Fall is in the air and the cool, crispness that comes into the house in the morning for me brings newness, peace the end of the crazy season into the season of harvest, celebration of the what the earth has given us in preparation for winter where we fetal, rest, gestate and nurture ourselves from what was collected and stored during the fall.
The cycle we call Fall is a time we see the earth change in preparation for sleep, bring life extended out back into its self a going within. Nature is collecting back within her what she poured out in the spring all over the planet as life sprouted under her watchful eye. Now she calls gently calls back to her informing nature to bring back to the self, the one and the whole. Fall is the sorting; collecting and organizing all the pieces.
I currently am living in a condo. I see condo living more like a sick and confused ant hill. More things come in via the ants/people than seems to go out and the hoarding of items including garbage is the norm. In nature ants would be collecting food, taking care of young, cleaning the inner out parts of the ant hill, organized with a unified unspoken conversation. The human ants cannot seem to work together, living in fear usually self made and bringing into the ant hill useless items that cause them more distress than aid. We humans are so far removed from nature these days. We should be hoarding food. Connecting to each other in ways that nature connects her parts ensuring all are participating in the nature flow of labor and abundance. My observation of ant hills and the inhabitants has brought me more understanding than any social networking ever has.
A few mornings ago I woke up to a conversation that was taking place outside my window that woke me up. It was to crisp and cool to just hop out of bed. What bliss! This conversation was between the garden care take’r ant and one of the ants of residence here in the ant hill of suburbia. The Fall season has been slowly approaching this year. Everything in the natural world is still holding onto the ideas of summer but with readiness to transform. There are few leaves beginning in the transformation which I will identify as going from green to yellow. Even in nature some of us are always ahead of the curve. The conversation was something like this: resident ant to care take’r ant: “looks like fall is coming early this year”. Care take’r ant: “yep, soon the leaves will all be falling down and the clean up will begin”. Resident ant: “there are so many trees with leaves here it is always a nightmare job to clean up all those leaves”. That is when I full woke up; full absorbed what that resident ant just said that the trees, their leaves and the fall clean up are nightmares? Is a nightmare? For who? Sometimes I am lucky enough to be in the right state of consciousness to notice the world around me perfectly with the words that are used to describe and how we use them. It was obvious to me that this resident ant was living a nightmare and including the magnificent, glorious nature world outside her window was catch up in.
Trees are one of the miracles of this place we call home. They are sacred in many ancient stories, myths and to this day you can find oral stories still told about them by the storytellers, usually be the first nation peoples as they still remember that which most of us have forgotten and become so distant to.
Trees can teach us so much on so many levels. Roots moving deeply into the unseen called soil, pushing towards the center of the earth and roots hold everything around them together by embracing and surrounding the soil, rocks, microbes, plants of all kinds. Trees hold our world together. The tree offers shelter; homes for countless living beings and in some cases provide food. The trees trunk is strong, stable teaching us structure, stamina, tree never looks down and raises the branches towards the cosmos collecting energy and information in a worship to the most high, Great Spirit and our ancestors. The information is collected into the tree so that the tree knows what is going on all around it. There are trees that are very old and the information that they hold and know is of great value to the environment in which they live. The tree and like most plants can adapt and as it adapts all parts of it contain not only the information about climate, cosmos, air, water but about the whole totality of what is going on around the tree but it constantly collects information coming to it from the world around it. I will include human energy as a consideration as well and in the future I will write more about the human dilemma for the tress.
When Fall comes, the tree moves into letting go, collecting its forces that are out stretched and pulls into itself getting ready for winter when it goes into sleep. The trees I am talking about are not pine/s, but the leaf baring ones. The sign of this change is the leaves turn colors, dry and fall off. These leaves contain the information that the tree collected from the environment through out the previous year. These leaves now fall onto the ground and if left like in the forest will give the information from the tree to the soil to be digested by microbes they are the beings who break down the bulk of information or leaves into another thing we call food/nutrient. Once it is digested and the nutrient/food source is taken up by the soil the information released into a way the soil can know it the fungi now pick it up and like vases cable lines run it as far as the lines stretch. Nothing is ever wasted in nature, ever. Microbes are everything the basis of all life and I have read about microbes that can even eat metal!
In the Spring what has fallen and has been utilized will become the nutrient for the entire natural world when awakening. It is a constant never ending flow, perfect without us humans needed to change nature, clean her up or impress energies such as nightmare upon her. What tress offer can have no value in a world where we buy things, what the tree offers is invaluable to the whole in which they belong. We should honor the tree, she is not a nightmare and in needed of so much labor and cleaning up, she is the giver of life and the queen of her domain called earth. She tends to life without effort gracefully moving from one season to the next. Her leaves should not be collected as if garbage and tossed out, there is no need for that. Leaves that fall are offerings of food to the microbes and they eventually create “top soil” out of them. This is what we grow plant/s in; the plants we need to eat need top soil and prefer real nutrient dense soil over fake fertilizer on depleted soil. By ending the processes of nature we end life, eventually the microbes will die or move on, the soil hardens because there are not microbes to move through the soil aerating it, breaking down the leaves and other natural debris that fall on it to be eaten and turned into nutrient for the plants, grasses, weeds and trees. When the soil hardens the water will off as there is no top soil in which to absorb it, this is one cause flooding. Next the soil blows off in the wind turning into a desert of sand where most life ceases to exist.
There is no nightmare in clean up the leaves. It is not a nightmare to be in service of ones so great like trees. It is not a night mare for the leaves to dry up, fall and land exactly where they belong. It is our honor to be so lucky to have trees to remind us about giving and honoring the cycles of life.
When I was part of the nightmare it was the battle over the natural world to fit into a form that I was patterned to desire. Anything that did not fit into the fantasy of how my life should be was “a nightmare”. I was constantly working towards something to get somewhere and I needed others to see it my way. I was not like this as a child, I moved to the rhythm of nature, studied her, followed her, sat in trees for hours dreaming in the fall I chased her leaves down the street, collected them and jumped without reservation into them.
Nature works so perfectly that everything contained in nature works together and not for a specific outcome. It just is, effortlessly it continues on day to day, season to season doing its part for the whole without complaint or suffering. In the case of a forest nature has been doing the same thing without effort for thousands of years like a Zen master. Nature she is constant and continual being without need, manipulation, fear, anger, hostility, danger or emergency. We spend so much time trying to figure out the future, global this and that. Even the greatest of us who have visions of an eco friendly, green power, urban farming world that supports us all have forgotten that all of this is already known by the natural world and if we leave it alone stop controlling it, planning it and possibly spend more time in it, in silence watching. We might be able to allow the hard drive of earth called nature to reboot allowing us to know all the information already contained.
It is “we” that call nature a nightmare, the planet we live on a nightmare, our lives a nightmare, racking of leaves a nightmare. Nature knows itself as life, giving, receiving always reaching for the light, always reaching for the creator and always perfectly co-creating. We can learn great things from a perceptive of watching nature as a dream unfolding at every moment. Maybe we would need to spend less on workshops if we really understood co-creation?
During this fall season may you honor nature by being in service of her, may you allow her to dream you a new dream as your old leaves fall off and May you awaken out of your nightmare into full co-creation with all of life, may you pile up leaves and with a great scream of joy, leap and plunge into the center!
http://consciousnessofeconomics.blog.com/?p=127
