Something's Coming...
Something's Coming
Spirit doesn't speak the language of 'should'. It doesn't guide us with fear. It communicates through the medium of the heart, and its language is that of joy.
When Spirit tells us to prepare for something, it does so by making the preparation itself seem exciting, even fun. When it's time, on our evolutionary path, to do something new, we develop a true zest for it. A heartfelt, deep interest. An excitement and passion that perhaps wasn't there before and makes no rational sense. We aren't made to do it, or told to do it. We just suddenly *want* to do it. Or, if we've always wanted to do it, we suddenly *cannot wait* another minute to do it.
I've always hated gardening. My mother and grandmother have always loved it, sectioning off huge portions of the yard which they would fill with a bewildering jungle of edible growing things and then spending every spare moment of the sunny weather out there working in it. I don't like bugs. I can't stand spiders. I don't like getting dirt on my hands. My knees hurt if I kneel more than a few moments, and bending over hurts my back. I have *never* had any interest in gardening, and I didn't learn anything from my years of watching the women in my family do it. I love fresh, organic produce, but until now, I've been content to spend money and time visiting whole foods stores and stocking up on it that way.
But now, suddenly, I find myself itching to learn everything there is to know about both wild, and do-it-yourself food.
Spirit has put me on this path with many interesting little nudges which I think you will find both entertaining and, for those of you new to learning all the quirky ways Spirit gives us the guidance we seek, informative.
During this void the past couple of months, I've distracted myself from the 'nothing', the physical discomfort, and the emotional tidal waves with a new interest: The Sims. The Sims 2, specifically, at least to start with, and then The Sims 2: Castaways. These are video games where you have a little character who engages in the acts of daily living, and your job is to help that character achieve her or his needs and wants. Very addicting. I highly recommend it. Anyway, the part of this that has contributed to this very bizarre new passion to grow my own food is that the Sims do. They have a 'frood tree' on which they grow several varieties of fruits, and a container vegetable garden as well. I found myself no longer interested in the other options for feeding them once I'd discovered these things. But that didn't make me want my own. Not yet.
I played and completed the challenge of Sims 2 and went searching for more. I found The Sims 2: Castaways. Your sim is now marooned on a deserted tropical island, and must be totally self-sustaining, harvesting everything they need to stay alive (and joyfully thrive) from the abundant environment around them. Instead of going to the refrigerator for food in this one, you go out gathering the wild fruits, nuts, berries, grains, roots, and vegetables which grow all around you. And you harvest the vines, stalks, wood, grass, clays, stone, and leaves around you in order to craft your tools, housing, furniture, clothing, and entertainment.
I found myself playing in tears, wanting our world to be this abundantly sustaining. The thought of walking around outside and picking things off bushes and trees, digging it out of the ground when I got hungry, rather than making a draining trip to the local grocery store and settling for chemically-poisoned pseudo-food made my heart *yearn*.
I was so damned jealous.
We have to move from the home we're in, and for the two months since were were given our deadline of this week, we've been patiently (okay, impatiently and frustratedly) trying to keep the faith, waiting for Spirit to lead us to the one that it has prepared for us. We found it last week. And one thing I saw right away was that it has waist-high, raised brick garden beds, about one foot wide and three or four feet long, all around the perimeter of the home. I couldn't stop looking at them. And I started to think how simple gardening would be, if I could just cultivate a few things I really loved, in a space I wouldn't even have to bend over to tend.
A little research and some consultation with both my mother and grandmother, and I learned that it was not only possible, it was a trend that was spreading like wildfire. Container gardening. Square foot gardening. Urban rooftop gardening. Hanging gardens. Even kitchen table gardening.
I move in one week, and I can't wait to get my very own, first organic container garden started. I've been spending hours online researching and learning everything I can to get ready.
The home also happens to have its own well and septic, disengaging us from those municipal utilities as well. It's got a lovely fireplace/woodstove in the living room, too, in addition to its electric heating system. This is a very nice thing to have on the coast, where wet ground, high winds, and lush trees means lots of downed power lines. We learned all about this our second week living here, when a monumental three-day storm hit which knocked out power for those three days and ripped the top off a tree in our driveway and sent it crashing directly down onto our less-than-a-month-old car. (Spirit replaced it, by the way, within a few weeks, with one that was twice as nice, with no cost to us whatsoever. And no, we didn't have insurance.)
During our initiation into coastal storm-weather, we also quickly learned about no-cook, no-refrigeration food, crank-powered flashlights and radios, and the beauty of homemade quilts. The house we're moving out of doesn't have a woodstove, and I still don't know how to use one anyway (even though I grew up with...and pretty much despised...those as well) but I was very envious of the neighbors' woodsmoke filling the freezing, wet air around our house. I plan to stockpile some firewood (and learn what to do with it!) this winter.
And then there's the whole natural medicine thing. I've always been fascinated with medicine, and as I evolved spiritually I shifted my interest from allopathic to natural healing. A few weeks ago, as I shared here, that interest increased suddenly, and I was passionately led to begin the process of getting my doctoral degree in naturopathy. In the past few weeks, I've also found myself drawn to take a walk up into the forest behind this house, where I experienced a very strong desire to further my learning on wild-grown medicinal and edible plants.
I think something is coming.
And I don't just mean, I think something is coming like we've all known something was coming, a time when we return to a more self-sustaining, and thus more harmonious, way of living. What I mean is, and I don't want to scare anyone, but I think I'm going to need all this stuff. Maybe before the end of this year.
I know that the New Earth will be made of tribes and villages, interdependent but self-sustaining. No more cities, where people drive two miles to get this, another three to get this, perhaps twenty to get to work. The New Earth will not be a commuter world, but a local one, where we can walk or ride to our destinations, and where imports come to us, in the form of travelling marketplaces, like it was hundreds of years ago.
Living dependent on imported goods is something we must get away from as quickly as possible. And again, I mean it's time to think, right now today, about what you would do if you could not drive at all for say...one week. Just think, if the price of fuel merely doubled, how very much less driving you would be doing. And when you did drive, or ride public transport, just think how expensive every single thing in the stores would be, due to the doubled cost of transport.
Just that one change, which is completely possible given our already-record-breaking fuel prices right this moment, would change the way we live in a matter of *days*. No more dependence on stores and pharmacies, doctors and utilty companies. Even getting things delivered through the mail would be cost-prohibitive. People would very, very quickly need to find ways to meet their own needs rather than just pay for someone else to produce and transport everything they consume. Kids wouldn't be able to be herded by the hundreds across town to be mass-educated in one big building. They would have to receive their education at home or in small, community groups. No more office buildings filled with wall-to-wall cubicles full of unhappy drones, either. People would need to find ways to creatively use their natural gifts and talents to serve the needs of their close-knit community in a way that was in alignment with their passion and purpose, instead. And communities would need to share resources, compensating one another's strengths and weaknesses to create a unified whole that met everyone's needs.
Wow, doesn't sound that bad, really, does it?
Well, I'm telling you it will happen. I have no doubt in my mind and have been saying so and naturally preparing for it (joyfully) for years. But what I'm saying that's different now is that I feel it's going to happen much sooner than people think.
Last year, a hurricane seriously threatened our U.S. fuel supply when it nearly took out the major platform we rely on in the Gulf of Mexico for transport of both domestic and imported oil. There was a cable TV movie made in which this scenario actually happened, and while it was rather alarmist and not-too-cleverly written, it was more than just a good story. It's a very real possibility. One well-placed hurricane could take away 75% of our access to petroleum, and all the (earth-destroying) products made from it. That could happen this fall. And even if it doesn't, fuel prices could keep rising enough to transform the face of our country's access to goods and services.
That is just one way we could instantly be transformed from a commuter society to a localized one.
I don't say this to scare you, only to point out that so many people walk around in the daze of tedious daily responsibilities, thinking that drastic change doesn't and couldn't happen. That things may change, yes, but it will be slow and steady, like they're used to, and that they'll change slowly to adapt. But that's just not the way things are anymore. Change can happen overnight. And my intuition, and the signs I'm getting in my own life, says it's going to.
More signs:
I suddenly can't stand shopping. I used to adore it. Even grocery shopping. The power of making the choices, the novelty of seeing all the products, the thrill of handing over money and taking home new things.
It exhausts me now.
For one thing, I can intuitively feel almost no life energy in the goods in the store. I can feel the chemicals, the poisons, in the products and in the foods, and they're in more things than you think. I can feel that there are virtually no choices now, even on the health food shelves, that truly hold life inside them. Grocery shopping leaves me drained, aching, and sad, and more often than not, I leave without even purchasing enough to feed myself for more than a day or two. My partner and I, like my starchild daughter, have lost interest in food. We have no passion for shopping, preparing, or eating it. We've been living on liquid nutritional supplements, to a large extent, taking the cue from our daughter. But there is no joy in that temporary solution. And we still have to go out to stores to buy those. The idea of growing and eating our own food, however, holds an allure for me that is just as strong and undeniable as it is new and startling. I mean, if you knew me, you'd know how weird, and thus meaningful, this change is. From city-living shopaholic to country-living organic gardener. It's bizarre to say the least.
And it's a message.
This rapid and dramatic death of tolerance for the old way is a sign that I'm being given little choice but to enter into the new. It's not just a good idea, and it's not just something to work toward in a slow, meandering way. I'm being forcibly *shoved* away from what is non-nurturing and will very soon be unavailable, toward what is nurturing and will become a necessary way of life. And the speed and strength of the changes suggests that the need will arrive very, very soon. I'm feeling that it will be before the end of this year.
It's beautiful how Spirit never, ever speaks to us in terms of obligation, fear, or responsibilities, but rather in terms of what seems fascinating, joyful, and holds true, heart-deep attraction. I'm not getting my 'warning' about the impending shortages with visions of doom and scarcity, but am rather being joyfully and passionately guided to exactly what I will need in order to not only survive, but thrive in whatever is ahead. And I didn't go looking for a home that would make me virtually self-sustaining, I was led to one almost effortlessly. I did have to wait and wonder if Spirit had somehow forgotten about me as the weeks passed and no home appeared! Even that, however, was perfect, because if we'd found the house earlier, the owner wouldn't have been willing to hold it as long as we would have needed. As it is, it is available exactly when we need to move into it, and we didn't have to worry about paying rent ahead of time for a house we weren't ready to live in. Everything worked out in perfect divine timing, as always.
I guess I felt led to share this with you because I know that you, too, have been getting nudges to follow your joyful heart-longings, and I wanted to remind you how very important it is to do so. Without sounding like a doomsayer, following your joy is what will save you in the transformative times to come.
And is that really such a bad way to live your life?
Namaste,
Satina
http://www.dharmawork.com
Spirit doesn't speak the language of 'should'. It doesn't guide us with fear. It communicates through the medium of the heart, and its language is that of joy.
When Spirit tells us to prepare for something, it does so by making the preparation itself seem exciting, even fun. When it's time, on our evolutionary path, to do something new, we develop a true zest for it. A heartfelt, deep interest. An excitement and passion that perhaps wasn't there before and makes no rational sense. We aren't made to do it, or told to do it. We just suddenly *want* to do it. Or, if we've always wanted to do it, we suddenly *cannot wait* another minute to do it.
I've always hated gardening. My mother and grandmother have always loved it, sectioning off huge portions of the yard which they would fill with a bewildering jungle of edible growing things and then spending every spare moment of the sunny weather out there working in it. I don't like bugs. I can't stand spiders. I don't like getting dirt on my hands. My knees hurt if I kneel more than a few moments, and bending over hurts my back. I have *never* had any interest in gardening, and I didn't learn anything from my years of watching the women in my family do it. I love fresh, organic produce, but until now, I've been content to spend money and time visiting whole foods stores and stocking up on it that way.
But now, suddenly, I find myself itching to learn everything there is to know about both wild, and do-it-yourself food.
Spirit has put me on this path with many interesting little nudges which I think you will find both entertaining and, for those of you new to learning all the quirky ways Spirit gives us the guidance we seek, informative.
During this void the past couple of months, I've distracted myself from the 'nothing', the physical discomfort, and the emotional tidal waves with a new interest: The Sims. The Sims 2, specifically, at least to start with, and then The Sims 2: Castaways. These are video games where you have a little character who engages in the acts of daily living, and your job is to help that character achieve her or his needs and wants. Very addicting. I highly recommend it. Anyway, the part of this that has contributed to this very bizarre new passion to grow my own food is that the Sims do. They have a 'frood tree' on which they grow several varieties of fruits, and a container vegetable garden as well. I found myself no longer interested in the other options for feeding them once I'd discovered these things. But that didn't make me want my own. Not yet.
I played and completed the challenge of Sims 2 and went searching for more. I found The Sims 2: Castaways. Your sim is now marooned on a deserted tropical island, and must be totally self-sustaining, harvesting everything they need to stay alive (and joyfully thrive) from the abundant environment around them. Instead of going to the refrigerator for food in this one, you go out gathering the wild fruits, nuts, berries, grains, roots, and vegetables which grow all around you. And you harvest the vines, stalks, wood, grass, clays, stone, and leaves around you in order to craft your tools, housing, furniture, clothing, and entertainment.
I found myself playing in tears, wanting our world to be this abundantly sustaining. The thought of walking around outside and picking things off bushes and trees, digging it out of the ground when I got hungry, rather than making a draining trip to the local grocery store and settling for chemically-poisoned pseudo-food made my heart *yearn*.
I was so damned jealous.
We have to move from the home we're in, and for the two months since were were given our deadline of this week, we've been patiently (okay, impatiently and frustratedly) trying to keep the faith, waiting for Spirit to lead us to the one that it has prepared for us. We found it last week. And one thing I saw right away was that it has waist-high, raised brick garden beds, about one foot wide and three or four feet long, all around the perimeter of the home. I couldn't stop looking at them. And I started to think how simple gardening would be, if I could just cultivate a few things I really loved, in a space I wouldn't even have to bend over to tend.
A little research and some consultation with both my mother and grandmother, and I learned that it was not only possible, it was a trend that was spreading like wildfire. Container gardening. Square foot gardening. Urban rooftop gardening. Hanging gardens. Even kitchen table gardening.
I move in one week, and I can't wait to get my very own, first organic container garden started. I've been spending hours online researching and learning everything I can to get ready.
The home also happens to have its own well and septic, disengaging us from those municipal utilities as well. It's got a lovely fireplace/woodstove in the living room, too, in addition to its electric heating system. This is a very nice thing to have on the coast, where wet ground, high winds, and lush trees means lots of downed power lines. We learned all about this our second week living here, when a monumental three-day storm hit which knocked out power for those three days and ripped the top off a tree in our driveway and sent it crashing directly down onto our less-than-a-month-old car. (Spirit replaced it, by the way, within a few weeks, with one that was twice as nice, with no cost to us whatsoever. And no, we didn't have insurance.)
During our initiation into coastal storm-weather, we also quickly learned about no-cook, no-refrigeration food, crank-powered flashlights and radios, and the beauty of homemade quilts. The house we're moving out of doesn't have a woodstove, and I still don't know how to use one anyway (even though I grew up with...and pretty much despised...those as well) but I was very envious of the neighbors' woodsmoke filling the freezing, wet air around our house. I plan to stockpile some firewood (and learn what to do with it!) this winter.
And then there's the whole natural medicine thing. I've always been fascinated with medicine, and as I evolved spiritually I shifted my interest from allopathic to natural healing. A few weeks ago, as I shared here, that interest increased suddenly, and I was passionately led to begin the process of getting my doctoral degree in naturopathy. In the past few weeks, I've also found myself drawn to take a walk up into the forest behind this house, where I experienced a very strong desire to further my learning on wild-grown medicinal and edible plants.
I think something is coming.
And I don't just mean, I think something is coming like we've all known something was coming, a time when we return to a more self-sustaining, and thus more harmonious, way of living. What I mean is, and I don't want to scare anyone, but I think I'm going to need all this stuff. Maybe before the end of this year.
I know that the New Earth will be made of tribes and villages, interdependent but self-sustaining. No more cities, where people drive two miles to get this, another three to get this, perhaps twenty to get to work. The New Earth will not be a commuter world, but a local one, where we can walk or ride to our destinations, and where imports come to us, in the form of travelling marketplaces, like it was hundreds of years ago.
Living dependent on imported goods is something we must get away from as quickly as possible. And again, I mean it's time to think, right now today, about what you would do if you could not drive at all for say...one week. Just think, if the price of fuel merely doubled, how very much less driving you would be doing. And when you did drive, or ride public transport, just think how expensive every single thing in the stores would be, due to the doubled cost of transport.
Just that one change, which is completely possible given our already-record-breaking fuel prices right this moment, would change the way we live in a matter of *days*. No more dependence on stores and pharmacies, doctors and utilty companies. Even getting things delivered through the mail would be cost-prohibitive. People would very, very quickly need to find ways to meet their own needs rather than just pay for someone else to produce and transport everything they consume. Kids wouldn't be able to be herded by the hundreds across town to be mass-educated in one big building. They would have to receive their education at home or in small, community groups. No more office buildings filled with wall-to-wall cubicles full of unhappy drones, either. People would need to find ways to creatively use their natural gifts and talents to serve the needs of their close-knit community in a way that was in alignment with their passion and purpose, instead. And communities would need to share resources, compensating one another's strengths and weaknesses to create a unified whole that met everyone's needs.
Wow, doesn't sound that bad, really, does it?
Well, I'm telling you it will happen. I have no doubt in my mind and have been saying so and naturally preparing for it (joyfully) for years. But what I'm saying that's different now is that I feel it's going to happen much sooner than people think.
Last year, a hurricane seriously threatened our U.S. fuel supply when it nearly took out the major platform we rely on in the Gulf of Mexico for transport of both domestic and imported oil. There was a cable TV movie made in which this scenario actually happened, and while it was rather alarmist and not-too-cleverly written, it was more than just a good story. It's a very real possibility. One well-placed hurricane could take away 75% of our access to petroleum, and all the (earth-destroying) products made from it. That could happen this fall. And even if it doesn't, fuel prices could keep rising enough to transform the face of our country's access to goods and services.
That is just one way we could instantly be transformed from a commuter society to a localized one.
I don't say this to scare you, only to point out that so many people walk around in the daze of tedious daily responsibilities, thinking that drastic change doesn't and couldn't happen. That things may change, yes, but it will be slow and steady, like they're used to, and that they'll change slowly to adapt. But that's just not the way things are anymore. Change can happen overnight. And my intuition, and the signs I'm getting in my own life, says it's going to.
More signs:
I suddenly can't stand shopping. I used to adore it. Even grocery shopping. The power of making the choices, the novelty of seeing all the products, the thrill of handing over money and taking home new things.
It exhausts me now.
For one thing, I can intuitively feel almost no life energy in the goods in the store. I can feel the chemicals, the poisons, in the products and in the foods, and they're in more things than you think. I can feel that there are virtually no choices now, even on the health food shelves, that truly hold life inside them. Grocery shopping leaves me drained, aching, and sad, and more often than not, I leave without even purchasing enough to feed myself for more than a day or two. My partner and I, like my starchild daughter, have lost interest in food. We have no passion for shopping, preparing, or eating it. We've been living on liquid nutritional supplements, to a large extent, taking the cue from our daughter. But there is no joy in that temporary solution. And we still have to go out to stores to buy those. The idea of growing and eating our own food, however, holds an allure for me that is just as strong and undeniable as it is new and startling. I mean, if you knew me, you'd know how weird, and thus meaningful, this change is. From city-living shopaholic to country-living organic gardener. It's bizarre to say the least.
And it's a message.
This rapid and dramatic death of tolerance for the old way is a sign that I'm being given little choice but to enter into the new. It's not just a good idea, and it's not just something to work toward in a slow, meandering way. I'm being forcibly *shoved* away from what is non-nurturing and will very soon be unavailable, toward what is nurturing and will become a necessary way of life. And the speed and strength of the changes suggests that the need will arrive very, very soon. I'm feeling that it will be before the end of this year.
It's beautiful how Spirit never, ever speaks to us in terms of obligation, fear, or responsibilities, but rather in terms of what seems fascinating, joyful, and holds true, heart-deep attraction. I'm not getting my 'warning' about the impending shortages with visions of doom and scarcity, but am rather being joyfully and passionately guided to exactly what I will need in order to not only survive, but thrive in whatever is ahead. And I didn't go looking for a home that would make me virtually self-sustaining, I was led to one almost effortlessly. I did have to wait and wonder if Spirit had somehow forgotten about me as the weeks passed and no home appeared! Even that, however, was perfect, because if we'd found the house earlier, the owner wouldn't have been willing to hold it as long as we would have needed. As it is, it is available exactly when we need to move into it, and we didn't have to worry about paying rent ahead of time for a house we weren't ready to live in. Everything worked out in perfect divine timing, as always.
I guess I felt led to share this with you because I know that you, too, have been getting nudges to follow your joyful heart-longings, and I wanted to remind you how very important it is to do so. Without sounding like a doomsayer, following your joy is what will save you in the transformative times to come.
And is that really such a bad way to live your life?
Namaste,
Satina
http://www.dharmawork.com