To Be More Than We Were Before
Blessed is the gift of being invited into shared experience with another with the intention to grow and become more than we were before.
Lady Gaia often invites me into these kinds of experiences. When I join those moments with presence and curiosity, I am brought into a life that is so intricate and precious beyond any words I can offer as representative.
In my deep desire to co-create with this beautiful garden space here at our home, I often ask that kindness and love guide my hands, my heart, and my engagement.
I am a “learn as I go” kind of gal, sometimes tuning in well and feeling that the time together was mutually beneficial. Other times, I have bulldozed my way into spaces and through projects that leave me feeling that I have left the life in this garden gasping for breath and clutching for nearby support in an effort to recover. In my well-meaning intention to engage, I often forget to slow down and be present with the beings I share this space with, which can bring some harsh lessons about the effect it has had on all parties. I am learning to feel into each moment, how it may be affecting those in this space, and let it guide me, but it is a work in progress.
Thankfully, I am coming into more capacity and willingness to slow down and become present, even though it means that things take much longer to complete….but then again, is a garden ever really a “completed” process? Thankfully, it is not. It is an ever-evolving dance which I love deeply and infinitely. It brings me a deep peace and communion that influences how I learn to love all life here.
This morning was met with such invitation.
As I head out to greet the day, and walk the garden, in my thank yous and blessings, I look around and assess what I may engage here for awhile.
I become aware of the thousands of baby trees that have been left these past 2 years to anchor and sit sweetly all over the garden, but which I know will also become very large trees soon enough. With really no room for them among all the trees already here, they would need to come out, as I have had to do in years past.
I select one area to focus on and grab my bucket. Before plucking their little tree bodies from the nurturing earth they are so happily in, I say a prayer that I am guided in thoughtfulness and kindness, presence and appreciation for their sweet lives, that they know how much they are loved, how much I have enjoyed their presence, and that they understand that as much as I feel sad to pull them, that they won’t have space to grow here, but to please focus their energy and presence on the support and thriving of a native habitat for all who are in the highest and best to be here, and to please come out of the ground easily, to guide me in how to assist this, with blessings for all.
As I begin, I make sure to pluck one at a time, which will take a looooooong time, considering there are thousands of them. This will take many days. But I do my best to be present and send love to each one I pull, appreciating them fully, and letting kindness reach from my fingers to hug each baby tree.
Eventually, it becomes a conversation, mostly me talking and then feeling into their reply, knowing I am only getting some of it, but with time and practice I'll pick up more.
As I pulled them, I felt sad, knowing they were dying. I apologized many times, and asked that they please know my heart, that they guide me to do this with kindness, and that I hoped they felt as little discomfort as possible. They replied lovingly with, “kindess is always appreciated”.
I begin to ask how it feels to be in the earth, to grow here, to feel the sunlight, and I feel their invitation to “try it out”. So, I pause, sit down, allow my hands to rest on the ground with my fingers weaving in between the little trees still rooted here, and ask them to share with me what this feels like. As we sit together in the morning sunlight, I get this lovely sensation of sunlight touching my skin (which would be my leaves, if I were a tree), seeping into my body and filling it with a light and powerful brightness…life force. I experience it travelling down through my body and feet (which would be my trunk and roots, if I were a tree) and deep into Lady Gaia. It illuminates her as well, and travels up through me and all life once more, in a communion. We all are lit and buzzing with this brilliant life.
As we sit there, I get a sense of the larger community that makes up this garden: the bustling, the joy to be alive and here in this moment, as well as the quiet expansiveness, the deep presence and awareness of each and all.
Eventually, I get the courage to ask what it feels like to be plucked and to leave their earth body. What they shared felt like a physical disconnection in that plucking, and I witness the light dim to black, and then nothing. The essence is gone from the baby tree.
I ask where their essence goes once they leave their tree body. The little I could sense was that their Light joins the Great Light.
As I return to pulling them from the ground, I continue to meet each one as best I can with presence and gratitude. Sometimes as I move the bucket that I am putting them into, I feel them ask me to move the bucket aside, so that they can enjoy the sun as long as possible while I am pulling them. They wish to celebrate this life as long as they can with the sun’s blessing upon their body. And so I did.
There came a time when I felt that they wished me to lay them on the ground as I plucked them, so that their little tree bodies could be blessed by the sunlight as they complete the return of their life force to Gaia…feeling the sun’s caress as they transitioned. So, of course this is what I did.
When we reached the end of this work for the morning, I sat with them, thanked them deeply, and together we celebrated the sun, life, and togetherness. I wanted to be sad because of having to pull them out, but they invited me to also allow the joy and sweetness to seep in and be present. And so we did.
This moment in time has become a deep and loving reference for me to carry into each moment of my life, encouraging me to create space for that as often as possible, to find opportunities to weave it into the spaces that feel constricted or rushed. And even though there are times I just cannot see how to incorporate it, I ask its grace and love to be planted here, and to teach me how to grow it.
So blessed are we, to belong to a space such as Lady Gaia, where life can be so many things, especially deep and precious, and sweet.
May we all come to know, intimately, her loving presence…both through our engagement with one another, as well as through the precious experience that is our own life.
In deepest love and gratitude,
Munay 💗🤍🖤💜💙💚💛🧡❤️
Kimberly Logan
Harmonic Luminosity
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