Lesson 9:
In the last lesson, you began to develop your individual technique for your connection. In this lesson, you will be given another method for communication and you will explore a few other aspects of where your awareness can go when communicating with nature.
Stream gives us a graphic illustration of how you can use your imagination to push your consciousness off on the wave of another energy.
"I am the Stream. When you imagine floating along my current, you imagine having your eyes closed and feeling the water buoy you up, carry you along - feeling the chill of it on your skin, the warmth of the sun on your face. This is how you imagine it would feel if you were carried by me. You have left your sense of sight behind for the moment. Delve into this a little further. Imagine yourself continuing to be carried. What other things come into your field of awareness as you are being carried along? At some point, you may find that you don't seem to be making it up any longer. It seems to be coming of its own accord."
Our consciousness is very malleable. Sometimes, we may allow ourselves to become the aspect of nature that we are communicating with. Spontaneously, consciousness may flash upwards and see life from the vantage point of a bird, or move into a tree to experience what it is to be a tree. For this moment, we are that bird or that tree. Moments of clarity like this help us realize that all that talk about oneness is really true.
Good communication takes trust and it takes an ability to let go. It has to be fun, playful. It's a bit like sex in that it's an activity in which we relax, we focus our attention and let ourselves be carried with the experience. When we are done with sex, we know we'll drop right back into the real world. The same happens after an experience of clarity or communion.
Our consciousness is often more flexible than we realize. One day while out by the pond, I wondered how well I could communicate with nature since I had a bad case of laryngitis. I was using a voice recorder those days. Once I moved into the state of communication and started to speak, a distant part of me was aware that my voice was becoming clear and normal. The hoarseness was vanishing. But the second the session ended, I was dumped back into this reality along with a voice that could barely do better than a whisper. We just don't realize how flexible our consciousness can be.
However, we need to take care not to con ourselves. We need some sort of marker to tell us if it's just our ego speaking or if what we perceive is of high quality. One way to tell is to look at what information might have come through. If there is any sense of fear, of lack, of worry or strife, if there is any sense of ill-will or anger or defensiveness, then we're probably having a conversation with our ego and not with nature. My experience of higher wisdom is that it doesn't control us or tell us what to do or make judgements. For me, the high energies of angels, nature spirits and devas always have an essential tone of respect, compassion, love and acceptance. They affirm the divinity of all things and people. They offer empowerment, unlimited choice and support. They raise us up.
More on techniques:In the last lesson you played with finding your own method of connection. To make it truly your own, I suggest that you observe your own process and posture. And if you need more, here's the method that was suggested by Mentor to Meredith Young-Sowers to connect with the energy of a specific plant or species of plant in "Agartha":
1. Sit quietly in a pleasing place, close to the spirit you want to contact. Realize that this is possible.Exercise:2. Picture the plant as closely as possible in your mind this serves as an invitation. Then comes quiet acceptance.
3. Let the picture of the plant drift away and in its place appear whatever representation the plants energy wishes to put forth. It makes room for the form the plant wants to take. The response can be very delicate: a sense of pressure somewhere on the body, a waft of colour before your closed eyes. If you feel as though someone has slipped their hand in yours even though there is no one there, don't dismiss.
4. Repeat however often you need to establish a link and keep the link in use.
Sit at the foot of the tree you have greeted in each lesson. Greet it again. Be fresh about it. It can not be done by rote. Feel again the love, humility. As you approach this communication, notice what posture you tend to hold as you open to the energy of the tree. Notice how you best prepare for this and how you settle into it. See if any of the techniques of the others have worked for you.
Make contact with your tree and jot down your impressions in your journal.
Journal:As well as your impressions, ask yourself if you think it might be easier for you to "become" the energy you contact or observe it as a witness to it. What steps can you take to make this so?
Review the important attitudes to bring into the communication like relaxation, mindfulness, joy, curiosity, inventiveness, imagination, and humility. See if you tend to leave one out or forget it. Ask yourself what you can do to remember it next time and see yourself doing that.
What this was like for me:My main concern at one point was authenticity. I didn't want to fool myself or anyone else. Sometimes when I thought I was connecting with a tree, I'd discover it might have been a bird. So I asked what to do about this.
Redpoll: "Our words vary in their texture, in their characteristics, for each carries a different focus, a different feeling-tone, as different sense of being, a different song. So listen then, as we talk to you as spring, as apple, as the earth, or as we speak to you as you."
We are each unique. No one else's Song is quite the same. That is why, I believe, that no matter how well we clear our energies and how well we move into our divine space, we do not always get the same messages from nature as other people. When two people listen to a symphony, one may hear the percussion and another may hear the strings. But they are both listening to the same symphony. You will find when you compare what you hear with others, that the tune may be different, but the essence of the messages you get is the same.
Questions others have asked:Q. I hear people talking about how the Earth has feelings and that she cries in sorrow because of how we have treated her. You said that any information from nature had no sense of good and bad. Is the information about the earth crying ego based?
A. While it's true that our activities are, at times, a hardship to the earth it's unclear that she feels any emotion about it at all. How can we know what the earth feels when our world view is limited to the karma we have brought into this life? For example, being human, I can't know what it's like to think like a dog. I can empathize. I can guess. I can speculate. I can observe. But I'm not a dog, so I can't really fully "get" how Rover thinks. We can get glimpses of the unknown. In meditation, we sometimes rise above our limitations long enough to feel/know something different. But even then, unless we have some sort of framework to put a new experience in, we can't fully know.
In the end, if we respond to someone's phrase that 'the earth cries' in a way that opens us, then it doesn't matter whether the tears are real or a human projection. What matters is our love.
As with the rest of this course, everything here is optional. Do what is right for you at your own pace.
References and further reading:
Agartha, by Meredith Young-Sowers, ISBN: 9780345362773
Back to Introduction
Spirit Messages on my website.
A-Little-Birdie-Told-Me, Meditations From Nature
This work is © Copyright by Janet Dane. It may not be reproduced in total or in part without the author's express written permission. If you'd like more information, contact Janet
