to death in the past

somehow the grass was teaching me how to turn down the volume so i could communicate with everything



i realized in my writing class the other night that it was my resistance to the real cellular message of the green light inside me that was making me cranky

the light right before my fingertips was just so bright

my proximity to all I desired was way too close

as indicated in the previous posts, i had begun to abuse the light, utilizing it, instead of closer connection to the divine, as a method to relieve my symptoms of discomfort, to get away from myself

be generous & gentle with yourself

this was compulsive & a true detour from what my cells really wanted me to do

liberation

why is it so hard

even my gratitude was utilized like a drug to save myself from sadness

i was holding on while I swore i was letting go

& i was cranky because my inner fingers were exhausted from gripping

. .

love apple

"what can be as simple as eating an apple?

and yet, what can be more sacred or profound?  when we eat an apple we are not just eating an apple as a sacred thing.  the apple enters us, dissolves within us, contributes to us, becomes us . . . we are eating of the rain & the clouds & of all the trees that have gone before to bring this tree into manifestation, & of all the tears, sweat, bodies, & breaths of countless generations of animals, plants and people that have become the rain & soil & wind that feed the apple tree

when we look into one apple, we see the entire universe.  all the planets & stars, our sun & our moon, the oceans, rivers, forests, fields & creatures are in this apple . . . the apple is a gift of the tree . . . the seeds fall to become new trees, or are eaten by humans or bears or birds & thus spreading widely . . . unfolding in utter vastness, complexity & perfection

if we become aware of this when we eat an apple, we will know we are loved & nourished, & that we are part of something greater, a mystery so immense & benevolent & exciting  . . .

we humans, eating apples, are in a true sense apples eating apples.  the whole universe is not only in every apple but in every one of us.  it is through eating that we see that there are

no fundamentally separate things at all . . . "

~ will tuttle THE WORLD PEACE DIET

love, wheatgrass & magick

january 20, 2008

enough about heartbreak, let's talk about wheatgrass

this is where i have disappeared to in the last days: lit up, bright & shiny, lost (or found) in the moment like through the looking glass

& it is the chlorophyll that took me there

wheat is a much abused, adored and, like much of our food, a maligned substance.  the more i am learning about raw living foods, which is a huge subject and one just hinted to here and one to be explored further and further, what it is truly and what it means to me, but the more i live it and learn, the more i realize that it really about alchemy and really about magic, love magic . . .

first of all the love is in the plants

the love is in the growing

& by growing i mean the seed and the planting & the love it takes to do the work to grow the food

but i also mean the love is the actual growing . . what is in the seed that causes it to push it's way open into the world

everyday i wake up way before dawn, ridiculously way before dawn. i am so excited.  by just getting up and lighting the candles in my little beach shack and listening to the pound, pound, pound of the surf and padding over to the wheatgrass pavilion in my nightgown, i am making love to myself & i am deliriously happy. . . .delirious, really

close your eyes. nothing is moving. the roosters are crowing. the stars are still out, in multitudes

i reach into the student fridge to see what is still cut from the night before and if i am lucky it is empty.  then i get to go right into the greenhouse church for the grass

the trays are on the table. everything is green and silent.  the smell of the grass is 100 times more potent but just as narcotic as a fresh mown lawn.  i just want to lay down and kiss their feet, the wheatgrass cutters . .

& let me remind you that I am a coffee girl, with major ancestry . .

i can't say it enough, the love is in the grass

i get a couple of handfuls and go to the juicer.  you cannot push the grass.  it must be drawn through the blades.  you are extracting the love.  it takes it's own time.

i know the love is in the plants because i see and feel the transformation in myself and others on a daily basis.  it is palpable, visible.  one day afraid.  the next day, the face is open and the eyes are bright and there is the possibility for trust

these are not the enlightened here, or the highly evolved . . well maybe we are now, after two weeks of wheatgrass, but what i am saying is that even the most resistant, most hesitant pilgrim here at wigmore softens radidly once the green takes hold

there is no meditative process that i have experienced that delivers this kind of rapid result

& it is not narcotic nor hallucinogen, it is just food  . . .

inner species love

january 8, 2008

"if you look at your body you will find billions of living beings who depend on you.  every cell in your body is a living being that depends on you.  you are responsible for all these beings.  for all those living beings that are your cells, you are god

you can love all these beings or you can be mean to them

the cells in your body are completely loyal to you; they will never leave you & will work for you in harmony.  we can even say

they pray to you

that is the absolute truth"


~the mastery of love~~don miguel ruiz~

*******

"during digestion, food gives up it's identity & takes the identity of the one who ingests it 

it says i love you & i will take care of you & sustain you"

~spiritual nutrition~gabriel cousens~