a fish out of water

By now we are all familiar with the benefits of shopping locally.  When you purchase what you can in your own community you support people, your local merchants directly, instead of the corporations of the big box stores, and strengthen the fabric of your downtown.  Shopping locally for produce puts money directly into your local farmers' pockets, not the supermarket corporation.  Here a post on localism and a related post of voting with your $. 

Permaculture (here a post on that), a fairly new agricultural system, has always worked with native plants.  Now we are beginning to expand our awareness to the benefits of using native plants in our gardens - gardening localism.   

Plants that naturally evolved in a particular habitat are inherently hardier, which means more resistant to weather extremes and more resilient to pests.  Native plants have stronger genetic material than hybrids, and are biologically more diverse.  Perhaps you have heard that Peru's staple, the potato, comes in almost four thousand different varieties!  Now that is biodiversity.  Each potato variable developed within its own little ecosystem of weather and soil conditions, and thrives in that particular small patch of land.  A hybrid, on the other hand, was developed in a research facility, out of context of particular local soil and weather conditions.  When such a hybrid is introduced into an out-of-context garden ecosystem that plant is like a fish out of water.  

ka ching!

It may be an old hat for you, this idea that your thoughts create your reality, or it may be a novel idea worthwhile pondering.  Or maybe you never thought about it at all.  But if you're not entirely convinced already that your thoughts and beliefs are responsible for your physical reality think about it in reverse and read on.  

Say you're just coming back from the grocery store, how did that bag of groceries manifest in your house?  A few days ago you must have thought, "The fridge is getting pretty empty, I really need to go shopping."  Then you made your shopping list and off you went. It's pretty easy to trace back how the grocery bags on your kitchen counter originated with an idea in your mind.  Without those thoughts, if your mind had been completely empty regarding the state of your fridge, no groceries would have appeared by magic.

 Same if you're planning a vacation.  You think of it first, research where you want to go, make the arrangements, pay for your trip - and voilà, you're on your way. The first part of this manifestation process is all always mind work.

 It's funny that we are less convinced of this method when it comes to things like wealth and abundance, or health, or love and friendship, or recognition.  In reality these manifestations are just as real and tangible as the groceries in your fridge because you can clearly look at your life and see what you've got. What's your life like?  Do you have what you want?  Do you have the love you need?  Do you have the abundance you want?  If you have tons of friends,  life's serendipity didn't just send them your way.  You must have thought and done something to attract them.  Same with abundance.  Inspecting how you talk will give you a clear indication of where you're at with regard to abundance.  If you say things like, "It's not always easy," or, "I just have to work harder," you are not expecting it to come easily to you, and then it won't.   

The principle for manifesting a new job, abundance, health, or recognition is the same as for manifesting the bag of groceries or the gas in your car.  It starts with thoughts, beliefs, and intent.  Some things take longer to manifest, some manifest right away.  If you're thirsty you'll manifest a glass of water very fast, almost instantaneously.  If you're sleepy you'll go to bed pretty quickly.  If you were down and out and wanted to be a millionaire, even if you were to act like one and turn your belief system around right now, it might take a while before things were visibly moving along towards that goal.  

Think about what you think about, then create something fantastic.  If you're a skeptic try it with something small to test the theory.  

a smörgåsbord

Today I will serve you an eclectic buffet of posts from the bottom of the Deep Living blog archive, a treasure trove of pick-me-ups for a lonely night, a few stray minutes during lunch break, instead of watching your favorite Netflix show, or while surfing the net.   This blog has been in existence for over six years and I'm not even sure what I'll find when I go digging. So here goes...

We all have too much stuff, and not all stuff is created equal.  I found a post from 2015 about what makes stuff meaningful.  

One of my favorite posts, also from 2015,  is a reflection on the power of Now, and the dumbfounding realization that the past actually doesn't exist.  Huh?  Here is the post.

During the Ebola crisis in 2014 I reflected on the mystery of Ebola in particular, and illness in general, at least as we see it from our Western medical perspective.  Food for thought.

By design we don't have a clock in our living area, and in 2013 I reflected on forgetting your watch and experiencing time differently.

In January of 2014 I pondered the choice of our thoughts and how that is so crucial to how we perceive life and our lot in a post called it's your choice.     

Bon appétit!

what's the rush?

During a recent conversation a friend mentioned that he has always been called Joe, although his given name is Joseph.  I mentioned that the nickname thing seems specific to this country.  He nodded and said, "Yes, what's the rush?" A while back in Greece he had asked a new friend with a long first name, "So, what do I call you, Theo?" The friend replied, "Theofilos." 

My mother-in-law sometimes shortened my husband's already short name Brian to Bri.  Some people have tried to call me Sue and I have always gently corrected them, "I'm Susanne."  

First name abbreviations are just not a thing in Europe. We have time.  What's the rush to make us into Sues, Joes, Theos, Petes, and Mikes?  Is time worth so much money that we gain some by abbreviating a first name? 

here's some fabulousness

Wow, it is so easy to get dragged into the go-go-go and work-work-work mode of this culture.  If you don't make a conscious effort to raise your frequency - fabulous emotions have a higher frequency - you sink because you get thought by your subconscious beliefs (our subconscious informs 85% of what we do!).  

We need inspiration on an ongoing basis to remind ourselves of the magnificence of this earthly existence, and if yours is not wondrous you can learn methods to make it so.  To inspire people you need to be inspired.  If you're not inspired you lose your luster.

Currently I am reading Mike Dooley's Infinite Possibilities to remind myself how magical this world really is, and how much I'm in charge of my existence by way of what I think and conjure up that way.  I am always inspired by accounts such as Anita Moorjani's amazing (at least in our limited and limiting way of thinking) healing story, and there are many others like hers.  It's just that our Western medical paradigm does not yet allow for acknowledgement and scientific research into how this works. 

In addition I try to go to at least one inspirational conference each year.   Not only do these conferences inspire me personally and bring renewed inspiration to my thinking, they also contribute to freshening my messages to you.  Here a post, divorce is not an option, from one of the previous inspirational conferences I have attended, Omega Institute's Sustainability Conference.  

At the end of June I will be attending Charles Eisenstein's conference,The Space Between Stories, at the Garrison Institute.  Eisenstein, together with many other inspirational authors and speakers, is leading and lighting the way through the chaos of our cultural redefinition.  Civilizations have come and gone, and ours, in its present expression, has made us and our environment sick.   It is no longer viable and sustainable because it leaves not enough room for fabulousness, inspiration, individuality, freedom, meaning, creativity and all those other great heart based values.  I will report back after my return from Garrison at the end of this month.  

Meanwhile, think about what inspires you?  What lifts your energy?  What puts a smile on your face?  What makes you exhale and say "ahhhhhhhh" in delight?

CSAing

Just picked up my first CSA share of the season.  I didn't do it in a long time because I liked the freedom to buy wherever, whenever. But this year I wanted to support Jeff and Adina Bialas, local farmers who do an organic share close to home, and who are known to grow a wide variety of vegetables.

CSA, or community supported agriculture, is a social agricultural model.  At the beginning of the season you prepay a share of the season's crops, thereby helping to finance the farmer's expenses at the beginning of the season.  Because you pay upfront crop failure and weather related risks are minimized from a financial perspective for the farmer, and the risks are spread.  If the season is prolific everyone profits and you get a more generous share each week.

About twenty years ago, together with several other moms, I signed up for a working share on a biodynamic farm, all our kids in tow.  It was a lot of work for us moms, a lot of fun for the kids (play, warm cherry tomatoes right off the plant, running along the rows of vegetables, sitting under a big old tree and enjoying playmates and snacks), and an amazing abundance of vegetables each week.  That's when I learned to process tons of fresh bulk vegetables quickly lest they perish - eat, blanch, freeze, eat more, cook a lot.  Should have known about green smoothies then.  Oh well, live and learn.  Here an earlier related post on local food relationships.

This week's beginning share was modest because of the long, cold spring.  We got small bunches of kale and asparagus, beets, lettuce, herbs, young garlic, a small bunch of rhubarb, and two potted herbs.  Can't wait to see what next week brings.  I feel good supporting one particular organic farmer instead of the local supermarket.

friend or foe?

Nature is reestablishing itself on our property after all the construction, landscaping, and upheaval before our move here almost four years ago.  Small trees are coming up and filling in where trees came down or were taken down, the land is settling, and wildlife is moving in again.  

Two days ago our daughter came home and showed me a video on her phone of two long black snakes slithering into the rock wall as she came up the stairs.  Wow!  They looked quite impressive.  We had never seen anything bigger than a garter snake in our garden.  My husband quickly identified our new garden companions as harmless black rat snakes. The next morning both slithering reptiles were out sunning themselves, but quickly disappeared into their rocky home when they sensed my footsteps. Later, one of them visited the herb garden.  But they are shy and run away from us.

My attitude was ambivalent about these two new garden buddies.  Should I be scared?  Should I mind?  How to share my private paradise with what would send many a friend to flee?  But these two snakes found a perfect home in the chunky rock wall, they are not dangerous to us, and they attest to the fact that nature is healing after all the upheaval we inflicted on it.  

I have decided to make friends with them, share my garden with them, appreciate that animal life is moving back into this wooded territory we so rudely disrupted for our own purpose.  They have moved in for good and will undoubtedly keep the chipmunk population in check.  I look out the window and see if they are out sunning themselves.   They can have the garden when we're not around, and they willingly cede it to us when we want to be outside.  We will coexist peacefully.  After all we need to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

an American dream

No, I did not wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to put on a fascinator, and sip tea and eat crumpets while watching television.  But now, a few days later, it has dawned on me that the royal wedding symbols a shift to a more inclusive and diverse, a more beautiful world, the way the world really is when we don't put our blinders on.  

I love shifts because they create sudden change that was otherwise not thought possible in such a short timeframe.  With a shift comes a new paradigm, and our world cracks open somewhere and let's a new belief, a new possibility, enter.  Just like that.

Saturday's royal wedding shattered a glass ceiling. Meghan Markle helped to bring a little bit of that American dream back that I had thought was gone, the dream that anything is possible.  There is more to this wedding than the ongoing undusting of the British monarchy.  This alliance represents the new world order of unification across skin color.  It symbolizes hope.  As Mara Gay said in the NY Times, "Thanks, Meghan Markle, We Needed That."

wild, wild world

We live in an insane world.  Feeling guilty for taking time off is normal in this crazy world.  Feeling guilty for doing something "non-productive," like writing a poem, doodling, singing and dancing, is normal in this wild world.  So you become overwhelmed.................because you live in an out-of-balance left-brain world.  That's normal too.

We do so much mind work, and that gets us all clogged up, up there in the head, aka stressed.  Left-brain overload can result in headache, anxiety, fogginess, or dizziness.  We need a balance between right-brain and left-brain activities, the creative, intuitive side of us, and the analytical, rational side.  They inform and need each other, but too much of a good thing either way doesn't work. 

What to do?  Swim a bit upstream and do a little less, at least temporarily until you can catch your breath.  Become quiet. Take half a day.  Do a right brain activity (creative and heart based) that resonates deeply.  Could be meditation, a walk in the woods, some gardening work, doing some beading, singing out loud, doing some EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), or taking a nap.  All these activities take you out of your mind and into your body and heart, and ultimately help you regain mental clarity and perspective.  Take a look at a recent post on the benefits of coloring in this context.

After you've had your mental health moment, time, or day, you might make a prioritizing list to sort out all that mind mush that got you into a tizzy in the first place.  But now your mind is more rested.  Make a chart by category, such as Work, Personal, Kids; then start with your most important to-do item in each category and go down to the least important item. When you see your list, or lists, you have a visual of what needs to be done.  Now you can cross off each completed item with great satisfaction and feel you're in control again.

an adventure

Me, my body, my mind, and I are good friends.  I depend on my body for this in-body experience here on Earth, and my mind permits me to experience it mindfully and with meaning.  So I need to cultivate them, love them, treat them well, and heal them if they indicate that they are out of balance.  I provide my body with healthy foods so it can restore its cells; I try to be joyful and grateful and feed my mind good thoughts; I exercise (a bit) and dance (sometimes) and try not to sit for too long; I try to get a good night's sleep (sometimes it happens, sometimes not); I try to do more and more of what I truly enjoy doing, and less and less of what I don't like so much; and I try to meditate regularly (well almost).  

We - me, my body, my mind, and I - go on adventures all the time.  That is when I discover that something is out of balance and I need to figure out how to heal me; when I become aware of beliefs or patterns that no longer serve me; when things shift and I need to change with them.  The more in tune we/I become the better life gets.  Have you made friends yet with You?