Alanda Greene lives in the Purcell Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Having a deep connection with nature, she and her husband built their house of stone and timber and a terraced garden, and integrated their life into this rural community. Alanda’s primary focus is the conscious integration of spirit with all aspects of life.


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Alanda Greene

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<h4>
 ALANDA
 GREENE
 explores how to bring balance into a polarized world, even the polarized
 nature of the environment, climate change and politics. It all starts with
 us as individuals.
</h4>

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 A friend from Switzerland called recently, and we shared stories about our
 respective extreme weather conditions. He was sitting in a down jacket in a
 late afternoon of mid-summer, a time when he would usually be in swimming
 shorts at the nearby lakeshore, warmed by the evening sun. I was sweltering
 in our unprecedented heat even as thick smoke and unsettling dry conditions
 threatened fire. We joked about how to balance things – trade some of our
 heat for the persistent rain and coolness where he lived.



 Later I considered how these polarized environmental conditions – fire and
 flood, heat and cold, dry, and sodden – mirror the social and political
 situations of our world. Conversations regularly include discussions about
 the polarities of the times: stances extreme, positions locked, words and
 tempers volatile.



 When conditions are highly polarized, balance is difficult to maintain. The
 spinning top spins smooth while the center of gravity is aligned with its
 physical center, but begins to wobble and crash as the balance moves toward
 the periphery. Not a perfect metaphor, but you get the meaning. In Chinese
 Medicine Philosophy, the basic yin and yang energies are part of all aspects
 of the world. The path to health and well-being exists with the balance of
 these two functioning in harmony.



 Considering this widespread imbalance, I know that the first step to
 restoring balance must come from me. Until it is present within myself, how
 can I recognize what is needed to restore it in the outer environment?



 Here, I turn to the teachings of hatha yoga where balance is a key offering.
 Hatha is a combination of two syllables: ha meaning sun and
 tha meaning moon. The word combines the masculine and feminine
 principles, the active and receptive.


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 In the deep stillness of
 relaxation at the end of a series of poses,
 balance, harmony, and centeredness is restored.
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 Breathing in, breathing out: one breath, two processes in harmony. Balancing
 the inward and outward aspects of breath brings immediate and palpable
 influence to my mind. I move to center, feel harmony and peace. Moving
 through various poses or asanas, my body and mind work together, bringing
 balance between the left and right sides, between tension and relaxation,
 between action and rest. In the deep stillness of relaxation at the end of a
 series of poses, balance, harmony, and centeredness are restored.



 Systems thinking shows that a very small change can ripple out to have a
 large and significant effect. Returning to the center, to the balance and
 harmony within myself, can be this small change.


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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Illustrations by LAKSHMI GADDAM
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Balance

<h4
 class="block-heading"
 id="h-alanda-greene-celebrates-the-lives-of-those-among-us-who-have-had-the-resilience-to-discover-joy-in-times-of-suffering-and-uncertainty-and-gives-us-a-hint-of-how-we-can-do-the-same"
 >
 ALANDA GREENE
 celebrates the lives of those among us who have had the resilience to
 discover joy in times of suffering and uncertainty, and gives us a
 hint of how we can do the same.
 </h4>

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 A few months into the pandemic, I read an online editorial responding to
 requests to write about the problems facing our world. There ply: “Our
 focus is not on the world that is ending, but the world that is
 struggling to be born” went on to suggest how each of us could be a
 solid presence in these times of instability and fear. “Replenish joy
 and gratitude in the life you have now.”
 

 
 Something rang true. Cultivating joy and gratitude is a contribution.
 Not denial of a serious situation, or refusal to recognize the tragedies
 and crises of our world, or dismissal of the prevalent pain, fear, and
 anxiety; rather, the potential for positive influence.
 

 
 Yet, in these times of despair for the afflictions be falling the Earth,
 the suffering for loss of habitat and lives, uncertainty for the future,
 and a sense of helplessness in the face of such suffering, how do we
 find joy? Is it even a suitable response?
 

 
 I remembered how people such as the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and others
 less well-known faced horrendous suffering and hardship, yet they
 achieved joy and offered encouragement to find it. The pain and
 suffering are not irrelevant. They need to be addressed and
 acknowledged.
 

 
 Words from those who have faced such challenges and found they could
 also experience joy can give us hope:
 

 
 Thupten Jinpak knew sorrow and hardship as a refugee child and
 discovered, “Humans cannot avoid physical and social suffering and pain.
 … The key to joy is to get in touch with your own natural compassion and
 live by that.”
 

 
 Desmond Tutu observed, “As we discover more joy, we can face suffering
 in a way that ennobles rather than embitters.”
 

 
 The Dalai Lama emphatically stated, “Joy is in fact our birthright.”
 

 
 In the midst of sorrow and pain, how do we find joy? Yoga teaches that
 the path to joy is within and accessible. Swami Radha taught how in
 conscious relaxation we can go to the fountain of joy; it is ours for
 the asking. The well-spring of joy within can fortify our determination
 to meet the difficulties facing our world.
 

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 <h4 class="has-text-align-center block-heading">
 Choosing to be replenished with joy, we can indeed be a solid
 presence in these troubled times, sharing a contagion of joy
 that awakens our stamina and strength to meet the
 challenge.
 </h4>

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 <hr />

 
 Choosing to be replenished with joy, we can indeed be a solid presence
 in these troubled times, sharing a contagion of joy that awakens our
 stamina and strength to meet the challenge.
 

 
 As Teilhard de Chardin said, “Joy is the most infallible proof of the
 presence of God.”

ALANDA GREENE
 lives in the Purcell Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Having a deep
 connection with nature, she and her husband built their house of stone and
 timber and a terraced garden, and integrated their life into this rural
 community. Alanda’s primary focus is the conscious integration of spirit
 with all aspects of life.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 I’m standing in the garden, enjoying the hum of insects intent on collecting
 as much nectar as possible. The season has clearly shifted, transitioning from
 languid long days of summer to cool nights, shorter days and a sense there is
 no time to lose. It’s a time of abundance accompanied by reflection and
 assessment. What do I want to keep, to nurture and what is ready to be
 released, discontinued?



 These questions arise as I consider the garden’s production this year,
 planning what will be maintained, what I will no longer plant, what varieties
 are proving suitable, what needs processing. It becomes ever more clear that
 the lessons of the garden are the lessons of my life, and it is working in the
 garden that provides the most accessible insights into my life: the seasons,
 the patterns, and cycles. Now 75, I especially feel resonance with autumn, the
 period of reaping lessons from many years, ripening my understanding of the
 way the round squash has matured from a soft ball to a firm and nutritiously
 dense vegetable that will contribute to many meals in the coming months.


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 <img decoding="async" width="700" height="466" alt="Garden-Gifts2" class="has-img-center lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Garden_Gifts2_d7fb22c367.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-12T07:00:02.857Z" />
 </figure>
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 This process of assessment and reflection brings immense gratitude for being
 part of the garden’s cycle, for the lessons it teaches. How fitting it is that
 much of the world celebrates this season with rituals of thanksgiving. The
 garden reveals so many aspects of appreciation.



 The food produced comes immediately to mind. Rich soil nurtures the plants’
 growth. It has been cultivated for decades to become a foundation for full
 tastes, healthy content, vibrant colour. I gain the immense blessing of food
 that nourishes me, that does not travel long distances before it is consumed,
 that does not require packaging or unnatural treatments to preserve it. As our
 global community struggles with mountains of plastic and other waste, with
 loss of arable land, with sickness and disease that in many cases could be
 prevented through a healthy diet, with the consequences of applying
 pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers – I recognize the value of
 one small effort to counter these detrimental actions. Small efforts can have
 large outcomes.


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 <figure>
 <img decoding="async" width="600" height="781" alt="Garden-Gifts4" class="has-img-center lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Garden_Gifts4_390b428918.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-12T07:01:58.594Z" />
 </figure>
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 <img decoding="async" width="400" height="599" alt="Garden-Gifts5" class="has-img-center lazyload"
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 </figure>
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 <img decoding="async" width="400" height="600" alt="Garden-Gifts6" class="has-img-center lazyload"
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 </figure>
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 In the forest around this garden are numerous insects and creatures, but in
 the garden they are abundant far in excess of these surroundings. Although the
 global bee population is declining at a frightening rate, here there is
 sustenance for great numbers of them. A variety of butterflies flit blossom to
 blossom from spring to autumn, one of them the white cabbage moth, laying eggs
 in broccoli, cauliflower, kale and of course, cabbage. I watch and see also
 the numerous wasps who fly behind and eat the eggs, later eating the small
 worms that managed to hatch. Where many people have large numbers of slugs or
 mice in their garden, here their numbers are low, thanks to the generous
 feasting of snakes. Because there are no pesticides, because I do not use
 anything that would poison these so-called nuisance creatures (and I have to
 confess that at times they are indeed a nuisance) things tend to come into
 balance. It isn’t about perfection in the eradication of anything that might
 nibble on a lettuce leaf. It’s about learning how tolerance and diversity
 work. I see it here in the garden and understand how these qualities can also
 contribute to a balanced and harmonious world community that finds a way for
 all creatures to be valued and included.



 Many spiritual traditions and teachers extol beauty as a positive spiritual
 influence. I think of the Navaho prayer, “In Beauty I Walk” and of many Sufi
 and Zen teachings that encourage the practice of creating beauty. They counsel
 the seeker to create and acknowledge beauty for the benefit it confers. Dr.
 Zach Bush expresses the scope of it eloquently:
 If we make a conscious effort to elevate beauty in our work and our
 relationships, we can focus on doing our highest work and witnessing, with
 pleasure, the fabric of reality. It is in the garden that I repeatedly experience the transforming power of
 beauty. Light as it transforms an onion skin to ruby brilliance, veins on a
 cabbage leaf like the branches of an elm tree, the glistening webbed wings of
 a fly: these suspend my thoughts as I gaze in wonder. In such moments, the
 fullness of being is revealed.


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 <figure>
 <img decoding="async" width="700" height="466" alt="Garden-Gifts7" class="has-img-center lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Garden_Gifts7_81180ec290.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-12T07:05:41.976Z" />
 </figure>
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 <img decoding="async" width="700" height="466" alt="Garden-Gifts8" class="has-img-center lazyload"
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 </figure>
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 <img decoding="async" width="661" height="533" alt="Garden-Gifts9" class="has-img-center lazyload"
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 </figure>
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 Such moments bring me fully to the present. Thich Nhat Hahn wrote:
 Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a
 miracle. Having the blessing of a garden reveals this miracle. The various practices
 meant to bring awareness to the present, including meditation, hatha yoga, qi
 gong, journal reflections, and prayer, can include the garden as a means to
 develop conscious awareness of now.



 Many philosophers and psychologists have characterized our modern world and
 its ills as evidence of a crisis of meaning. Rituals and connections that once
 infused meaning into our lives have been abandoned along with the meaning they
 provided. Yet people who find their way to tending a garden repeatedly express
 the satisfaction it gives. The process of interacting with soil, plants, and
 animals provides a community of relationships, a connection with other living
 beings that becomes a lived experience of the interconnectedness of all life.
 The question of meaning is transcended by living with it. This moves beyond
 the rational mind to include the more than human world. In doing so it
 restores something sensed as a great loss, which is our felt connection to
 this entire living world. An indigenous elder prophesied the “great
 loneliness” that would befall our civilization as we lost the awareness of our
 kinship with nature. The garden restores this awareness.


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<h4 class="has-text-align-center"
 id="h-the-process-of-interacting-with-soil-plants-and-animals-provides-a-community-of-relationships-a-connection-with-other-living-beings-that-becomes-a-lived-experience-of-the-interconnectedness-of-all-life">
 The process of
 interacting with soil, plants, and animals provides a
 community of relationships, a connection with other living beings that
 becomes a lived experience of the interconnectedness of all
 life.
</h4>

<hr />

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 The bees continue humming, the autumn light intensifies the brilliant red and
 gold of zinnia petals and I resume gently digging to retrieve potatoes for
 hearty winter meals.



 My determination to continue to support and nurture the life of this garden is
 strong. The life of the garden and my life are intertwined. The words of the
 medieval Zen monk gardener Muso Soseki reverberate:
 One who distinguishes between the garden and the practice cannot be said to
 have found the way.


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<hr />

<h4 class="has-text-align-center">Photographs by ALANDA GREENE</h4>

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Garden gifts

<h4
 id="h-alanda-greene-learns-something-precious-from-an-interaction-between-two-complete-strangers-in-a-grocery-store-all-it-takes-is-a-little-care-to-change-the-world">
 ALANDA
 GREENE learns something precious from an interaction between two complete
 strangers in a grocery store. All it takes is a little care to change
 the world.&nbsp;
</h4>

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 For 24 years, I taught in a public school system. Most of those years
 were with 12- and 13-year-olds, usually an intense period for young
 humans. Navigating the changes from childhood to adolescence, entering
 the unknown territory of emotional upheaval, feeling at the mercy of
 wild mood swings, erratic reactions, strange longings, attractions, and
 revulsions – it’s a challenging time emotionally without the added
 stress of difficult or dysfunctional home environments.



 I taught in a small Kindergarten-to-grade-12 school in an isolated rural
 area, where the families of students in the school were members of the
 community and the context of their lives known. A wide range of contexts
 was there. Through the years, observing some of the children who came
 from particularly difficult and dysfunctional environments, I wondered
 more and more what gave some of them the ability to maintain a core
 balance and ability to keep basically healthy emotionally, while others
 floundered and displayed considerable inability to function in a healthy
 way.



 Some of the conditions these students experienced included physical,
 sexual, and verbal abuse, exposure to serious drug addiction, family
 violence, parental break-ups, sequential partner relationships, and a
 considerable absence of security. In the midst of such challenges were
 students who managed to find their way, hurting of course, yet over the
 years showing a resilience that remained remarkable as they found
 healthy means to manage their own emotional lives. How was this quality
 strengthened and nurtured? What was the key ingredient that made the
 difference?


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 <img alt="how-is-your-day-going2" class="lazyload has-img-center"
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 Some years ago, I attended an international four-day conference titled
 Resilient Children, Resilient Communities, which brought
 together people from around the world to share research and experience.
 The strongest message for me from the conference was several decades of
 research on the topic of resiliency in children living in traumatic
 situations. The presenter began this research because he also questioned
 what gave some children the resilience to thrive while others seemed
 unable to move beyond their difficulties. He concluded that the positive
 influence of just one caring person in the life of a child in a
 difficult situation could make all the difference. It could be a
 grandparent, a teacher, a neighbour. It only took one.



 With a cadre of caring teachers in our small school, who knew the
 context of some of these difficult cases, some of us were able to be
 that one person to offer emotional support through non-judgmental
 listening, being present, giving sincere attention, and having
 conversations. The difficult situation didn’t need to be addressed, but
 heartfelt interest in the person seemed to provide the missing
 nourishment.



 The research showed me that anyone, at any time, can be the person who
 gives interest, caring, and presence in their interaction. Children who
 don’t receive this grow up to have adult bodies but are still missing
 that key piece of nurturance. It can be received at any time. Children
 in adult bodies can respond to sincere caring, and their emotional
 well-being can still be nourished.



 A few months before the pandemic began, I waited in line at a grocery
 store where the cashier was incredibly slow, seeming to stall on almost
 every item she entered. I figured she must be new and wondered why there
 was no one assisting her. My trips to town are infrequent and include a
 ferry ride and a 40-minute drive. It’s a long wait if the ferry is
 missed. I noted my irritation building at her slowness and errors. I
 kept looking at my watch. Finally, the line moved to the person in front
 of me. This man too had been waiting a long time. He looked at the
 young woman and in a caring voice asked, “So how’s your day going?”
 She looked at him, tears welled in her eyes, and answered, “Not
 too well.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied. “Just take your
 time.”



 I was amazed to see how this small interaction had such an effect on the
 young woman. Her slouched posture changed to an upright one, she looked
 at the items he was buying with focus and seemed to give her work
 re-newed effort. Someone had noticed her, looked at her, and spoken with
 kindness. I felt ashamed of my self-centered impatience, stepped forward
 for my purchases, and emulated the example he had shown: a smile, a
 comment about the weather, sincere thanks when done. She smiled back and
 held the posture and interest that would help her move this work along.
 Whatever was causing her bad day, and we rarely know what is going on in
 a person’s life, a shift happened. Neither the man ahead nor I could fix
 her problems, or the many problems people face in this world, in the
 same way that as a teacher I couldn’t fix the problems of my students,
 but I could infuse an energy of genuine care.



 Each of us can choose to be a caring influence, offering connection and
 presence. These small moments, gestures, speech have huge potential to
 positively influence the emotional well-being of others. And from that
 small change, a new direction can be set, new possibility.



 Anyone looking at the challenges of our world can see that so many
 people are facing difficulties. Thinking of fixing the difficulties
 feels overwhelming and hopeless. Yet remembering the students who
 overcame their situation, remembering the impact that kind man had on
 the young cashier, I am inspired that this is something I can do. Small
 choices of heartfelt care make a difference.


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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Each of us
 can choose to be a caring influence, offering
 connection and presence. These small moments, gestures, speech
 have huge potential to positively influence the emotional
 well-being of others.
</h4>

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How’s your day going?

<h4
class="block-heading"
id="h-alanda-greene-shares-her-perspective-on-how-we-can-find-our-true-purpose-and-vocation-in-the-world-by-serving-ourselves-and-our-communities"
>
ALANDA GREENE
 shares her perspective on how we can find our true purpose and
 vocation in the world, by serving ourselves and our
 communities.
</h4>

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Our world is indeed in dire straits, and we are familiar now with the
litany of crises imperiling our earth. The miraculous balance and
harmony of systems of water, air and creatures are severely threatened.
All of this is exacerbated by social tensions of hatred, violence,
racism, poverty, and war.



The miracle of this planet can feel overlooked. We dwell here with such
an improbably wondrous constellation of events that has brought about
the unfolding and manifestation of the great mystery of life on Earth.



Many of us do recognize both the miracle and the crisis, feeling a sense
of overwhelm, despair, and hopelessness; wanting to take action to heal
and stop the ongoing harm and destruction of our shared home; not clear
which path, which action, which choices will assist. In such a state,
questions emerge: What can I do with my life to help this world? Where can guidance be found?
 What is right action?
 How can I best use my energy and resources to be of use and a force
 for good?



We live with incredible access to information, opinions, advice, and
knowledge, and there is a plethora of answers to such heartfelt
questioning. We find abundant offerings served on platters claiming
truth, certainty, and conviction – polarized views and contradictory
stances. This also contributes to uncertainty and paralysis for the
genuine seeker desiring to find a path with heart that will be of
service.



At such a time, relaxation, rest, finding joy in beauty and in simple
natural pleasures can feel self-indulgent or escapist. Pursuing calm and
peace through meditation, yoga, quiet interaction in nature is essential
given the stress and uncertainty of our times. It is not just about
finding personal respite from the situation. It is much more.


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The sense of urgency that makes time for personal quiet and restoration
feel like a selfish choice is perhaps behind this story. A Buddhist
teacher asked his student who had come for an interview, “Have you been
able to meditate for an hour a day as was instructed in our last
visit?” The student explained that it was not possible, since he
had so many responsibilities with work, family, and community: “Usually
I can manage half an hour.” The teacher replied, “In that case, I
now instruct you to meditate for two hours a day.”



In times of pressure and busy-ness, stress and uncertainty, it is in
quiet and peaceful situations that access to inner guidance, direction,
and knowing can be accessed. When the tumult of emotion and the
restlessness of thoughts settles, then the “still small voice within”
emerges. Listening deepens. Innate wisdom speaks. Our innate wisdom is
our surest guide to what action, what path is required. Unless we can
experience balance, harmony, and peace within, how will we find it
elsewhere?


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<hr />

<h4 class="has-text-align-center block-heading">
When the tumult of emotion and the restlessness of thoughts
 settles, then the “still small voice within” emerges. Listening deepens. Innate wisdom speaks.
</h4>

<hr />

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In the quiet within, inner guidance that directs appropriate personal
response is revealed. The cultivation of peace within is a skill that
benefits the health of our own selves and that of the global community.
We can then determine the best path to offer our own gifts, skills,
talents, and abilities. As Howard Thurman said, “In the stillness of the
quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving
strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.” The whisper of
the heart becomes a source of wisdom to counter to conditions of
confusion, uncertainty, and stress of these times.



Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, taught, “The Tao is called the Great Mother,
empty yet inexhaustible. It gives birth to infinite worlds. It is always
present within you. You can use it any way you want.” The collective
gifts of humanity contain the many paths that surely can change the
course of our current trajectory. There is a need and a calling for the
artists, the musicians, the business people, the healers, the gardeners,
the tenders of children and animals and wild spaces, the teachers, the
contemplatives, the cooks, and the trades. To discover which path uses
the gifts of a particular individual requires the deep listening of the
heart, by that person.


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<figure>
 <img
 alt="still-small-voice3"
 class="lazyload has-img-center"
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“Our world needs wisdom and insight,” said Thich Nhat Hahn. “You are
capable of sharing your insight so that you can wake up your nation,
your people. And if your nation, your people, are awake, then your
government will have to act according to the insight of the people.”
Accessing our insight awakens knowledge of a genuine path of service,
chosen with the confidence of its effectiveness and worth.



In the midst of all the need that surrounds us, perhaps the most
important is to give time to go within, to allow your own wisdom to
speak and guide you, to restore your peaceful being and joy. Rather than
being self-serving or indulgent, claiming and sharing beauty, joy, and
care could be the highest service we can offer.

The still small voice within

<h4
 id="h-alanda-greene-is-a-seasoned-yogi-who-celebrates-half-a-century-of-yogic-practice-and-how-it-has-benefited-her-and-enriched-her-life">
 ALANDA GREENE is a seasoned yogi, who
 celebrates half a century of yogic practice and how it has benefited her and enriched her life.</h4>



<hr class="vertical-space1">



I cannot say how my life would have been different without the influence of a regular Hatha Yoga practice, but I
 believe its quality has been much enriched because of it. I am immensely grateful that I discovered a book about
 yoga in my late teens and eagerly began reading it. Yoga’s current widespread influence and recognition are such a
 contrast to that time in Western Canada, where it was almost completely unknown.



The book contained a thorough and clearly explained set of exercises with simple line drawings. My exploration of
 Hatha began. A few years later, beginning a committed meditation practice, I stopped Hatha but later resumed it,
 finding the learnings that arose from the poses complemented the stillness of sitting.



I was fortunate to receive teaching and training in a method of Hatha (Yasodhara Yoga) that included a written
 reflective element with the poses. This reflection augmented the improvements in balance, flexibility, and
 relaxation, and brought a deeper awareness of the mind-body relationship. I learned that the body held unconscious
 knowledge and information that became available through the conscious interaction with the Asanas. When finding a
 tense or locked muscle while engaging in a pose, it offered insights and understandings that unlocked hidden areas
 of my mind.



For example, I discovered concepts about what commitment means, how ideals can change and evolve, and how to
 penetrate the tangle of my responsibilities and sort out which were mine and which belonged to others. Once, when
 investigating my associations with the idea of surrender, an experience occurred that confirmed the potency of these
 explorations. Relaxing and stretching into the sitting forward bend, allowing associations with the word surrender
 to arise in body and mind, I connected for a moment with the freedom that surrender can mean. In that moment of
 insight, my body released as if it had become like a rag doll, folded over, and resting on my legs. Never before and
 never since has such a complete release happened in the pose, but something was revealed about this interaction of
 body and mind, and about the true potential of surrender.



Understanding of trauma has emerged in recent years, how it can block energy in the body, be passed from generation
 to generation, and be carried collectively in a culture. I have gained a deeper appreciation for how Yoga can gently
 and steadily unlock the places in the mind and body where trauma is held. In Chinese Medicine, rooted in the
 spiritual practice of Taoism, it is the blocking or hindering of the flow of energy (qi) that causes pain, disease,
 and mental disharmony. Yoga allows the flow of energy to be restored in a safe manner that is right for the
 practitioner, that opens and unfolds at the right time.



Many years ago, I heard a story about the Dalai Lama’s advice concerning attention. He invited questions after
 finishing a talk to a packed hall at the University of New Mexico. A woman eagerly asked, “Your Holiness, what is
 the single most important thing I could give attention to?”&nbsp; He immediately answered, “Routine.” The
 person relating the story had lived as a monk for decades and said, “I understood immediately. In my order, the
 rule, or routine, was the highest order of attention, that is, being attentive to what one did every day, because
 what we do is what we become.”



This anecdote provided much to consider about my choices each day. It still does. The regular routine of a Yoga
 practice becomes a treasure house for learning. Hatha(as well as other Yoga practices) has been a tool for
 transformation, and continues to be, especially in realizing that it is a practice – I’m practicing for my life. The
 learnings that emerge through the day’s session are applicable throughout the rest of the day, the rest of life.



The regularity of the practice lets me catch subtle changes. I discover hitherto unnoticed tightness and it releases
 ever so slightly g. I notice how a subtle press with my fingers changes the alignment of my hips, or that my breath
 is deep, or my attention is wandering.



After all this time, it also surprises me to see how some days I resist the practice. Long-term benefits in
 abundance, and the short-term immediate benefit of bringing flow and balance into my body, do not succeed in
 countering a part of the mind that resists, looks for reasons to do something else. Really? But in recognizing and
 naming that resistance (instead of trying to pretend it isn’t there or justifying its presence) I’ve gained an
 understanding of how resistance feels and how it turns up in other areas of my life. Those insights have revealed
 procrastination, avoidance, justification, and excuse-making. Seeing it in action, I can choose otherwise, just like
 I choose to maintain the Hatha practice. Because again, I’m practicing for my life, learning what supports my
 ideals, learning how to make available all the energy I have in the expression and offering of those ideals.



Some days my concentration is poor, my mind wanders, I realize I was not even present during a particular pose. Some
 days it’s different. The regularity of the practice has released judgments about how I did that day, and this
 transfers to other areas of life, letting go of ideas of how I should be doing better after all this time. I’m in it
 for the long haul. I keep the practices going. I learn. Refinement happens.&nbsp;



The purpose is awareness. I’m learning how to use this life, this body, this mind, to serve the whole through
 offering light, love, compassion in the circumstances that arise each day. I recognize where those offerings fall
 short of the ideal, both on and off the mat. And I continue learning that another opportunity will arise each day,
 each moment, to live in balance and harmony with my ideals.

Half a century of yoga

<h4
 id="h-alanda-greene-celebrates-the-approach-of-thich-nhat-hanh-s-prayers-to-the-earth-and-urges-us-all-to-do-whatever-little-things-we-can-to-re-establish-a-bridge-of-trust-with-the-earth">
 ALANDA GREENE
 celebrates the approach of Thich Nhat Hanh’s prayers to the Earth, and urges
 us all to do whatever little things we can to re-establish a bridge of trust
 with the Earth.
 </h4>

 <hr class="vertical-space1" />

 
 This January, the much-loved Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, died. His rich
 teaching legacy includes abundant encouragements to reconnect and care for
 our world. In one of many prayers to the Earth, he wrote, “You are not
 outside of me and I am not outside of you. … You are nothing less than
 myself.”
 

 
 Many voices, present and past, have expressed that humans are one with
 creation. In recent history however, they have been little heard, inaudible
 in a cacophony of competing voices that have forgotten this connection, that
 have ignored the quiet, persistent voice that says:
 we are one with this Earth and all its beings.
 

 
 We have become familiar with the lists of harms inflicted on the earth. The
 situation is dire and the testaments to a world out of balance multiply each
 season. A new chorus of voices claims we have passed the tipping point;
 global catastrophe is inevitable. Other voices hold hope, but warn that
 healing our planet requires urgent action.
 

 
 What might effective action look like? Albert Einstein cautioned, “We can’t
 solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created
 them.” Something radical, maybe something basic and simple, might be the way
 for healing and restoration to happen. Something other than the thinking
 that brought us to this crisis.
 

 <h4>
 Two examples come to mind:
 </h4>

 
 Some years ago, high in the inland forests of a remote area in Japan, my
 husband and I were joined in a small 2-car train by a joyful group of elders
 traveling to sing to the mountain trees in autumn, enacting a long-observed
 ritual.
 

 
 In the 1980s, 3000 beluga whales were trapped in shallow water, ice
 preventing them from accessing the open sea. A Russian icebreaker cleared a
 channel, but the whales held back until the sailors began playing music from
 the ship’s speakers. Trusting this sound, the whales followed the ship to
 safety.
 

 
 These two stories suggest practices to turn us from the current trajectory.
 Worldwide stories of the healing power of love, song, light and prayer
 abound. Each of us can offer such practices to the Earth, can open our
 hearts and create a bridge of trust with the Earth as Thich Nhat Hanh did
 with his prayers, as the Japanese elders did, as the Russian sailors did.
 Simple, accessible, and doable actions can be potent, full of restoration
 and hope.
 

 <hr class="vertical-space1" />

Sounding hope

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h4>
 <spanundefined
 >ALANDA GREENE
 and her husband are on a pilgrimage to visit the Buddhist temples that
 date back to the 8th century, on the island of Shikoku in Japan. In this
 final part of the journey, she sees the parallels with her life’s big
 pilgrimage, and understands that the work is in the effort, not in
 achievement.
 
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<h2 style="text-align: center">
 <spanundefined style="color: #a16730"
 >The Challenges of the Journey
</h2>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <spanundefined
 >The Buddha taught the Eightfold Path as a means to be free of the innate
 suffering of the unawakened existence. “Right effort” is one fold of the
 Eight. Did Kobo Daishi teach about right effort when he wandered around
 Shikoku? If he did, what did he say about this striving? If we, on our
 small pilgrimage, begin to choose only
 the temples in the countryside, only the temples we like, what is
 determining our action then? I think of the ancient yogic teachings that
 counsel freedom from the limitation and control of likes and dislikes.
 When we open the can of worms of likes and dislikes, a whole host of
 wiggly interferences ensues.


 <spanundefined
 >I recognize that I want certainty. If I stay focused on my goal of
 completing the pilgrimage and visiting all the temples, I can muster the
 drive and determination to complete this. It’s not that I don’t feel the
 presence of distractions, hounding me like homeless dogs sniffing for a
 handout. If I’ve lost the ideal of getting to all the temples, what will
 hold back the temptation of, say, laziness? Because, in fact, we are truly
 exhausted every evening and there is no denying the appeal of taking a day
 to soak in one of the many natural hot springs on the island. I feel the
 wiggly mass of likes and dislikes that congeal into tempting thoughts of
 choosing the most comfortable and aesthetically pleasing routes. I hear
 the panting at my heels of the distraction dogs, who conjure images of
 historic castles, museums, and galleries. “This is it, isn’t it?” I tell
 myself. Without the goad of success in completing this pilgrimage, I fear
 my ability to sustain my commitment. I don’t trust myself.
 

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <spanundefined style="color: #a16730"
 >Now I wonder if the practice is to challenge the aspect that wants it
 perfect and,&nbsp;if it isn’t, well,&nbsp;what point is there to keep on
 striving? The work is in the effort, not in achieving some concept about a
 goal.
 
</h5>

<hr />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <spanundefined
 >There’s an old tradition in Japanese pottery making. Deliberately flaw
 the piece. Don’t let the temptation for perfection enter into it. Give the
 work the best effort possible, then make it “less than.” I used to think
 this was a message about not expecting perfection in this life, about
 acknowledging that this is not a perfect world. Now I wonder if the
 practice is to challenge the aspect that wants it perfect and, if it
 isn’t, well, what point is there to keep on striving? The work is in the
 effort, not in achieving some concept about a goal.
 


 <spanundefined
 >I grasp this about pottery making; feel less convinced about pilgrimage
 making. I hum lines from a Leonard Cohen song: “Forget your perfect
 offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light
 gets in.” “Yeah, right!” I mutter to myself. But a pottery bowl doesn’t
 hold its soup very well if it’s cracked, does it?


 <spanundefined
 >Each day as I walk, I ponder and question this theme. I wanted to visit
 all the temples, wanted that sense of completion. That goal had to be
 relinquished. Okay, I tell myself, I’ll come back another time by myself
 and do it. But I know it’s a lie. Surrender can feel like such a cheap and
 easy out.


 <spanundefined
 >I do want certainty. These signposts and little red arrows are fabulous.
 We are learning where to look for them, how to find the clues that tell us
 where the path is. We encounter astonishing help every day. I realize I
 want that kind of certainty in the big pilgrimage also. When I struggle
 with decisions, endeavor to understand what right action is, I have longed
 for the red arrow of certainty to appear. If the heavens don’t part with
 the message written clearly in a language that I know, couldn’t there at
 least be granite posts with signs I can figure out?
 


 <spanundefined
 >Maybe it’s a matter of faith, I consider. Never once have I doubted the
 truth of the red arrows on this route. I trust those pilgrims who went
 before. In daily life, my mind does not recognize or accept the signs so
 easily. When walking on Shikoku, I go where the arrow points. When walking
 in my regular life, I sometimes don’t like where the arrow points and
 don’t want to recognize it as an arrow. But not to be too harsh on myself,
 usually it doesn’t even look like an arrow. If the Divine wants me to go a
 certain way, wouldn’t it make sense to use a signal I can clearly
 understand?


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<img
 alt="Always-the-first-step-part3-2"
 class="w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Always_the_first_step_part3_2_19ec61696e.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T04:37:52.374Z"
/>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<hr />

<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <spanundefined style="color: #a16730"
 >More challenges present themselves over the days, but these become less
 bothersome&nbsp;because they are so compensated&nbsp;by the goodwill and
 assistance we receive on our journey. I begin to have a profound and
 heartfelt appreciation for the positive kindness we meet over and
 over.
</h5>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 <spanundefined
 >More challenges present themselves over the days, but these become less
 bothersome because they are so compensated by the goodwill and assistance
 we receive on our journey. I begin to have a profound and heartfelt
 appreciation for the positive kindness we meet over and over. People go
 out of their way to help us. We don’t recognize the bus we need, so
 someone runs out of a ticket booth and hails down the bus, asking the
 driver to make sure we get off at the right place. It rains, we have no
 umbrella, a kindly woman in a shop makes us wait while she finds one in
 the back of her store and insists we take it. An English-speaking man
 appears from nowhere when we are lost and looking for the small inn where
 we have reservations. After he takes us there, he explains our vegetarian
 dietary needs to the owners, and we avoid the discomfort of being served
 the fish that other guests eat. We ask directions to a lost temple, and a
 woman clears out her back seat and drives us. Same thing when looking a
 few days later for a train station. We meet helpful and cheerful people.
 


 <spanundefined
 >I cannot help recalling the times in other countries when I blundered,
 didn’t know protocol or language, went the wrong way, and met the rolled
 eyes, impatient sighs, long-suffering looks of pained bother, or the very
 loud and then louder explanations that suggest I am dense or hard of
 hearing. I resolve to be kinder. More helpful. Positive.
 


 <spanundefined
 >This feels like one clear message from the pilgrimage. Be kind. Be
 helpful. But what about striving? What about goals? What about right
 effort? I count up the stamps from the temples visited so far. It doesn’t
 look good. At least as far as numbers go. We might get to sixty of
 them.


 <spanundefined
 >The days are getting cooler and the maples are beginning to turn,
 transforming the forested mountains to shades of red, orange and gold. The
 beauty of our daily walks has me feeling like Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s
 book, The Wind in the Willows, when Rat took him out in the boat
 in spring. “It’s too much, Ratty. Too much.”

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <spanundefined style="color: #a16730"
 >This feels like one clear message&nbsp;from the pilgrimage. Be kind. Be
 helpful.
 
</h5>

<hr />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 <img
 alt="Always-the-first-step-part3-3"
 class="w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Always_the_first_step_part3_3_7b700521c4.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T04:39:24.801Z"
 />

<h6 style="text-align: center">
 Photo Credit: sugar fresh 1 / Shutterstock.com
</h6>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 <spanundefined
 >Sometimes it feels like my heart can’t hold this much beauty as we walk
 along ridges, follow cascading blue rivers, find temples high in the
 clouds. Then the next day, the same thing – different form, same
 breath-catching beauty. I begin to forget about how many temples. We just
 get to what we can each day.


 <spanundefined
 >As days pass, I recognize one more difference between this pilgrimage and
 the big life one. We have a specific departure date whose presence I feel
 looming. It’s hard to be in the timeless moment of now, when I need to
 keep track of the date we need to be at Osaka airport. But these maples
 and the mountain trails give moments.


 <spanundefined
 >In the big pilgrimage, I don’t have a specified departure date. Not one
 I’ve been told about, anyway. I have no ticket with a flight and gate
 number. Kobo Daishi is reported to have announced his date of death, set
 his will in order, left clear instructions for his successor, and the day
 before he died he helped complete his portrait that a disciple was
 painting.


 I
 <spanundefined
 >
 live the big pilgrimage with the unarticulated assumption that my
 departure date is a long time in the future. Unexpected deaths of family,
 friends, and neighbors reveal the unreliability of this assumption. “You
 just never know,” we who gather to acknowledge the passing of a life nod
 to each other. “You just can’t put things off.” I don’t want to put things
 off. The fact is I don’t know my time of death the way the Daishi did, the
 way I accept the certainty of my ticket from Japan.


 <spanundefined
 >The final temple we visit is in fact Number 88, Okuboji, but it is the
 sixtieth of my count. We climb over a mountain and down to the temple, a
 mountain once forbidden to women, where the Daishi changed the restriction
 – a reminder that enlightenment is available in this lifetime, to female
 and male alike. The climb is long, steep, and cold, but it’s the beauty
 that is breathtaking. I didn’t think we could experience anything yet more
 beautiful than the routes of the previous days, but I was wrong.
 


 <spanundefined
 >We visit this temple. I bid farewell to Kobo Daishi at the enormous stone
 statue at the front gate, say prayers of thanks and farewell at the Main
 and Daishi Halls. I wait for a sense of completion, finality. An insight.
 There is no red arrow that points to understanding. Later, we wait for the
 bus down the mountain to the train station, lean against a stone wall
 where a small patch of the late day sun warms it, and eat Japanese oranges
 gifted from a young man about to depart by motorcycle. “So, this is it,” I
 muse. The last temple.
 


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<img
 decoding="async"
 alt="Always-the-first-step-part3-4"
 class="has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Always_the_first_step_part3_4_4098543ea8.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T04:41:34.565Z"
 <hr
 class="vertical-space1"
/>


 <spanundefined
 >The pilgrimage ended. Is it finished, with all those unvisited temples
 around the island? Do I yet understand the meaning of pilgrimage? Do I
 know what impelled me to do this?


 <spanundefined
 >The guide map said it only mattered if I took the first step. This much I
 do understand, from walking this island where Buddhism saturates the land
 and where the sense of eternal presence leaks through everywhere. It leaks
 out of the bowl to the always now and every step is a first step. It only
 matters that I make it, one first step after the other. This much I
 understand. This is enough.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Article by
 <spanundefined
 >ALANDA GREENE
</h4>

<hr />

Always the first step - part 3

<h4><hr class="vertical-space1" /></h4>
<h4>
 ALANDA GREENE and her husband are on a
 pilgrimage to visit the Buddhist temples that date back to the 8th century on
 the island of Shikoku in Japan. In part 2, Alanda connects with the saint who
 built the temples in the 8th century, Kobo Daishi, and the earlier pilgrims
 who travelled the path. She also sees the pilgrimage as a metaphor for life
 itself.
</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h2 style="text-align: center">
 A Saint’s Legacy
</h2>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 It is getting dark when we reach the last temple of our first day, Number
 Eight. Our plan had been to take a bus or train back from this one to our
 hotel in Tokushima City, from where we would head out again tomorrow. In this
 way, we travel with light day packs and not with all our gear. We are so tired
 we can hardly stand. At this point, the kindly monk who stamps my temple book
 manages to explain in broken English, from my question in broken Japanese,
 that there is no bus or train from here. I stand in his small office and
 contemplate just how I will break the news to Sonni, who waits outside. I look
 for an alternate exit but know I am too tired to run far. In the end, the monk
 calls us a taxi to the train station that is ten kilometers across the valley.
 “This does not bode well,” my husband comments.


 Obstacles. A pilgrimage has obstacles. A life has obstacles. Any goal worth
 going after has obstacles. These are the challenges that make us strong.
 Recognized as obstacles, as challenges, I can choose to meet them. Learn from
 them. Taken as things that shouldn’t happen, viewed as errors, viewed as wrong
 – they are not met in the right spirit. It’s good for me to keep telling
 myself this and holding my lips closed.


 In the big pilgrimage, recognizing when a situation is a challenge and when it
 is a sign to change course has been a source of considerable discomfort for
 me. But on this small pilgrimage, it’s easier to accept the process I’ve
 entered into – there’s a path, a guidebook that’s a challenge to understand
 but infinitely better than no guidebook at all, there’s difficulty with
 language, but there’s a definite direction.


 Later that night, after the luxury of a hot bath, just before sinking into
 exhausted sleep, I feel a rush of gratitude for those who have made the path,
 left the guidebooks, the clues, the signposts, the encouragement. Their legacy
 of wisdom is a treasure.


 The legacy of signs becomes even more appreciated as the days go by and we
 struggle to find our way from one temple to the next. For hundreds of years,
 pilgrims have set stone pillars along the route, have carved in
 kanji characters the temple’s name, a directional arrow, and the
 distance left to go. Some are so weathered they can barely be deciphered.
 Other new granite posts sit upright at corners and forks in the path, their
 message carved in deep, black grooves. The information, however, we do not
 know how to read. It takes some days before we begin to make sense of their
 messages.


 Not without missing a few more temples, however. I’ve accepted already that
 I’m not getting to all 88 temples – not even 86. I have made progress in
 releasing my goal of visiting every one of them, and am developing intrigue
 with connecting this pilgrimage to the big one of life. These signs in a
 language I don’t understand remind me of learning the symbolic language of
 dreams. At first, there was no sense to be found. Dream symbols were a mystery
 and a language I didn’t get. Of course not, I think now. I’d never given any
 time to learning their language, just like I haven’t learned kanji. But then,
 when I gave that effort to understanding my dreams, a meaning unfolded along
 with a new source of wisdom.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<img
 decoding="async"
 alt="Always-the-firststep-2-2"
 class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Always_the_firststep_2_2_1_86ba94adbb.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-06T13:42:16.755Z"
/>


 PHOTO CREDITS: B-HIDE THE SCENE / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Sure enough, six or seven days into the route on Shikoku, the stone pillar
 language starts to reveal helpful clues. My night dreams encourage me with
 signs of harmony and completion.


 Each evening, Sonni pours over the guidebook, the first English version ever
 published, available just a few days before we began. From this we determine
 each day’s route. The map certainly is not the territory. Learning to navigate
 the roads and paths requires considerable time and effort, and mistakes. What
 did the pilgrims do before such aids were available, and before these steep
 trails that wind through pine and bamboo forests to the top of mist-wrapped
 mountains were built? They had to climb through dense woods, usually slippery
 from rain, without handrails, to places hard to find even now with signposts
 and maps to help us. The first record of pilgrims dates to the twelfth
 century. Men and women inspired by the life of Kobo Daishi, the seventh
 century teacher, walked to the places he made famous, places now filled with
 legend and tales of miracles.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Obstacles.
 A pilgrimage has obstacles.
 A life has obstacles.
 Any goal worth going after has obstacles.
 These are the challenges that make us strong.
 Recognized as obstacles, as challenges,
 I can choose to meet them.
 Learn from them.
</h5>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 He was Kukai when he lived his life as a simple monk, and he was given the
 honorific title Kobo Daishi after he died. The title means a great master who
 spread the teachings of Buddhism widely – in simple words, a saint. At every
 temple is a statue of him, along with various Buddhas. He stands in pilgrim
 attire, conical reed hat, prayer beads, straw sandals, travel cloak, and
 pilgrim staff. The Japanese pilgrims believe that Kobo Daishi travels with
 each one on their journey. As days pass and I learn more about this historic
 founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, as I witness the devotion of pilgrims
 chanting the heart sutra at each temple, invoking the name of the Daishi and
 his protection, I find arising in me unexpectedly a fondness for him.


 Being in the presence of this much-loved teacher is what impels so many to
 make the journey. Each temple feels redolent with the presence of the past,
 and of the Daishi, and as we approach each one I begin to look forward to
 seeing his statue. In addition to prayers at the Main Hall and the Daishi Hall
 of each temple complex, I include an affectionate greeting, a moment to
 remember the treasure of his legacy.


 Even with the paths and ways marked and cleared – even with the small red
 arrows pasted on walls, rocks, posts and gateways, by modern pilgrims who
 leave one more bit of assistance to those who come after – even with this, the
 journey is demanding. We have good hiking shoes, state-of-the-art socks, packs
 engineered to balance our load, and hot baths every night. It is, after all,
 Japan. But the early pilgrims traveled in straw sandals, no moleskin for
 blisters, no youth hostel or Japanese inn or business hotel with breakfast
 included.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<img
 decoding="async"
 alt="Always-the-firststep-2-3"
 class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Always_the_firststep_2_548dc9e19b.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-06T13:46:35.317Z"
/>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 What sustained them? What is that mysterious quality that keeps the effort
 alive, keeps a person going through demanding challenges?


 This route goes around the island of Shikoku for a walking distance of about
 1,400 kilometers. We’ve been using buses, trains, and even bicycles to cover
 the distance between far apart temples. By the time we’re halfway through our
 allotted time, we’re visiting Temple 33 and have missed a few more along the
 way, but I’m still intent on visiting all the remaining ones. “Let’s just
 focus on the ones in the country,” Sonni suggests. “I don’t like the ones in
 the cities anyway, or at least the routes to them. We’re definitely not going
 to visit them all now.”


 It feels like the plug gets pulled on my basin of enthusiasm. We could visit
 all the remaining ones, I repeat to myself yet again, for I know it’s
 impossible to backtrack to the ones we’ve missed. We could push through our
 tiredness. Yesterday, when I wanted to hurry down the trail from the just
 visited temple at the top of a mountain, to catch the train that would let us
 visit another that day, he wanted to go slowly and enjoy the walk. It was the
 most beautiful temple we had visited to date. It was high on a forested
 mountain, with gardens that stopped my breath in their beauty, and vistas to
 the Pacific and its legendary blue. But we missed the train by five minutes
 and couldn’t visit the next one. Should we have hurried, as I suggested?
 Should we have walked slowly and enjoyed the gift of this place?


 Another day, in the mid-afternoon, we were tired and it looked like rain. “But
 we can still make it to one more,” I offer. We didn’t try. When is pushing
 past fatigue, or hurrying to get to one more, the right action? When is it
 just striving, striving in the goal-oriented, achievement-minded hungry
 craving for experience or stuff or power that characterizes so much of modern
 life? The kind of striving that has brought our world to its imperiled
 condition.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
To be continued.
<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<hr />

<h4 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>

<hr />

Always the first step - part 2

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h4>
 ALANDA GREEN and her husband are on a
 pilgrimage to visit the Buddhist temples that date back to the 8th century
 on the island of Shikoku in Japan. The journey is as much about learning
 to let go of expectations and maintaining harmony as it is about visiting
 the temples!
</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h2 style="text-align: center">
 Sustaining the Pilgrimage
</h2>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 A few words on the side bar of a guide map reassure me: “It doesn’t
 matter where you begin the pilgrimage. It only matters that you take the
 first step.” Presumably, it matters that I take the second step as well,
 since I’ve already made the first step just by getting to Shikoku, the
 smallest of Japan’s four main islands.


 I’ve persevered to get this far in order to do a pilgrimage that I know
 little about and can’t explain my motivation for doing. “I’ve always
 wanted to,” I stammer, when asked why I’m doing this, “ever since I read
 about it in a book some years back. Just a line, really, but it set
 something off in my mind.” Then I’d try to change the subject and talk
 about my fondness for Japan, or how my husband is coming with me but
 adamantly proclaims, “I’m not doing any pilgrimage. I’m just going on a
 hike.” I like that line and steer the conversation to its humor or its
 vague portent of challenge. But sometimes the questioner would not be put
 off track.
 


 “Why are you interested in a Japanese pilgrimage? Are you Buddhist?” No,
 no, I explain, and then backtrack. It’s not that I’m not Buddhist or that
 I am Buddhist. This gets worse as I try to clarify my motivation. Pretty
 soon the listener is convinced I’m actually heading off on a spy mission
 to Chechnya, or at least that’s my take on the quizzical expression that
 looks back at me .
 


 So I talk about the beauty of Japanese temples, landscapes, gardens and
 statues, because it’s
 what I can talk about. How I like to walk. There are 88 sacred temples on
 the pilgrimage that circumnavigates the island. It has a rich history
 dating back to the 8th century when a Zen monk born on Shikoku wandered,
 built bridges, made roads, established temples, and spread the teachings
 of Buddhism. At this point, I go back to talking about enjoying walking
 through the Japanese land, because I’ve pretty well reached the end of my
 beginner’s knowledge. What the pilgrimage will mean and my knowledge of
 its background will have to unfold through the process of doing.


 At the first temple, I realize that although I may not understand the why
 of the pilgrimage, I do understand that I have chosen a purpose and a
 direction. I realize that I want to complete this pilgrimage, want to
 visit each of the 88 temples, and that I am beginning at the first and
 will end at the last. This realization becomes clear that first day
 because I discover my husband does not share this purpose. “It doesn’t
 matter if we get to every temple,” he announces. “This isn’t about that.
 It’s about enjoying the journey.”


 How can I explain that it matters a great deal to me, when I can’t even
 explain why I want to do this in the first place? I begin to think about
 this journey as a mini-version of the greater pilgrimage of life: we start
 out and we journey to the end. Yes, it’s true, what’s in between is what
 matters. It’s the journey, the quality of the journey. But I see at the
 same time that if I do not have a purpose, a direction determined by that
 purpose, then the journey itself becomes meaningless. It’s the purpose
 that defines my choices. I’m walking the narrow paved road along a back
 street of the city of Tokushima, on the way to Gokurakuji, Temple Two.
 This purpose, I reason, is what guides me to choose this alley to the
 left, where an exquisitely shaped pine arches over a driveway, and not the
 alley to the right, where an exquisite stone lantern sits at a house
 entrance.
 


<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<img
 alt="sustaining-piligrimage-part1-2"
 class="has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/sustaining_piligrimage_part1_2_757c4d844b.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-12T12:15:07.614Z"
/>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 I recall the old folk tale of a young girl walking a road that forks in
 front of her. At the fork sits an old woman. “Which road should I take?”
 the girl asks. “Where are you going?” asks the old woman. “I don’t really
 know,” the girl answers. “Then it doesn’t really matter.” How do I sort
 out what matters without a goal? How do I release striving and still hold
 to purpose?
 


 “We don’t have to only go to temples,” my husband Sonni continues.
 “There’s so much we could see on this island, now that we’re here.
 Besides, there’s no way we’re going to get to all of them. We just don’t
 have time.”


 I keep my lips tight and decide this is not the time to say anything out
 loud. But my silent thoughts protest loudly. “I didn’t come here to go
 sightseeing. We could get to all the temples if we really wanted because
 then we would really try.
 

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <hr />
</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 We start out and we journey to the end. Yes, it’s true, what’s in between
 is what matters. It’s the journey, the quality of the journey. But I see
 at the same time that if I do not have a purpose, a direction determined
 by that purpose, then the journey itself becomes meaningless.
 
</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <hr />
</h5>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 Maybe there isn’t time to walk to all the temples, but we can find
 transport.” Is it still a pilgrimage if I don’t do the whole thing? What
 is a pilgrimage anyway? All these years I’ve heard and used the word.
 Suddenly its meaning is vague. Foggy like the low clouds that dollop
 mountains in the distance.


 That first day we miss the turn off to temples four and five, Dainichiji
 and Jizoji. We’ve walked and walked many kilometers already, pavement
 kilometers, and we’re a long way past where we needed to turn. Our feet
 ache. I notice my husband is grumpy. I suspect he notices the same of me.
 “We don’t have time to go back,” he says. “It will take too long. We can
 miss those two.”
 


 Only the first day and the plan is ruined. My efforts will come to
 nothing. I muse about the wisdom of having a travel companion who doesn’t
 share my goals. So what if we have to backtrack? I suggest getting a bus.
 He’ll have none of it. I breathe deeply. This is like the learning of the
 Japanese martial art Aikido, I tell myself. You set out and move with what
 unfolds, harmonize rather than oppose the energy that comes into play.
 Okay, I re-evaluate. This isn’t about getting it all perfect or not
 missing a temple, because then it’s all ruined. Sort of like my friend who
 kept quitting smoking, but then she’d have one cigarette and that was it.
 Whole effort sabotaged. She’d be smoking steady for months until the next
 attempt to stop began. The whole plan isn’t ruined I affirm. I’m still
 putting one foot in front of the other. I’m walking dead tired along this
 path from temple to temple, with two visits missing. That’s all. Get the
 facts in line, girl.


 As I walk, I think about how this plays out on the big pilgrimage – life.
 We choose a purpose, set out in a direction, and things happen that we
 don’t expect. Then what? Do I give up? Get petulant? Disheartened?
 Divorced? How do I realign with my direction when things throw me off
 track? How do I sustain the freshness of yet another first step when my
 ideal is already compromised? I think about how many times in my life I
 gave up, dropped an aim, a goal, because I believed I’d messed up and felt
 like a failure, so that there wasn’t any point in keeping going. How did I
 manage to feel like a failure before I was even twenty? Or was it fifteen?
 Twelve? So I walk, I breathe, I release those temples, but I am still
 determined to visit 86 of them.
 


 To be continued.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<hr />

<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Article by ALANDA GREENE
</h4>

<hr />

Always the first step - part 1

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h4>
 ALANDA GREENE explores the topic of
 perception, through her experience of picking raspberries in the garden, and
 understanding the importance of looking at life and situations from
 different angles.
</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 I pick thoroughly and am convinced that every ripe raspberry, with the tug
 of thumb and finger, has slid from its cream-colored conical core. Then I
 kneel, lean down and look up at the low branches to see if any remain. It is
 not one or two ripe berries now before me – it is dozens. Again, I pick all
 I see, drop them in the container hanging from a belt at my waist and move
 on. While plucking from the other side of the row, I look through the
 sun-dappled leaves and see an abundance of ripe berries hanging where I had
 just picked everything in sight. “Did these ripen in the time it took me to
 walk to the other side of the row?” I ask myself, knowing full well it is an
 impossibility, yet feeling it is the only logical explanation. Because I
 really checked carefully and thoroughly and there were no ready berries in
 sight a few minutes earlier in that very place.A squirmy feeling lurks in
 the back of my mind, hidden like the raspberries have been. Eventually, as I
 wait, it reveals itself; it’s a reminder that changing my angle of vision
 can expose what has previously been entirely hidden. It’s a reminder that
 from a certain perspective, I see something clearly (In this case that there
 are no ripe raspberries). The certainty of it is reassuring. This is the way
 it is, the way things are. I can trust what I see, what I have experienced
 and what I know.


 Then my perspective changes and voila! I perceive differently.
 Things are not what they appeared to be just moments earlier. My reassurance
 in the certainty of what I know evaporates.


 I am reminded of a situation several years ago when I was teaching at the
 local school. Close to the school is a small church and the current pastor
 was perceived to be a difficult man by many of us. He complained regularly
 about the teaching at the school – both what was taught and how. He
 complained about teachers who did Yoga and therefore didn’t belong in a
 public school system, because they were engaging in what he called the
 devil’s work. What particularly vexed me was his regular shooting of the
 local, wild coyotes wherever he found them, whether they loped across a
 meadow or walked over a frozen lake. It was this behavior that aroused my
 considerable antipathy towards him, but it bothered me to feel it with the
 intensity I did.


 Then a friend told me a story about this man’s life, about something that
 happened when he was five years old. My perception changed dramatically. I
 still felt revulsion for what to me were his unnecessary and cruel actions,
 but my dislike for him personally changed. The adage of ‘hate the sin, love
 the sinner’ comes to mind, though at that time I confess I did not feel love
 for this man. My appreciation and love for the local coyotes had me feeling
 disgust for what he was doing. Still, because I learned about his life, I
 was able to feel compassion for the young boy he had been and what had
 happened to him. Such trauma at a young age would considerably impact any person’s life. It was a step
 forward. It happened because something changed my perspective.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 <img alt="raspberries2" class="w-100 lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/raspberries2_585862d284.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T04:52:27.778Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Like the raspberries that teach me each year, 
 there is a continual unfolding of learning and expansion. 
 The certainty of my views on everything from finding all the ripe
 berries 
 to what it means to be spiritual continues to be adjusted.
</h5>
<hr />
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 The Dalai Lama is credited with saying, “Every change of mind begins with a
 change of heart.” I see that a change of heart happens, or can happen, when
 I am willing to adjust my stance, the way I think it all is and should be.
 Raspberries that reveal themselves where I was convinced they couldn’t
 possibly be, because I had checked so carefully, is the metaphoric version
 of a change of heart – a change of vision. My antipathy towards the man who
 was senselessly killing coyotes was softened because my heart was touched.
 Like the raspberries that teach me each year, there is a continual unfolding
 of learning and expansion. The certainty of my views on everything from
 finding all the ripe berries to what it means to be spiritual continues to
 be adjusted.


 When Swami Radha studied in India with her guru, Swami Sivananda of
 Rishikesh, he instructed her to find the hidden meaning in the
 Yogasanas.


 She asked for further explanation and he guided her to begin by exploring
 the headstand to find out what happens when your world is turned upside
 down. With this beginning she delved into meanings hidden in the poses. From
 the headstand, she learned that voluntarily turning cherished concepts and
 beliefs on their head was a path to independence. Choosing to explore the
 challenges and criticisms that come from both the external and internal
 world prepares the mind for meeting them with equanimity in situations not
 voluntarily chosen. Cherished ideas can have another perspective; we can
 expand the beliefs and concepts that hold us bound.


 Seeing from different angles is the antidote to right/wrong polarized
 thinking, to fundamentalism in its many forms. When I was young, I had so
 many ideas about spirituality, concepts about what it meant to lead a
 spiritual life, what it looked like, what the yogic teachings meant. Being
 young, my experience was also young. My ideas and concepts needed to be updated, to expand and adjust
 in order to
 understand in new ways. My resistance and determination to cling to what I
 thought I knew created a barrier that took considerable force to remove.
 Fortunately, my teachers weren’t interested in my concepts about a
 spiritual life. They were interested, in the spirit of true friendship, in guiding me to
 discover, embody and live a genuine spiritual life. This process didn’t (and
 still doesn’t) always feel comfortable. It is easier, however, when I
 willingly explore different perspectives and possibilities rather than
 having the events of life force them upon me. The fact that raspberries are
 often found when I get down on my knees to investigate has not been lost on
 me. Humility is a quality that softens the edges of my concepts, that allows
 understanding to be absorbed more easily.


 Surprise at discovering what I hadn’t previously seen or understood
 continues to occur, which in itself is surprising, since I keep thinking
 that by now this lesson surely must have been learned. But this kind of
 learning isn’t like memorizing a list of facts or names or numbers. Rather
 than thinking I’ve finally landed at the definitive view, I’m learning to be
 pleased to find a concept adjusted by a different perspective. The ultimate
 definitive view isn’t defined at all. It belongs to a complete sphere of
 perception.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Raspberries continue to remind me, 
 as the process of forget/remember continues. 
 Hidden and revealed, they wait to be recognized, 
 to be perceived.
</h5>
<hr />
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 From many seasons of picking, finding berries at places not easily seen, I
 notice also I’ve begun to search in the hard-to-see places, underneath a
 cluster of leaves or behind a group of stalks. At times, I have resorted to
 crawling along the row on hands and knees, slithering under branches to look
 up. Then I find I’ve overlooked the berries right in front of me, easily
 accessible.
 


 It reminds me that what I am seeking might be right before me. The Quran
 records that Allah is “closer to you than your jugular vein,” while the 15th
 century mystic poet Kabir wrote, “I laugh when I hear that the fish in the
 water is thirsty … looking everywhere for water.” It reminds me too that the
 Divine, Creator, God, Light is everywhere in everything. The raspberries
 seem to hide, but it is my awareness that is the culprit, my preconceptions
 and expectations. It could be said I’m hiding from them.
 

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 <img alt="raspberries4" class="w-100 lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/raspberries4_96183b6ad7.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T05:02:40.549Z" />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 In a Yoga class of many years ago, we were asked to reflect on times and
 situations where the presence of the Divine had been working in our lives. I
 found it impossible to name a particular incident over another, because I
 could see that there could be no time or place in my life where the Divine
 had not been present. If I said the Divine was present in one moment, it
 suggested not present in another. However, where I recognized in the moment
 the presence of the Divine was something different. For although I
 understand, in a deep and palpable way, the permeation of the Divine in
 everything, I often forget and act like I don’t know this. From a song the
 words “At times you seem to hide from me; perhaps I hide from you” capture
 the insight. And raspberries continue to remind me, as the process of
 forget/remember continues. Hidden and revealed, they wait to be recognized,
 to be perceived.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Article by
 ALANDA GREENE 
 Main photograph by RAJESH MENON
</h4>
<hr />

Raspberries as agents of change

<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>ALANDA GREENE is picking blackcurrants in her garden. Reflecting on the nature of these tiny fruit helps her see the importance of valuing everyone and everything, of being in tune with Nature, of interconnectedness, and of Mitakuye Oyasin.</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
The cycle of seasons has circled again to the blackcurrant bushes where berries have turned from green to bronze to glossy blue-black. And again, in this steady and rhythmic process of picking, these berries offer understandings. My mind quiets enough to be receptive to insights. My tendency is to move along quickly with tasks. The garden cares little for my inclinations about efficiency and speed. It requires that I adjust to its rhythm. It is much wiser than me.
This morning, with a twig broom, I swept the stone patio and was reminded of Zen monks tending the gardens around temples in Japan. I used to think the slow care with which they swept was about their practice, like the walking meditation where each moment is attended to in awareness. The sweeping probably is about this, but today I understand that they also sweep slowly because this kind of sweeping just doesn’t work if done quickly. When I try, which I did repeatedly today, feeling time pressure and wanting to get this patio cleaned and get on with other things that need doing; when I try this way, the pine needles, the dried catkins, the cones, the papery leaves just get stuck in the cracks and in the broom. The debris that covers the gravelly parts gets mixed with bits of gravel itself, which is not what I want. Sweeping slowly and lightly allows the ends of the twigs to nudge the bits of litter along without carrying a lot of what needs to remain.
Like the currants cycling to ripeness, my thoughts turn again around seeking the balance between an impulse to be efficient, to use time effectively, and the recognition that going slower can sometimes mean a job is done in an effective way. When I try to move faster in picking berries, I end up dropping them, or getting stems and leaves mixed with them, or squashing them. Yet the nature of my life – of other things in the garden needing attention than just this bunch of berries or this patio full of twigs and dust and leaves – means that time is a factor to consider. I have a meeting later in the day. I don’t feel comfortable about arriving late, keeping others waiting just because I want to explore the Zen-monk method of sweeping the patio.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">The garden cares little for my inclinations 
about efficiency and speed. 
It requires that I adjust to its rhythm. 
It is much wiser than me.</h5>
<hr>
<img decoding="async" alt="being-with-berries" class=" lazyload has-img-center" src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Berries2_47774a5110.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T07:40:46.702Z">
Now, in the case of the currants, it isn’t effective to rush the picking either. When I hurry, it takes longer to correct the add-ons from rushing than if I slow down and pick carefully. Voices from the past rise up, unbidden, sometimes unwanted, but still good advice, then and now. “If you don’t have time to do the job properly the first time, how are you going to have time to correct your errors or do it again?” I think this is my mother’s voice. She also liked the humor of the well-known, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” She has become much wiser as I age, even though she died over 25 years ago.
Certainly picking the berries carefully is a more pleasant way. A rhythm develops, I forget about time, and the shiny bead-like black spheres fill my container, a small bunch at a time, giving a pleasing soft thump as they land on top of the other berries.
A poem I recall from childhood likened a spilled bucket of blueberries to the sound of tiny rabbit feet running. It’s the same sound I hear now when the blackcurrants are dropped into my pail. When I hurry, I don’t even notice that sound.
One by one, I drop them in. They are small in comparison to plump blueberries or to the blackberries that fill a container in just a few minutes. The currants require careful picking that is pretty much a one-at-a-time process. Yet the container is filled. And another. In a few days more will be ripe, and eventually the freezer has a stack of containers labeled “Blackcurrant.” In fall and winter, these will transform to incredibly tasteful jam or concentrated juice.
As I pick one berry, it seems so small compared with how many are needed to fill the tub. It isn’t like this one berry is the make or break berry of the collection. There isn’t a berry that is more important than the others, or acts like a kingpin around which the berry collective organizes itself. None of the berries seem exceptional, not famous or accomplished or more worthy or valuable than any other. Yet I can’t identify any berry that isn’t part of it all, that doesn’t matter.
One by one, I bring these berries together, and together they will be part of something else. It’s a one-berry-at-a-time process, yet it isn’t the one berry that matters. Yet it also is. I have a niggling, unformed idea at the edge of my mind that this contains wisdom about humans and our actions, our concepts and ideas.
A Zen teacher, when asked what enlightenment is, replied, “Small moments, many times.” Like one berry at a time, many times?
I think of communities where people intentionally work together for a common purpose with shared ideals. In such collectives, there’s something that emerges that is more than any particular individual. Every berry matters. Every person matters. But not in the sense of being more important than any other one.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">A rhythm develops, I forget about time, 
and the shiny bead-like black spheres fill my container, 
a small bunch at a time, giving a pleasing soft thump 
as they land on top of the other berries.</h5>
<hr>
Many examples in modern cultures reveal pervasive ideas that some people are more important, more worthy, than others. It is at the core of a class system, whether the class is defined by ancestry and lineage or by acquisition of money and things, or by education, or by power. With berries, they are visibly alike, small differences but nothing exaggerated. They all have a similar role – feed something and maybe let the seed find a place to grow. Humans have diverse roles and easily observed variations. Somehow this has become linked to worth and value. Those not perceived as having high value, or worth, or importance, do not receive an equal share of goods and services, of opportunity, of access to resources. Of respect.
If I sorted out the currants, picking them one by one and deciding to keep only the ones of a certain size or shape, tossing out the rest, what I would be doing is depleting the potential of what is collected. It would be less, limited. All the berries contribute. All people matter. The opportunity to contribute just needs to be included in the container.
Indigenous teachings throughout the world focus on relationship; it is the network of connectivity that is the important thing, the thing to be served and cherished and supported. Not just the network of human beings, but the network of all parts of creation. Mitakuye Oyasin, in the Lakota or Ojibway language, means “We are all related,” and refers to the interconnectedness of all things. The phrase appears in most languages of indigenous peoples of North America. It is spoken to close, sometimes to open, an address. It is an acknowledgement regularly repeated, to encourage remembrance that we are all part of the same life. We all matter.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Life is not just networked; 
it is network.</h5>
<hr>
In his exquisitely written book, titled The Songs of Trees, author David George Haskell writes about his observations and studies in the boreal forest of Ontario (as well as about many other trees and forests in the world). He explores the fossil record and the trail of emerging life, an evolution that reveals the role of this network of connection. “The fir tree’s life is relationship,” he says. “Life is not just networked; it is network.”
In the complex connectivity of life, with so much we humans do not yet understand, how is the network, the relationship, impacted by the loss of so many species, so many habitats? There is a continued process of change in the life on the planet, but most of the current changes, losses, are the result of human activity. That activity seems driven by self-interest and lack of understanding about this fundamental relationship of all things. My carelessness with picking quickly, or an arbitrarily selected standard that would determine which berry to pick and which to leave out, becomes today a potent metaphor.
I pick the currants more slowly. What isn’t completed today will be waiting tomorrow. My impulse to move quickly and get it done so I can get on to the next thing is colored with an attitude that doesn’t honor Mitakuye Oyasin. This is my chance to be the change I want to see in the world.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr>

Being with berries

<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">ALANDA GREENE writes about likes and dislikes,
 annoyance and irritation, and how a simple shift in attitude can make all the difference in the world.</h4>
I’ve been weeding in the Tomato House – a recently built small greenhouse that replaces
 the decades-old plastic “hoop house.” Although this year the number of plants growing inside it is reduced by a
 third, the space feels crowded, especially during this weeding process.
The tomatoes are supported by jute cord strung from the ceiling and tied at their base.
 As the plants grow, I wrap them around the string instead of tall support stakes used in previous years. The poles
 were easy to see but these thin cords are often not noticed as I reach for weeds. My hand repeatedly collides with
 taut string. Stepping and bending between plants, crawling on my knees, I get tangled in the thin black tubes of
 irrigation hose lying on the dark soil, also often not noticed. Leaning to grab a few more weeds in an uncomfortable
 stretch, I feel the twang of another support cord as my leg collides with it.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">The mind is swayed by likes
 and dislikes. 
 These cause mental perturbations that 
 push and pull with attraction and avoidance. 
 They feel compellingly justified. 
 Seeing into the nature of likes and 
 dislikes is a way to be free of them. 
 </h5>
<hr>
And I notice how these persistent interferences – reaching for a weed and feeling
 restrained by a tangle of hose, leaning for another and finding a string blocks the motion, gently moving aside a
 frond and tearing off an unnoticed one – these obstacles feel irritating and I recognize that this is a response
 that often arises in situations where movement is constrained, obstructed or blocked.
I begin to move more slowly and deliberately to avoid tearing out an irrigation line or
 breaking leaves, or – which has happened – pulling out the entire tomato plant as I lurch in an awkward loss of
 balance against one of the support strands. In this slower, more careful movement, I wonder, “Why does this irritate
 me, these tangles and this sense of being restricted when I reach for something and feel blocked, held back by
 invisible restraints?”
I note that this feeling arises elsewhere in my life, when a momentum with intentions,
 desires or goals is blocked.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">There is no inherent quality
 of 
 irritation, difficulty, discomfort in it. 
 Those qualities come from my condition 
 of dislike at being constrained or blocked 
 and from wanting it to be otherwise. 
 Neutralize my response and there’s no reaction. 
 </h5>
<hr>
In the greenhouse, I want to explain that it’s because of my poor eyesight and
 accompanying lack of depth perception; or that it’s an offshoot of my two brothers delighting in doing what brothers
 often do – torment sisters. They enjoyed holding me down, sitting on my legs, tying my hands behind my back,
 pressing my face into the living room carpet.
But my eyesight and childhood wrestles are blame wrongly placed for this irritation. I
 have to face where the issue arises: when I hurry, rushing to finish something or get somewhere and an unexpected
 situation hinders my progress, I get annoyed. It isn’t about the past – it’s right now. I realize also that it isn’t
 about the hurrying but the feeling of being restrained.
Feeling some chagrin, I distill the insights to: Things aren’t going the way I want. I
 resist writing these words. They appear too blunt. They seem to tell me that not getting my way annoys me. Annoyance
 is a version of anger but gentler. Am I trying to escape facing what this feeling really is?
But the word anger is indeed too strong for what is a more subtle, almost background
 irritation, going along beneath the birdsong that brings soft delight, the tangy scent of tomato leaves and freshly
 moved soil, the wonder of delicate yellow blossoms and tiny balls of emerging fruit. It could be easily missed,
 probably often is missed. But the garden atmosphere allows these subtle patterns to be recognized. So finding this
 annoyance at being restrained is both pleasing – as a discovered behavior to identify and change – and something I’d
 rather not find, for the same reason. The irritation has been subtle enough that I haven’t acknowledged it; in
 catching it, my self-concept of who I am in the garden needs adjustment.
So here is the condensed insight: I’m doing something, I’m hindered. I don’t like it.
 Thus I arrive at what is essentially a like/dislike situation. In the simple environment of the garden, my response
 leads me to seeing into my human nature once again to find a basic yogic teaching: The mind is swayed by likes and
 dislikes. These cause mental perturbations that push and pull with attraction and avoidance. They feel compellingly
 justified. Seeing into the nature of likes and dislikes is a way to be free of them.
<img decoding="async" alt=""
 class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/tangles2_809d454b84.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T06:04:31.920Z">

Here in the greenhouse where there is no particular hurry, I have the space to attend to
 this response and make a choice to release it. Each time my hand gets twisted with a hose or a strand or a branch,
 as the feeling of dislike for the sensation of being held back rises, I breathe into the moment, soften it and let
 it go. After awhile, I don’t notice it anymore – the irritation that is. Getting tangled in hose, colliding with
 strands, my grasp obstructed: this continues. My response has changed.
I wonder about the situations outside the garden, where it’s more than just tomatoes and
 me, the cases where what I want is thwarted. My teacher Kirpal said, “I cannot take the thorns out of your path, but
 I can give you heavy boots.” His words delighted me. “What do thorns matter, if they do not pierce my feet, if I do
 not feel them?” I asked myself. His gift of metaphorical boots has been an inestimable treasure of teachings,
 practices and guidance. But in this moment with tomatoes, I have a renewed insight as to my responsibility to put on
 the boots. The irritating situation is still active but if my response changes, the irritation is nonexistent. If I
 wear the boots, the thorns aren’t felt.
In the greenhouse, the tangles and obstacles have not changed. My response has. I see
 that it can be this simple each time irritation at these restraints arises. It isn’t like once the lesson is learned
 the situation that provoked irritation ceases to exist. It’s just that when these tangles do not evoke a response,
 it is as if they no longer exist. Thorns are on the path. They are not felt when wearing heavy boots. When the
 challenges of life arise, as they do, I can put on my boots and choose my response.
This feels so simple that I laugh out loud and recall the lines of the 14th century
 Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Longchenpa, who wrote:
Since everything is but an
 apparition, 
 Perfect in being what it is, 
 Having nothing to do with good and bad, 
 Acceptance or rejection, 
 You might as well burst out laughing!

The tug of the irrigation hose, the tangle of the support strings, collisions with
 unseen stalks as I reach for a weed – this is just what’s happening. There is no inherent quality of irritation,
 difficulty, discomfort in it. Those qualities come from my condition of dislike at being constrained or blocked and
 from wanting it to be otherwise. Neutralize my response and there’s no reaction.
“This,” I tell myself, “is another small step on the path of liberation.” At least for
 now, in the greenhouse, I am liberated from the tangle of irritation. Birdsong continues, the scent of earth,
 strands of twine. Laughter.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr>

Tangles

<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<h4>ALANDA GREENE explores the topic of perception. Her experience of picking
 raspberries in the garden becomes the catalyst for understanding the importance of looking at life and situations
 from many different angles.</h4>
<img decoding="async" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Raspberries2_min_d992c3e171.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T12:23:23.307Z">

I pick thoroughly and am convinced that every ripe raspberry, with the tug of thumb and
 finger, has slid from its cream-colored conical core. Then I kneel, lean down and look up at the low branches to see
 if any remain. It is not one or two ripe berries now before me – it is dozens. Again, I pick all I see, drop them in
 the container hanging from a belt at my waist and move on. While plucking from the other side of the row, I look
 through the sundappled leaves and see an abundance of ripe berries hanging where I had just picked everything in
 sight. “Did these ripen in the time it took me to walk to the other side of the row?” I ask myself, knowing full
 well it is an impossibility, yet feeling it is the only logical explanation. Because I really checked carefully and
 thoroughly and there were no ready berries in sight a few minutes earlier in that very place.
A squirmy feeling lurks in the back of my mind, hidden like the raspberries have been.
 Eventually, as I wait, it reveals itself; it’s a reminder that changing my angle of vision can expose what has
 previously been entirely hidden. It’s a reminder that from a certain perspective, I see something clearly (In this
 case that there are no ripe raspberries). The certainty of it is reassuring. This is the way it is, the way things
 are. I can trust what I see, what I have experienced and what I know.
Then my perspective changes and voila! I perceive differently. Things are not what they
 appeared to be just moments earlier. My reassurance in the certainty of what I know evaporates.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Eventually, as I wait, it reveals itself; it’s a
 reminder 
 that changing my angle of vision can expose 
 what has previously been entirely hidden. 
 It’s a reminder that from a certain perspective, 
 I see something clearly.
</h5>
<hr>
I am reminded of a situation several years ago when I was teaching at the local school.
 Close to the school is a small church and the current pastor was perceived to be a difficult man by many of us. He
 complained regularly about the teaching at the school – both what was taught and how. He complained about teachers
 who did Yoga and therefore didn’t belong in a public school system, because they were engaging in what he called the
 devil’s work. What particularly vexed me was his regular shooting of the local, wild coyotes wherever he found them,
 whether they loped across a meadow or walked over a frozen lake. It was this behavior that aroused my considerable
 antipathy towards him, but it bothered me to feel it with the intensity I did.
<img decoding="async" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Raspberries3_min_3ea5a518e0.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T12:24:16.101Z">

Then a friend told me a story about this man’s life, about something that happened when
 he was five years old. My perception changed dramatically. I still felt revulsion for what to me were his
 unnecessary and cruel actions, but my dislike for him personally changed. The adage of ‘hate the sin, love the
 sinner’ comes to mind, though at that time I confess I did not feel love for this man. My appreciation and love for
 the local coyotes had me feeling disgust for what he was doing. Still, because I learned about his life, I was able
 to feel compassion for the young boy he had been and what had happened to him. Such trauma at a young age would
 considerably impact any person’s life. It was a step forward. It happened because something changed my perspective.

The Dalai Lama is credited with saying, “Every change of mind begins with a change of
 heart.” I see that a change of heart happens, or can happen, when I am willing to adjust my stance, the way I think
 it all is and should be. Raspberries that reveal themselves where I was convinced they couldn’t possibly be, because
 I had checked so carefully, is the metaphoric version of a change of heart – a change of vision. My antipathy
 towards the man who was senselessly killing coyotes was softened because my heart was touched. Like the raspberries
 that teach me each year, there is a continual unfolding of learning and expansion. The certainty of my views on
 everything from finding all the ripe berries to what it means to be spiritual continues to be adjusted.
When Swami Radha studied in India with her guru, Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, he
 instructed her to find the hidden meaning in the Yogasanas.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Being young, my experience was also young. 
 My ideas and concepts needed to be updated, 
 to expand and adjust in order to understand in new ways. 
 My resistance and determination to cling 
 to what I thought I knew created a barrier 
 that took considerable force to remove.
</h5>
<hr>
She asked for further explanation and he guided her to begin by exploring the headstand
 to find out what happens when your world is turned upside down. With this beginning she delved into meanings hidden
 in the poses. From the headstand, she learned that voluntarily turning cherished concepts and beliefs on their head
 was a path to independence. Choosing to explore the challenges and criticisms that come from both the external and
 internal world prepares the mind for meeting them with equanimity in situations not voluntarily chosen. Cherished
 ideas can have another perspective; we can expand the beliefs and concepts that hold us bound.
Seeing from different angles is the antidote to right/wrong polarized thinking, to
 fundamentalism in its many forms. When I was young, I had so many ideas about spirituality, concepts about what it
 meant to lead a spiritual life, what it looked like, what the yogic teachings meant. Being young, my experience was
 also young. My ideas and concepts needed to be updated, to expand and adjust in order to understand in new ways. My
 resistance and determination to cling to what I thought I knew created a barrier that took considerable force to
 remove. Fortunately, my teachers weren’t interested in my concepts about a spiritual life. They were interested, in
 the spirit of true friendship, in guiding me to discover, embody and live a genuine spiritual life.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">The 15th century mystic poet Kabir wrote, 
 “I laugh when I hear that&nbsp;the fish in the water is thirsty … 
 looking everywhere for water.”&nbsp;It reminds me too that 
 the Divine, Creator, God, Light is everywhere in everything.
</h5>
<hr>
This process didn’t (and still doesn’t) always feel comfortable. It is easier, however,
 when I willingly explore different perspectives and possibilities rather than having the events of life force them
 upon me. The fact that raspberries are often found when I get down on my knees to investigate has not been lost on
 me. Humility is a quality that softens the edges of my concepts, that allows understanding to be absorbed more
 easily. Surprise at discovering what I hadn’t previously seen or understood continues to occur, which in itself is
 surprising, since I keep thinking that by now this lesson surely must have been learned. But this kind of learning
 isn’t like memorizing a list of facts or names or numbers. Rather than thinking I’ve finally landed at the
 definitive view, I’m learning to be pleased to find a concept adjusted by a different perspective. The ultimate
 definitive view isn’t defined at all. It belongs to a complete sphere of perception.
<img decoding="async" class="lazyload img-float-left has-img-center-in-mobile"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Raspberries4_min_4505b3db87.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T12:24:57.380Z">From
 many seasons of picking, finding berries at places not easily seen, I notice also I’ve begun to search in the
 hard-to-see places, underneath a cluster of leaves or behind a group of stalks. At times, I have resorted to
 crawling along the row on hands and knees, slithering under branches to look up. Then I find I’ve overlooked the
 berries right in front of me, easily accessible.
It reminds me that what I am seeking might be right before me. The Quran records that
 Allah is “closer to you than your jugular vein,” while the 15th century mystic poet Kabir wrote, “I laugh when I
 hear that the fish in the water is thirsty … looking everywhere for water.” It reminds me too that the Divine,
 Creator, God, Light is everywhere in everything. The raspberries seem to hide, but it is my awareness that is the
 culprit, my preconceptions and expectations. It could be said I’m hiding from them.
In a Yoga class of many years ago, we were asked to reflect on times and situations
 where the presence of the Divine had been working in our lives. I found it impossible to name a particular incident
 over another, because I could see that there could be no time or place in my life where the Divine had not been
 present. If I said the Divine was present in one moment, it suggested not present in another. However, where I
 recognized in the moment the presence of the Divine was something different. For although I understand, in a deep
 and palpable way, the permeation of the Divine in everything, I often forget and act like I don’t know this. From a
 song the words “At times you seem to hide from me; perhaps I hide from you” capture the insight. And raspberries
 continue to remind me, as the process of forget/remember continues. Hidden and revealed, they wait to be recognized,
 to be perceived.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr>

Agents of change

<h3 style="text-align: center">
 Lessons from the Garden
 </h3>
 <h4>
 ALANDA GREENE continues her personal
 understanding of life from her experiences in the garden. This time,
 potatoes shed light on consciousness and the ever-expanding need for
 authenticity and self-acceptance in following life’s path.
 </h4>
 
 This year the potatoes are abundant, their size a healthy medium-large.
 The two previous years gave a harvest of fewer and smaller ones. I note
 my pleasure to again find abundance in both quantity and size. Not just
 for the harvest’s productivity, but because it confirms my own
 experience and the uniqueness of this particular garden’s ways.
 
 
 Potatoes are generally an easy vegetable to grow. As a child, I learned
 how to space and plant them from my dad as we worked together in the
 backyard. This current hillside garden was created from depleted land
 that had been forest, vastly different to the deep prairie loam of that
 childhood place. Still, eventually the potatoes grew here and, as the
 soil improved, so did the harvest.
 
 
 One day, however, I read an article about the proper way to grow
 potatoes and I resolved to follow the advice of knowledgeable gardeners.
 The harvest wasn’t so good after the first year of using their
 suggestions, but I gave it another try in case I was missing something.
 The second year also gave less satisfying results and I returned to the
 former method, incorrect according to some, but successful for this
 garden. Now I am happily digging prolific numbers from the dark soil,
 finding nuggets of potato treasure.
 
 
 This garden is an interaction of soil, water, temperature, surroundings,
 hillside and tending that is unique to this place. It provides a bounty
 of vegetables from three terraced beds. When neighbors ask advice about
 how to grow plants, I have to preface every response with, “I can only
 say how it works in this garden. It might not be effective in another
 garden at all.”
 
 
 <img
 class="has-img-center lazyload w-100 h-auto"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/potatoes3_2a96e6bcfc.jpeg?updated_at=2023-04-06T12:37:55.845Z"
 alt="potatoes3"
 />
 
 
 These potatoes before me are indeed a treasure, but more so is the
 learning that came through this experience. This garden is a unique
 system of interacting elements and so is my life. My path of evolution
 is unique. Yes, of course, I am a living being that shares many
 characteristics with other creatures. But my pattern of growth, learning
 and evolution is individual, shaped by the particular experiences,
 events and choices that characterize it through time. The advice and
 teaching offered by the expert voices in our modern world might not be
 suited to this particular phase of my life, might not serve the next
 step in my learning. The panoply of available wisdom isn’t a ‘one size
 fits all’, whether it’s gardening or the evolution of consciousness.
 There are sources of knowledge, skills and wisdom from which to learn,
 but I need to test their advice in the context of my own experience,
 neither taking it on nor rejecting it without first bringing it to the
 field of what I have learned. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Our own life is
 the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.”
 
 
 Trusting the authority of my own experience is easier in the garden than
 in other areas of life, most especially in the realm of spirituality, of
 evolving consciousness. There is temptation to rely on the words, codes
 and admonitions of others. It can feel safe, and offer the security of
 what looks right, what meets the general community consensus of how one
 lives when living a spiritual life. Shakespeare gave wise counsel
 through his character Polonius’s advice to his son, “To thine own self
 be true. And then it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not be
 false to any man.”
 
 <hr />
 <h5 style="text-align: center">
 It has taken a lot of seasons to get a fertile garden 
 and a mind fertile enough to be able to discriminate,&nbsp;investigate, examine 
 and trust&nbsp;whether other’s knowledge or advice is suitable.
 </h5>
 <hr />
 
 But it takes sincere commitment to self-examination, reflection and
 honesty to learn how be true to myself. Being guided by my own learning
 and experience means uncovering those places where pride, fear,
 self-importance, laziness, or bolstering self-image are masquerading as
 authentic guidance, or worse, are justified in the name of authenticity.
 I have to learn about myself – the many aspects and layers – and have
 the courage to trust what I learn through experience.
 
 
 This potato learning isn’t about, “See! I was right.” It isn’t a
 right-wrong situation. It’s the recognition that there isn’t a right way
 for every situation. The appealing certainty of a one-size-fits-all
 answer doesn’t fit the context of a relational world. Cynthia
 Bourgeault, writing about Teilhard de Chardin, explains how Chardin
 addressed the idea of the unity of life. This oneness “doesn’t turn its
 respective participants into a blob, a drop dissolving into the ocean.
 Rather, it presses them mightily to become more and more themselves: to
 discover, trust, and fully inhabit their own depths.”
 
 
 In the same way the garden has evolved from rocky, sandy forest soil to
 one that is a fertile and nourishing medium, I’m building a body of
 experience and continuing to test it against the wisdom offered in the
 areas where I want to grow and evolve. This is the key factor, this
 identifying how I want to evolve, asking: “What kind of person do I want
 to be? What do I want to strengthen in my life? How do I want to use my
 energy?” Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, through the choices I
 make each day, I am answering these questions. I want my life to be a
 conscious response. But I am the only one who can really determine what
 those responses will be. And they change over time, as I learn through
 choice and experience.
 
 
 <img
 class="has-img-center lazyload w-100 h-auto"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/potatoes2_5d624fdfb1.jpeg?updated_at=2023-04-06T12:38:27.572Z"
 alt="potatoes2"
 />
 
 
 With the potatoes, I am pleased that their growth supports the learning
 of this garden, how to work with its elements to encourage its
 productivity, but certainly it is not a case of, “I knew better all
 along.” Because all along, in the garden and in my life, it’s been a
 case of trying things, assessing, learning how others do things. It has
 been the case also, however, that I was influenced hugely by selfdoubt
 through a great deal of my life, assuming other’s knowledge was more
 worthwhile than my own. It has taken a lot of seasons to get a fertile
 garden and a mind fertile enough to be able to discriminate,
 investigate, examine and trust whether other’s knowledge or advice is
 suitable.
 
 
 This makes me appreciate the value that so many cultures, especially
 indigenous ones, have for their elders. There is recognition that living
 a long time leads to wisdom, through having experienced a great deal and
 learned a great deal. It takes a long time to develop the authority that
 comes from experience. In a world that is changing rapidly, the wisdom
 and knowledge of elders is not generally respected in the countries
 collectively called (perhaps as a misnomer) the ‘developed world’.
 
 
 Recently I read an essay by a man who had been the CEO of a large
 company in the eastern United States, and who began expanding his
 consciousness by visiting the people on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
 in the Dakotas. On one trip he brought his mother, and when they entered
 the room where a meeting was being held, a chair was immediately brought
 for his mother as she was guided to sit in a place of honor with elders
 of the tribe. She had never been there before, the man himself wasn’t
 much known, she was of another race, but that didn’t matter. She was
 recognized and honored as an elder.
 
 
 Another way of growing potatoes might be offered to me in the future, in
 this dance of trying out, learning, keeping, releasing, adjusting. All
 of it is part of evolving. It’s about keeping open to learning and
 growing. I have enough experience to trust what I’ve gained so far, but
 also enough to know that this is a dance indeed as the universe offers
 possibilities. Where would I be if I had settled with the knowledge I
 had at eighteen? Some of it was okay. A great deal was deficient.
 Digging in my heels to hold fast to a position or a view wouldn’t have
 helped growth, certainly not my own evolution, and it wouldn’t have
 helped with this great potato harvest either.
 
 <hr />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
 <hr />

Potato treasure

<h3 style="text-align: center">
 Lessons from the Garden
</h3>
<h4>
 ALANDA GREENE explores the question,
 “What am I not seeing?” and celebrates paradox, impossibility and
 synchronicity through her musings on earthworms.
</h4>

 I grew up in a city at a time of large green lawns and cement sidewalks.
 The connected streets and crescents and curving suburban neighborhoods
 had an easily navigated network for pedestrians and cyclists and mothers
 pushing prams to walk long distances without ever having to cross a
 street. It was wonderful and safe, and we cycled and ran everywhere.


 After a rain, however, these sidewalk thorough fares were not so great
 for earthworms. With the dampness on the cement, the worms would begin a
 journey from one dirt haven to another. But many did not make the long
 distance, in worm terms, before the sidewalk became dry.


 It saddened me to find twig-like desiccated pinkish pieces on the
 cement. When I found one still alive, I picked it up and placed it in
 the grass or tossed it to safety.


 Rain in the garden doesn’t lead to overground earthworm traffic. I do
 not find dried out carcasses. The worms incur different threats. In
 spring, keen to fill the wide-spread mouths of newborn chicks, robins
 hang about close to where I turn over soil in preparation for planting.
 They forgo usual reluctance to come so close in response to the
 compelling need of newborns, brazenly hopping near my feet to grab
 exposed worms. Although worms are not the main food of newly hatched
 robins, they are still a significant food source. In the two-week period
 before leaving the nest, a young robin can eat 14 feet of earthworm
 dinners. Three or four young ones in a nest, nests in various places in
 the yard – the wisteria, the workshop, the cedars, the hazelnut – means
 the easy pickings I provide are worth the parental risk to move in
 close.


 I cherish these earthworms, and the robins too, and encourage their
 presence in the garden. When people comment on the garden’s good soil, I
 give credit to these wiggly workers and all they provide. Even though it
 takes more work to turn the ground with a garden fork, rather than a
 mechanical tiller, it seems to encourage more worms, so I choose the
 fork. Shovels slice too many worms while a fork seems to slide around
 them.


 The straw mulch that covers the garden over winter and lies between beds
 the rest of the year is a moist source of organic material that the
 worms eat, nutrients going in one end and out the other as worm
 castings.


 They are a terrific source of soil nutrients, balancing the soil’s pH,
 loosening and mixing the layers. They break down organic matter to make
 nutrients available to plants, and create burrows that allow oxygen and
 water to reach deeper levels of soil, as well as the roots of plants.
 Charles Darwin referred to them as nature’s ploughs.


 But in the same way that I was hardly aware of these helpful organisms
 until finding them stranded on the cement, I often forget about them as
 I work in the garden. They are in the unseen part of the soil, noticed
 during the inadvertent offerings to robins, remembered when asked about
 why I don’t mechanically till, or when suddenly visible as I turn a pile
 of compost or dirt.


 In Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, this
 well-known Sufi poet, story-teller and teacher of the 13th century
 offers words to nudge, exhort, prod, and remind his listeners to seek
 the wealth of the hidden treasure. Coming to the seashore and wondering
 where there are pearls, or even if there are pearls at all, Rumi asks,
 “How is one to obtain a pearl merely by looking at the sea?”


 He encourages those he instructs to let what is hidden in their hearts
 be brought forward and made visible. “It is like the root of a tree,” he
 says. “Although it is hidden from view, its effects are apparent on the
 branches.” Often he gives a clear reminder to what is implied here:
 humans need to remember this hidden, unseen realm, and then the signs of
 it will be obvious. When not acknowledged, the treasure is invisible and
 forgotten, its existence denied.

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 In the moments that bring them to awareness, 
 I am reminded of how much of the 
 really important work is going on beneath the surface, 
 whether it’s in the garden or in other dimensions of my life.
</h5>
<hr />

 Sometimes it seems that other beings of creation understand the unseen
 better than humans do and don’t need to be prodded with discourse.
 Earlier this year in late winter, it was still cold, still snowing, but
 each day the amount of light was increasing as the days grew longer. In
 the root cellar, however, it remained as cold and as dark as it had been
 through the previous winter months. Yet when I reached to take potatoes
 from their box, small nubs of new sprouts dotted them. These potatoes
 knew. They knew it was time to get ready for growing. But how did they
 know? What were their clues in that dark, cold, apparently unchanged
 room? Not anything I could perceive.


 Barbara Kingsolver wrote a collection of essays titled
 High Tide in Tucson. In one of them, she tells of a researcher in 1954, F.A.Brown, who
 brought oysters from their Connecticut seabeds to the basement of a
 laboratory in Illinois. For a couple of weeks the oysters kept their
 behavior to the rhythm of the coastal tides they had known, mouths open
 to siphon in their plankton nourishment, then closed in their shells.
 But then the rhythm of this tidal stimulated activity changed. Still
 acting in unison but not to a recognized tide pattern, the researchers
 finally calculated that the oysters were responding to high tide in
 Chicago. It had been millions of years since a sea bed covered this
 land, but the hidden rhythm of those ancient tides was still perceived
 by the oysters and they adjusted to it. They made the unseen visible.


 <img
 class="has-img-center lazyload w-100 h-auto"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/earthworm2_7c27d0eabe.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:07:56.400Z"
 alt="earthworm2"
 />


 Many decades ago, the participants in a weekly class at Yasodhara Ashram
 were asked to reflect during the coming week on the question: What am I
 not seeing? At first, I thought it was a strange question, somewhat
 irritating. How could anyone answer a question like that? If I could see
 it, then I wasn’t ‘not seeing’. If I couldn’t see it, how could it be
 known? The question seemed to loop around itself in an impossibility, a
 paradox of reason. But of course these kinds of questions are not like
 the homework I had been given at school, to bring back an answer and
 find out if it was right or wrong. It’s the kind of question meant to
 initiate more questions and reflection, with maybe no hope of an
 ‘answer’ but great possibility for expanding thought and perception.
 Great enough to last a lifetime.


 Not long after bringing this question home like a puppy that had
 followed me and moved into the house as a lifelong friend, I received a
 postcard in a newsletter. You have to keep your mind on what you cannot
 see, it read. I laughed aloud at the synchronicity. This card has
 remained pinned to the bulletin board above my desk. I want the reminder
 of what is hidden, of what I am not seeing, so I can expand the
 remembrance. I want to remember the worms and give them their due, along
 with the other hidden treasures.

<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr />

Earthworms & the unseen

<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>ALANDA GREENE challenges us all to listen to our fellow creatures of Nature,
 learn from them, and start to be in tune, before it is too late.</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
Carl Jung often repeated a story he heard from his colleague Richard Wilhelm, which he
 experienced while living in China in the early twentieth century. The story tells of a village that had suffered a
 long period of drought. The situation grew dire and after various unsuccessful attempts to correct the situation, it
 was decided to ask the rainmaker to come. A delegation went to find the man known by this name and brought him to
 the village. When he arrived, the villagers asked him what he would need. He requested only to stay in a small hut
 located on the outskirts of the village and that he was not to be disturbed. He remained inside the hut for three
 days. At the end of that period, clouds appeared and spilled thirst-quenching, life-giving moisture to the dry land.

“How did you do this?” the villagers asked. “How did you make the rains come?” He
 replied, “I did not do this. What I did was sit and find the disharmony within me since coming to your village. That
 disharmony brought drought to your village. I restored the balance within myself and so the rains could come.”
<img decoding="async" class="lazyload img-float-right has-img-center-in-mobile"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/listening_garden2_cf2b66a442.jpg" alt="listening-in-the-garden" >If
 this story was an isolated one, it could be dismissed as an amazing coincidence, or as fabrication, but stories of
 wise ones bringing or ending rain, or influencing other natural phenomena, appear throughout history, throughout the
 world. They are still reported in our own time. The pervasiveness of these stories tells me that they describe
 something that is possible. They tell me humans experience the ancient teaching: as within, so without.
A woman I respect, a teacher and practitioner of Chinese Medicine and Sound Therapy,
 speaks of the crisis of our world’s water systems. 
 “When you treat a client,” she counsels a group of us, “treat the water channels in the body; create flow and
 balance. This is a way to improve the health of the Earth’s water systems.” 
 This is a way to apply the wisdom of connectedness.
Such ancient wisdom has in general been long forgotten, and its teachings abandoned, or
 dismissed as childish or magic, scoffed at, or not thought about at all. But it does not change the fundamental
 principle that we are one with this Earth.
How can the enormity of this forgotten condition be known again? It is a question many
 of us ask in one form or another: 
 How can we find our way back to harmony and balance? What are the wise actions we need to make in order to restore
 ourselves in right relationship? How can we know what actions are wise?


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">To receive knowledge I need to learn how to truly
 listen. 
 Then I can listen to the land, to hear what the land knows 
 and what it is offering in guidance as a way to restore balance.
</h5>


<hr>
At a recent conference I listened to biologist Kevin van Tighem, retired superintendent
 of Banff National Park and award-winning author. 
 “When we talk about restoration,” he said, “it has to include restoration of ourselves.” He described how western
 science has broken things into many disciplines, many specialized bits of knowledge, looking at the world through
 particular windows. But we need to learn to think of the whole. “We need to break down the barriers to put us back
 together.”
In the garden, I’m one of those people who talk to the plants, something so many
 gardeners understand. Do the plants understand? Do plants have the capacity to care and feel? Do they know I’m
 talking to them? And perhaps more importantly, do I know when they talk to me?
“Where’s the proof that plants communicate?” my scientist friends ask, meaning the proof
 of the classic scientific method, where the results of an experiment can be repeated in the laboratory by anyone who
 follows the steps outlined in the experiment.
There are other factors of influence than the measurable ones required in the scientific
 method. These subtle conditions cannot be controlled and repeated in the way I can measure exact temperature or
 volume of water, yet they influence what happens. I cannot give the proof that is required, but I am not willing to
 suspend my own observation and experience because it does not meet criteria that are incomplete and limited. More
 importantly, I am not willing to dismiss the rich history of indigenous peoples worldwide that honors plants as
 conscious beings capable of communication. When asked how a particular plant cure was discovered, indigenous sages
 will respond, “The plant told me.” Other stories tell of asking a plant for permission to use it in healing ceremony
 or service and actually listening for a response and acting accordingly.
If the consciousness of plants is dismissed, how can we find our way back to
 experiencing our connectedness – the potential for being able to communicate and learn from other beings who share
 this Earth? How can we restore our relationship?
In the early days of the Findhorn community in Scotland, it was listening to plants and
 following their guidance that gave extraordinary growing accomplishments, because the plants themselves communicated
 what they needed.
Professor Emeritus and Blackfoot scholar at the University of Lethbridge, Leroy Little
 Bear, said recently, “I want to give you the big picture – something we don’t often think of. We’re in the cosmos, a
 very small speck in the cosmos. When you compare our planet, sun, solar system with the rest of the universe,
 there’s nothing special. We’re very typical. The cosmos is made up of energy forces in constant flux. On this Earth,
 there just happens to be the right combination of these fluxes to bring us into existence. This is what the elders
 are talking about: our existence is brought about by the totality of our relationships. If you take something out,
 it affects the whole – it changes things.”
Leroy relates a story told by an Aboriginal student in his class. The boy told of a
 small tribe in Western Australia that had consciously decided not to reproduce, because industry had so changed
 their environment that they couldn’t be who they were anymore. 
 “I hope we don’t reach that point,” Leroy added.
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There are cosmic and Earth events that disrupt, change, and damage the environment. The
 geologic and oral history is replete with examples. These are huge processes beyond the control, management or
 regulation of human will and thinking. But other influences causing major disruption are coming from human behavior.
 We may not have intended this destructive impact when we made the choices we made. We intended a positive outcome.
 But now we see that our actions and our creations have destabilized and harmed our relationships in our world.
 Considerable disruption has occurred. How is this to be redressed? This is a dimension of reconciliation.
Another Blackfoot knowledge keeper, William Singer, who resides on the Kainai or Blood
 Reserve in southern Alberta, expresses concern over what he observes happening on the land: the disappearance of
 many varieties of plants and animals. In his youth, William was trained as a herbalist by his father, using the
 natural plants of his surroundings.
“I went again to the land to get some answers. There’s no going back to the way it was
 before these changes happened. We have to adapt. We have to find the ways to adapt. We are the answers.”
Knowing that our human species has caused harm when it wasn’t intended, knowing that we
 cannot go back, how do we decide what to do next, to find what is right action? The Buddha taught the Noble
 Eightfold Path as a means to overcome the suffering of existence. He identified right action as one of the paths.
 How is right action discerned? How do I trust choices for the future, seeing how much error has occurred from past
 action?


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Can I learn to listen to what other creatures have to
 say? 
 Can I adapt according to the messages they give? 
 I am making efforts to learn how to do this, 
 and the garden is a good place to practice.
</h5>


<hr>
This takes me back to the garden, to the plants and animals and land. It takes me
 within. I recognize that I cannot think my way to right action. Thinking, delineating, planning and dissecting – to
 name just a few of the many qualities of our rational mind – are amazing human tools of cognition, but this rational
 thinking is also a limited tool for gaining knowledge and understanding. More unfortunately, it has taken over the
 show and is now generally accepted as the only reliable way.
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Einstein commented, “We can’t solve our problems by using the same kind of thinking that
 created them.” We need another way to use our minds, another way to perceive and understand right action, a way that
 will restore harmony, balance and right relationship.
I know that I don’t know. But I also know there are ways to receive knowledge. To
 receive knowledge I need to learn how to truly listen. Then I can listen to the land, to hear what the land knows
 and what it is offering in guidance as a way to restore balance.
Barbara McClintock, who won a Nobel Prize for her investigation into the genetic behavior of corn, said that she never did anything that the corn did not instruct
 her to do. She knew how to listen to the corn she was studying.
In the garden, I am learning to listen. In meditation, I am learning to listen.
I aspire to this kind of listening. It’s different than thinking, different than trying
 to figure something out with my rational mind, which as a species we’ve taken to the limit.
There’s no going back, but our future as a species is dependent on how we move forward,
 as it is for many of the creatures who share our home, planet Earth. Can I learn to listen to what other creatures
 have to say? Can I adapt according to the messages they give? I am making efforts to learn how to do this, and the
 garden is a good place to practice.
<hr class="vertical-space1">


<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>


<hr>

Listening in the garden

<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>ALANDA GREENE witnesses a lot while working in her garden. This time it’s the
 ripening of blackberries that provide the lesson on patience and acceptance of the processes of Nature.</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1">

The blackberries are abundant this year and they’re ripe for picking. At least they
 appear to be. They challenge me more than any other berry in the garden, for where black and red currants,
 gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries reveal their ripeness with color, blackberries don’t. They are masterful
 at appearing ripe when they aren’t, their glossy black nubs fooling me over and over. My sense of sight is deceived
 and I must rely on touch – giving the berry a light tug such that if it comes free into my hand, it’s a yes, and if
 it doesn’t, it’s not ready.
Using my sense of sight with other berries, I can reach between stems and branches to
 pick ones that don’t deceive; I’m not disappointed. With a blackberry, I find too often that my effort to get to it
 has been for naught. My slight tug meets resistance.
I notice my impulse to pull it from the stem anyway, to give just a bit more force to my
 tug so it will release, even though I know it won’t be sweet and the taste will be undeveloped. But sometimes I’ve
 reached between a lot of branches for just that berry. I don’t want to have to come back to the same one tomorrow or
 maybe again the day after that. Over and over I keep finding berries that are not quite ready.
But I find impatience too, wanting what isn’t ready to be so, because I don’t want to
 have to do it again. The willingness to accept a situation that is given, not trying to force my will on the way
 things are: I value this, I aspire to this. At least I tell myself I do. But in just a simple task like picking
 blackberries, I meet displeasure with a thin coating of irritation to go along with it, because it’s not the way I
 want it to be.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">“It is out of the dailiness of life that one is
 driven 
 into the deepest recesses of the self.” 
 But going into the deep recesses requires 
 a willingness to go there, to value it. 
 For certainly we live in a world that offers 
 a banquet of distractions from the exploration of inner learning.
</h5>


<hr>
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 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Blackberry_learnings2_6e05413047.jpg">

&nbsp;
I could pretend otherwise. No one but the blackberries and I would know. But these are
 the situations where what I believe about myself and what is revealed through my actions meet. If they don’t match,
 there’s something off. My actions tell the truth. Wasn’t it Goethe who said, “To know and not to do is not to know
 at all”? If I’m acting one way and telling myself I value something that doesn’t match, well, I guess that’s
 hypocrisy.
It’s good to look at it, good to name it. Not to indulge in self-condemnation about
 being a loser. But also not to ignore what blackberry-picking is teaching me. In this quiet context of garden work,
 I have the opportunity to catch thought patterns and habitual responses that I don’t notice in the busyness of daily
 life. Blackberries aren’t pointing any fingers of blame, but they are giving me an opportunity to learn.
Catching a pattern here in the garden allows me to recognize it when the same one turns
 up in more emotionally charged or busy situations. When I find myself irritated at the slowness of the driver ahead
 of me, or at the woman in the checkout line having a leisurely conversation about her kid’s preschool when I have a
 ferry to catch and am about to miss it. If I’ve already looked at my behavior in the gentle atmosphere of berries, I
 can more easily remember: “Hey, I know better choices of what to do with my thoughts. I know how to use my attention
 when waiting in line.”
The poet Stanley Kunitz once said, “It is out of the dailiness of life that one is
 driven into the deepest recesses of the self.” But going into the deep recesses requires a willingness to go there,
 to value it. For certainly we live in a world that offers a banquet of distractions from the exploration of inner
 learning.
The question “Why would you want to do this kind of self-reflection?” brings a flurry of
 voices internalized through the years from who knows where. “Yes, why spend your energy looking at your thoughts
 like this, questioning your motives, your actions? I mean it’s depressing. The more you look, the worse you get.
 Just get on with your life and do your best and don’t get pulled into this endless navel-gazing.”
Hearing these voices reveals the point. If I don’t do this work, don’t determine which
 voice, which desire, which concept or which attitude is pulling the strings of my choices, then I’m acting out those
 voices unconsciously, being pulled in a marionette kind of life. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” is often
 attributed to Socrates. For him, understanding motives and making choices based on conscious thought made life
 worthwhile. I can find these deeper learnings in the quiet of berry-picking.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">“The unexamined life is not worth living,” is often
 attributed to Socrates. 
 For him, understanding motives and making choices 
 based on conscious thought made life worthwhile. 
 I can find these deeper learnings in the quiet of berrypicking.
</h5>


<hr>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
In Kundalini Yoga for the West: A Foundation for Character Building, Courage and
 Awareness, Swami Radha questions the aspirant: “What is the purpose of your life? What makes your life
 worth living?” These questions felt too huge right at the start, when I first met them as a much younger woman. But
 really, this examination is foundational for building a life of awareness, of meaning. It’s essential to examine
 deeply. Blackberries too encourage awareness, if I choose to observe and listen.
After all, what is this wanting to pick them before they’re ripe? Do I know better than
 the plant? Tugging at them, trying to force them when it’s not their time. Can I surrender to what is, without
 trying to force my will upon the conditions? I am being shown where I do not accept what is, but rather how I want
 it, the way I want it. I have all the right reasons. I’m a busy woman, lots to get done, value efficiency. But
 justification with words to make the world what I want it to be is a misuse of speech. Arranging my words to justify
 my actions and thoughts, to tell myself this approach is just fine, is an even greater misuse of speech.
So I come to the blackberries again, bucket hanging from my waist, with the intention to
 accept them as they are, letting go of ideas of how I want them to be. They are good teachers, like Swami Radha and
 Socrates, reminding me of my ideals and gently revealing how to align them with my actions.
<hr class="vertical-space1">


<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>


<hr>

Blackberry learnings

<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>ALANDA GREENE discovers the art of slow and steady, regularity and perseverance.</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
It’s digging time. The spring has been cold and wet, the soil is heavy and sodden. Still, it has to be turned. It’s
 slow work and just one narrow row of pushing and lifting the garden fork, dropping and loosening the hard lumps with
 strategic whacks, has me puffing and sweating. 
 “Only one small row and I’m in this state?” I ask myself. “How will I ever get this whole garden dug?” 
 I know the answer. One forkful at a time.
If I were to use a mechanized tiller it would be faster and easier, and well-meaning friends often offer this advice
 every year. However, I’ve noticed that turning the soil forkful by forkful gives dirt that is laced with earthworms,
 while soil worked with a tiller doesn’t seem so packed with these amazing wiggly garden helpers. I changed from
 using a shovel to a fork, because it is kinder to the worm population.
Somehow, every year, the soil is turned and then planted. At the moment it feels like a daunting and formidable task,
 but if I look just at the area in front of me it feels doable. If I look at the whole garden and what is yet left to
 accomplish, it feels impossible. Carl Jung commented, “Nothing is more important than this day.” To condense that
 idea further becomes, “Nothing is more important than this moment.” In this moment, I can dig another forkful of
 soil from what lies at my feet.
Looking at what needs doing in the whole garden, instead of what I am immediately working with, diffuses my focus. Of
 course I can keep the whole garden in mind, lift my head and look around, appreciate the blooms of daffodil at the
 end of the bed, the fluttering of warblers in the cherry tree, the delicate breeze scented with new grass and the
 whole context in which this gardening is done at all. But I also need to hold the importance of the task right
 before me.
In early university days my diligence to study was not strong. I procrastinated and found myself overwhelmed with
 deadlines that felt insurmountable. My thinking often went something like: “Well, I’m so behind already that even if
 I apply myself to this assignment, it’s hardly anything compared to how much still won’t be done. So I might as well
 say yes to the invitation to go out with friends.” The fallacy of that approach is embarrassingly obvious now and
 viewed from my current perspective it’s easy to see how I sabotaged getting my assignments completed.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Carl Jung commented, “Nothing is more important than this day.” 
 To condense that idea further becomes, 
 “Nothing is more important than this moment.”</h5>


<hr>
This unhelpful approach began to shift as I observed the effects of procrastination and
 preferred approaching tasks without panic. In the process of turning over thoughts along with turning over dirt,
 I’ve become aware of the impact of doing things a bit at a time, and how much is accomplished this way. This wisdom,
 lost to me in earlier years, is found in long ago tales like ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ from Aesop’s Fables, which
 reveals the potential of a slow and steady effort.
In Franco Zeferelli’s enchanting film about Saint Francis of Assisi, Brother Sun,
 Sister Moon, the legendary Donovan put this theme to music, describing how the small team of early devotees
 rebuilt an abandoned church:
Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly. 
 Day by day, you’ll grow too, you’ll know heaven’s glory.
There must have been a receptivity to this idea, a weariness of putting things off and facing the intensity of too
 many papers, exams and projects, because the song had an impact and became a favorite with me. Even today, turning
 over forks of dirt, it comes to mind and I find myself singing it, an encouragement to keep on with the small tasks
 of the moment.
My friend Ben undertook a large project of making a drum, right from the basics of cleaning and tanning a hide,
 cutting and planning the cedar for the frame, sanding and gluing. This work takes up a lot of space and Ben has a
 modest, simple workspace, but week-by-week, he gets a piece of the job done.
<img class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/stone_stone2_8dd8674143.jpg">
“I’m not a person who does things in the big outburst of energy,” he explained. “I go at it steadily. But I
 persevere.”
His statement evokes the story of Scott Nearing, co-author of Living the Good Life. It is told that he dug a
 large pond on his land by digging two buckets of earth a day. It took a long time, but like Ben, he persevered and
 eventually had a large pond.
The more I mull over this approach, turning over another row of dirt in the process, the more examples arise of its
 efficacy. Regularity in practice or a project of any kind reveals a deep wisdom, the way this overturned and rich
 dirt reveals a wealth of helpful worms. I hear the words of my teacher, and recall the words of many guides:
Be regular, meditate daily, even if it’s just for a short
 time. 
 It bears much more fruit than long periods now and then.
I don’t want you to think that my early adult tendencies are entirely transformed. They turn up in many places,
 although it is in the garden that clear success is evident. While writing, I have yet to master the ‘short bits at a
 time’ skill. On larger writing projects I look for large blocks of time, but the nature of my life is that large
 blocks of time are difficult to create. I’m beginning to question whether it is my concept about needing these large
 blocks of time that will have to be revised. I’m learning to write when smaller bits are available. It keeps the
 story going, keeps the ideas burbling up, and keeps my receptivity alive, active and perceptive.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">What am I choosing to express in my life? 
 What qualities do I want to strengthen? 
 What values do I choose to live by? 
 How can I manifest these? 
 Then, the things that get in the way of these 
 choices can be faced, transformed, and left behind.</h5>


<hr>
In the same way, whatever I practice regularly and repeatedly opens the gates for where my attention goes. The wisdom
 of my teacher’s words expands. There’s much more potential in this regular approach, bit by bit, than just
 completing a task. It might mean overturning a whole way of being.
Every year the dirt is turned, the harvest comes in, shaped by temperature, rain, wind and cultivated attention. And
 what, I wonder, leaning in to lift another forkful of dirt, is my inner harvest of applying this wisdom?.

<hr class="vertical-space1">



<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>


<hr>

Stone by stone

<h3 style="text-align:center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3><h4>ALANDA GREENE shares her experiences of weeding her garden and her inner garden of tendencies and character traits, and makes peace with herself in the process.</h4>It’s late spring – the time of year when garden growth is prolific, determined, persistent. Sometimes overwhelming. Especially the weeds. They require attention that is also determined and persistent, but in spite of my efforts there are always weeds that escape my notice and grow too big, too much. Removing them now causes disturbance or harm to the other plants.The behavior of weeds is no different from that of humans and other creatures. The weeds want to survive and have evolved ways to maximize that chance. My own ways of being in the world are the same. Those tendencies, habits and attitudes I try to eradicate are no different. They have developed skills for endurance. It’s their nature, like the weeds.I recognize tendencies in me that want to survive, ideas about who I am and who I should be, and how I need to be in order to lead an effective life. Some of those ideas are like the healthy plants I have planted and some are like the weeds that arrived from who knows where. But in dealing with weeds, I learn about me.Chickweed, for example, has developed clever ways to thrive and survive. When it shows only two tiny leaves above the ground, hardly visible at all and apparently posing no threat, it has already grown a substantial long root. It’s easy to remove at this point, if it is noticed, but it is often overlooked. I pull one tiny plant and see the fine rootlets already branching from the long white central root stem. When I miss removing the plants when they are small the roots spread wide and gain a firm hold in the soil. They seem to grip each other and become stronger, like those school games where everyone holds hands and becomes invincible against the charging big kids who try to break our chain.Above ground the chickweed is quite weak. Trying to remove the roots by pulling the stem rarely succeeds. It breaks off. The roots sprout more green and life goes on. Removing the chickweed early is the most effective way but it seems so inconsequential at this stage. I recognize how I can ignore what seems to be a small thing. Maybe I think that particular thought or attitude is too small to bother with; maybe I think that I’m dealing with big ideas and can’t be focusing on every little thing. Maybe it seems too small to matter, that it won’t have any consequence. But when I catch those things early – just a couple of teeny leaves poking out of the ground – then it doesn’t grow into something problematic.<img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/chickweeds2_4b7b350318.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-30T12:13:26.121Z">The way chickweed breaks off where it emerges above the soil – I’ve seen that same strategy in myself. I feel like I’ve pulled out a troublesome behavior, removed the wayward thought pattern and can metaphorically brush my hands free of it. Gone. Like the chickweed pulled away above ground. But in neither case is it so. It is gone from visibility only, but the weed still thrives underground, just out of reach of my fingers or my attention. No worry – it will emerge quickly again.Above ground, chickweed displays the same branching pattern as the roots do as it grows. It threads and winds among the lettuce, carrots, petunias, onions, and almost anything it can seize in its growth process. When I try to remove it now, it grabs leaves and stems. It’s hard to trace back to where it emerges from the ground. It appears in one place but its roots are somewhere quite distant and apparently not connected to this visible portion. I see similar patterns when examining character traits I want to weed out.What are weeds really? They are plants in the garden that interfere or choke out what has been planted there. I respect their living energy. In the case of chickweed, I’ve developed a fondness for the flavor of its leaves in salads. But the potential of the garden is limited if the weeds are left to grow wild. My own potential is also hindered if I don’t make effort to remove the weeds. They are obstacles to my own evolution.&nbsp;<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">What are weeds really? They are plants in the garden&nbsp; that interfere or choke out what has been planted there.&nbsp; I respect their living energy. In the case of chickweed,&nbsp; I’ve developed a fondness for the flavor of its leaves in salads.&nbsp; But the potential of the garden is limited if the weeds are left to grow wild.</h4><hr>Sometimes I don’t notice the weeds in the garden, and sometimes I don’t want to deal with them. Then, suddenly, all I seem to see is weeds. Everywhere I look, they are there and I feel like a bad garden mom. In my daily life, sometimes I avoid examining my speech and actions. The results catch up with me. As with the weeds, I feel inundated with flaws, faults, weaknesses, the parts of me I don’t want to exist. I end up in an emotional puddle of “What’s wrong with me?”This approach, the polarity of avoidance and overwhelm, is not an effective strategy. If I don’t use loaded words like ‘flaws’, ‘failures’, and ‘faults’, and insert in their place the ideas of ‘obstacles’, ‘hindrances’, ‘transformation’ and ‘choice’, I make an effective step in meeting the inner weeding task with awareness and consistency. My focus then shifts to questions like: What am I choosing to express in my life? What qualities do I want to strengthen? What values do I choose to live by? How can I manifest these? Then, the things that get in the way of these choices can be faced, transformed, and left behind. And faced again and again. Like the garden weeds. I can release the emotional drama of focusing on what’s wrong, to what the situation is and what needs to be done. There are weeds: remove them. There are obstacles: transform them.Viewed from this perspective allows me to release my concepts of right and wrong, a good garden mom or a bad garden mom, how I might be or should be, how my garden should be, how I should be a better weeder, and how I should be as a person. It’s easy to slip back into, “By now I should be free from these character traits that I don’t want! I thought they would be gone by now. I don’t like still seeing these in myself.” Viewed dispassionately, being free of these patterns is about as reasonable as my garden being free of weeds.My garden will never be weed free. It’s big and fertile and organic and it grows a lot. I can accept (but sometimes forget) that the work of weeding, inside and out, will never end. It’s an ongoing process. No big deal. Just do it!

Chickweed – part 1

<h4>ALANDA GREENE lives in British Columbia in Canada, where the winters bring darkness and a quilt of snow over the garden. It’s a time of inward rejuvenation and recharging. How does that affect our own inner cycles of busy-ness and stillness?</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
I’m working at the kitchen table these days instead of upstairs at my desk. It’s winter and the house is cold, especially where I usually write. This is my version of a seasonal migration, a tiny replica of the cyclic nomadic journeys that the indigenous peoples of the plains made. When winter’s freezing temperatures, wind, snow and ice conspired, they moved to a location that gave shelter from these forces. It just makes sense, both out on the prairie and here in the house. The indigenous peoples moved closer to forested hillsides, out of the wind and with fuel nearby. I move to the warmth of the kitchen, as our firewood is gathered and stacked outside the door.
The garden is outside the window, covered in a thick quilt of white. I glance occasionally to it but feel no call to be there. During spring, summer and fall, I often tell myself a story: when the winter comes there will be so much more time for creative pursuits such as writing. Certainly the time I give to the garden in those other seasons is now available for other activities, but the anticipated expanded space where writing ideas burst forth is as absent as signs of growth outdoors.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">During spring, summer and fall, 
I often tell myself a story: 
when the winter comes there will be so much more time 
for creative pursuits such as writing. 
Certainly the time I give to the garden 
in those other seasons is now available for 
other activities, but the anticipated expanded 
space where writing ideas burst forth 
is as absent as signs of growth outdoors.</h5>
<hr>
There’s an outer cycle to seasons and there’s an inner cycle also. They tend to mirror each other, but I often don’t acknowledge that my own energy and creativity has seasonal fluctuations. Instead, I berate myself for not being more purposeful now that I have the time, not applying myself with more focus and diligence. I recognize self-accusations, such as “undisciplined, lacking focus, lazy, scattered.”
<img decoding="async" width="700" height="458"class="lazyload has-img-center" src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/winter2_e20bfcd8e9.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-03T14:29:07.700Z">
These accusations often function just under the surface, like all the things currently hidden by snow, so it requires listening and reflecting to catch the words that go with the feeling. They are old concepts, cultural and familial ideas that are as outworn as my old garden clogs. Unlike my clogs, they never did serve a useful purpose, but there’s a lingering suspicion …
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>Read the complete article in <a style="color: #bf8f26;" href="//www.heartfulnessmagazine.com/category/volume2/volume2issue4/">Volume 2, Issue 4</a> 
</h4>
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<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr />

Winter garden

<h3 class="text-center">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>
&nbsp;

<h4>ALANDA GREENE experiences the effect a change makes to the dynamics in her garden, and considers how much more aware we need to be of the decisions we make, and their effect on the Earth.</h4>
&nbsp;

Creatures had been eating the strawberries. Not only nibbling the bright red juicy fruit but also chewing at the roots, causing stress to the plant, killing several of them. Root-chewed plants were scattered through the bed.

I suspected voles since, when I lifted the straw mulch around the bed, I saw telltale holes dug into the soft black earth. Chipmunks were the next suspects, with several regularly bounding between the beds as they nibbled beans, raspberries and young cauliflower. They get away with a lot by being so cute; cuteness might be an evolutionary advantage.

Something had disrupted the balance and my hunch was that the garden snakes had been disturbed. I cringed with the realization that the something might be me.

The snakes have maintained themselves in a steady population in the garden for decades. They dwell mainly along the stone wall where the herbs grow. They eat slugs, voles, mice and probably those adorable chipmunks. But in doing so, they keep the numbers of these garden creatures at a reasonable level. Since the snake population doesn’t change much over the years, something is also keeping them in balance.

<hr>
<h5 class="text-center">The disruption of balance happened because I lacked foresight. 
This gives me insight about the ecological problems on our planet 
that result from human activity. The aims have not been 
to cause harm but to bring about improvement.</h5>

<hr>
A couple of years ago, in an effort to contain herb growth, and even more so, the weed growth among the herbs, I moved the plants into large pots. I then took away the top layer of soil and surrounded the pots with sawdust. But in so doing, I unwittingly disturbed the homes and pathways of the snakes. Without the snakes, there are more of those creatures that eat strawberries and destroy the entire plant.

I don’t know where the snakes have gone and I miss them. Even though, no matter how prepared I was to meet one of them lying on the warm stone at the day’s end, when the air was getting cool, I invariably started in surprise when I encountered one. A quick recovery followed and delight in seeing them. Knowing that snakes are sensitive to vibration, I regularly talked to them aloud and began to sing to them. Where they had once quickly slithered out of sight, into the foliage of the Echinacea or the sage, they began to move away more slowly, then to stop when I hummed or sang.
&nbsp;

<h4>Read the complete article in <a style="color: #bf8f26;" href="//www.heartfulnessmagazine.com/category/volume2/volume2issue3/">Volume 2, Issue 3</a></h4>
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<hr>
<h4 class="text-center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>

<hr>

Snakes & strawberries

<h3 class="p1" style="text-align: center;">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h3>

<h3 class="p1" style="text-align: left;">ALANDA GREENE explores the idea of openness and&nbsp;protectiveness against
 stimuli by a comparison with wearing garden&nbsp;gloves while working in her beloved garden in British Columbia.
</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
My relationship with garden gloves&nbsp;continues to consist of two
 opposing&nbsp;drives – the need to wear them to protect&nbsp;my hands, and the need for my skin to feel
 the&nbsp;plants without a barrier as I engage in garden tasks.
Each drive excludes something. In one case, the&nbsp;sensitivity of touch is dulled. In the other,
 protection&nbsp;of my hands from abrasion, cuts, punctures, dirt&nbsp;and stains is given up.
I see a similar paradox between openness and&nbsp;protectiveness in the experiences of daily living.
Most of the time I wear gloves while working in the&nbsp;garden. Otherwise, my hands are stained with
 plant&nbsp;juices and my skin is embedded with dirt, as well&nbsp;as marked with cuts and scrapes. Although I
 scrub&nbsp;and lather at the sink, clean hands are difficult to&nbsp;retrieve. Too many times have I looked down
 at&nbsp;my fingers while passing a receipt to someone, or&nbsp;playing my guitar in public, to discover with
 mild&nbsp;horror that my fingers and nails are not clean after&nbsp;all, but embedded with dark brown plant dye
 that&nbsp;looks like dirt.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">I need a more sensitive&nbsp;touch than gloves can&nbsp;give, 
 to clear this uninvited&nbsp;growth and not disturb 
 the tiny seedlings that I&nbsp;wish to remain and thrive. 
 … I see a similar paradox&nbsp;between openness and&nbsp;protectiveness 
 in the&nbsp;experiences of daily living.</h5>
<hr>
Gloves are not my preference, especially when&nbsp;removing weeds. If not removed early, these weeds&nbsp;will surge
 ahead of tiny, slow-growing carrots and&nbsp;crowd them out entirely. I need a more sensitive&nbsp;touch than gloves
 can give, to clear this uninvited&nbsp;growth and not disturb the tiny seedlings that I&nbsp;wish to remain and
 thrive.
Sometimes, I also just enjoy feeling plants. My sense&nbsp;of touch is dulled by a thick layer of glove.
 Touching&nbsp;the plants directly slows my work; I attend more&nbsp;carefully and work more precisely.
Transplanting tomato seedlings, I feel the fine furry&nbsp;texture of their stems. The impossible
 delicateness&nbsp;of celery brings protective and gentle caution, my&nbsp;awe renewed as I wonder, “How can these
 tiny&nbsp;plants become so strong?” Celery seeds are so&nbsp;small, as are their emerging leaves, their
 stems&nbsp;more like thin threads than stalks – yet look what&nbsp;they become.
I feel encouraged with the potential of my life, any&nbsp;life, to evolve beyond what is currently evident,
 in&nbsp;the same way that these celery beginnings give&nbsp;no hint of how they will stand lush and strong in&nbsp;a
 couple of months. That will happen, however, if …

<h4>Read the complete article in Volume 2, Issue 1 
 </h4>
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<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article By&nbsp;ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr>

Garden gloves

<h4>
 When fruits are ripe, there is always the tendency to rush the
 harvesting. ALANDA GREENE shares her
 experience of having an attitude of poise and being present in the
 moment instead of rushing to finish the task.
 </h4>
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 <h3 style="text-align: center">
 LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN
 </h3>
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 
 More than with any other berry in the garden, picking blueberries
 invokes a sense of urgency. I feel it as I see the clusters of deep
 blue-black orbs, and then see another cluster and another. The feeling
 is: hurry, there are so many, there is so much to be done, and there’s
 more there, and there behind you, and over in that bush. Another feeling
 is also evoked: that there is suddenly so much to do, not enough time.
 I’ve got to get them picked and frozen, or cooked into jam, or laid out
 for eating later, or baked into something yummy or delivered to a
 neighbor. There’s a mild panic that comes with a task that evokes time
 pressure.
 
 
 I have to admit I have a suspicion that, like missing socks in the
 washing, these berries can come in and out of other dimensions. I first
 suspected this with raspberries, when harvesting them. I would kneel
 down, spread the canes apart, look from left and right, and look up and
 down. After moving down the row to the next area, sometimes I looked
 back to where I had just been, only to discover large red ripe
 raspberries hanging there. They were hiding in another dimension! It’s
 the only explanation. They cannot escape if I keep my eye on them, hold
 them in place and then pick them, but if I let go of my gaze to finish
 what I am currently picking, the berries disappear.
 
 <hr />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">
 Truth be told, sometimes blueberries make me feel just like a little kid in a candy store.
 </h4>
 <hr />
 
 <img
 alt="be-present-blueberries"
 class="lazyload img-float-left has-img-center-in-mobile"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/be_present_blueberries2_img_bf4cc0f3cf.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-03T06:26:07.998Z"
 />
 
 
 Hence, with these blueberries, when a ripe cluster emerges just on the
 edge of my field of vision, I must turn and pluck them. But then another
 unseen cluster emerges. Hold that one. And where was I? Where were those
 other berries? They have gone. I have to work fast to get them before
 they escape.
 
 
 Truth be told, sometimes blueberries make me feel just like a little kid
 in a candy store. I remember taking my 93-year-old mother-in-law out
 shopping in a wheel chair. Shopping was an activity that always gave her
 great pleasure and she hadn’t been out of her house for a long time. She
 was enthralled. Always a chocolate lover, the racks of various bars and
 boxes at eye level brought that look to her eyes. She reached and
 grabbed anything that was within reach. With little gasps, her hand
 going this way and that, and in spite of my efforts not to deliberately
 entice this, she had an overflowing lap of various chocolate treasures
 by the time we got to the check out counter. I recognize something of
 that enticement, the call of these sweet delicacies, the overwhelm of
 abundance. Soon I have an overflowing container of blueberries and still
 the pressure is there to keep picking.
 
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 <hr />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">
 Picking with my focus fully in the moment changes everything. After some time a gentleness comes. … I keep picking, but there are moments of timeless absorption … It all has the feel of perfection. Some magic has worked on my
 mind.
 </h4>
 <hr />
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 
 Today I meet the challenge of the blueberry imperative. “No!” I say,
 when the feeling arises, when I feel overwhelmed at so many berries
 needing attention, calling, “pick me, pick me.”
 
 
 “No, we don’t have to hurry. There is all the time we need. Just this
 act in just this moment is just the right thing. It will never be more
 worthwhile than right now, never more complete, never more meaningful
 than being present with what I am doing, in relationship with the
 blueberries, in remembrance and gratitude.”
 
 
 Everything changes with this approach. The experience of these berries,
 their shape and scent, their beauty and abundance on the shiny-leaved
 stalks, is more vibrant and more complete. Today I did not approach this
 picking as another chore in the list of many things to do. The list is
 part of having a garden when things are ripening all together, when the
 time for harvest follows its own rhythm and not my imposed schedule.
 Yes, I do need to pick blueberries when they are ready, as they do not
 respond to an imagined date in a few days time, when I can schedule an
 opening, in between blackberries and broccoli.
 
 
 But picking with my focus fully in the moment changes everything.
 
 
 After some time a gentleness comes. The beauty of these deep frosty blue
 spheres, the crenulated rim on one pole, their flavor and squishy
 softness on my tongue… it all starts to work on me, starts to gentle my
 mind the way soft speech will calm a skittish horse. I keep picking, but
 there are moments of timeless absorption, taking in the image of round
 berries in green leaves, the chortles and whines of the newly hatched
 families of nuthatches at the edge of the forest, whispers of hazelnut
 leaves moved to comment by the soft breeze. It all has the feel of
 perfection. Some magic has worked on my mind.
 
 
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 
 <hr />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
 <hr />

 <hr class="vertical-space1" />

Be present - blueberries

<h4>
 ALANDA GREENE uses her experience of planting seeds to discuss the idea
 of not expecting anything from the work we do.
 </h4>
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h4>
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
 
 In my Educational Psychology class, I learned about delayed
 gratification, the ability to wait for a desired result, to postpone an
 immediate reward for a greater one later. A study of preschool children
 had been conducted to determine their capacity for delayed
 gratification. Each student was offered one marshmallow now with the
 promise of another marshmallow as well if able to wait fifteen minutes
 without eating the first one. Some gobbled up the marshmallow
 immediately, others struggled and finally succumbed before the time was
 up, and others managed to wait and have the double pleasure. The
 children who participated in this study stayed part of a longer
 forty-year research project. This study revealed that the group of
 preschoolers who exhibited the ability to wait for the reward showed
 much higher success in all areas of life in adulthood: health,
 happiness, SAT scores, work and general social integration.
 
 
 Later, while teaching in my own classrooms, I always had students who
 struggled with a postponed payoff and probably all of us have known
 adults who continue to have difficulty with delaying gratification.
 These people are unlikely to be drawn to gardening. Practically
 everything about gardening connects to delayed reward.
 
 
 Take the basic act of planting, for example. I have been planting seeds
 for as long as I can remember when, as a very small girl, I joined my
 father in our backyard. Dad always marked out a couple of rows for me,
 and I dropped tiny radish seeds along the trench he grooved with a
 stick. Then a row of impossibly smaller carrot seeds beside them. We
 covered the seeds, patted them firmly, and watered. And I watched, ready
 to eat whatever grew, expecting it any moment.
 
 
 <img
 alt="delayed-gratification"
 class="lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/delayed_gratification_img1_95858cd8da.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-31T06:11:20.214Z"
 />
 
 
 “It will take a few days or a week before they show above the ground,”
 my father said. A week? That is like an eternity to a little kid. But
 the days went by and finally small round green leaves emerged where the
 seeds had been placed.
 
 “Can we eat one?” I asked.
 
 “Not for a while yet. Maybe three weeks.”
 
 
 Three weeks! That is like almost a lifetime. Sometimes I pulled one out,
 disappointed to find a skinny pale red root that was nothing at all to
 munch on.
 
 
 Then finally I would hear, “Okay, they’re ready. See that curved bit of
 red showing at the dirt.”
 
 
 I love radishes – their taste, their round red brightness, the contrast
 of green leaves to red globe, and mostly their connection to my father
 and my first gardening experiences. And I love how they are usually the
 fastest of the seeds to sprout. Carrots require quite a bit more skill
 in the delayed reward area.
 
 
 No matter how many times I plant seeds, these small, hard beads of
 potential, I am thrilled when the signs of growth emerge. It is as if I
 never really believed it would happen this time. Seems just too
 improbable that those tiny pieces would transform as they do. If you
 held some radish seeds in your hand and showed them to someone who knew
 nothing about growing things, and told them what would happen when put
 in the ground and water poured on them – well, they might think you were
 a bit daft, or else that you were trying to fool them. Because how could
 such a thing happen? Or maybe they would think you believed in magical
 thinking, or had no clue about things worked in the real world. It is
 sort of like putting an eye of newt in a cauldron, repeating strange
 words and expecting something to happen.
 
 <hr />
 <h5 style="text-align: center">
 Without an understanding of 
 delayed gratification, 
 the connection between the green leaves 
 emerging to the seeds 
 that went into the ground 
 might never happen.
 </h5>
 <hr />
 
 Pretty improbable. Without an understanding of delayed gratification,
 the connection between the green leaves emerging to the seeds that went
 into the ground might never happen. Even when it does, and when I get
 the connection, it is still a miracle. I still see how little I really
 have to do with the intelligence for growth hidden in the seed.
 
 
 I have friends who think using so much time in spring to dig and plant
 and weed is just not worth it. “It’s only food. You can get good
 radishes at the market. It’s too much work for what you get,” and so on.
 
 
 I’ve mused about how these facets of gardening connect to spiritual life
 and practices. Rewards can be immediate, just as the right now reward is
 in planting seeds with the pleasure of hands in dirt, talking with your
 dad or being outside. But there is another reward to come. With a
 garden, I’ve got enough years of experience to know that there’s a
 waiting period and then a pay off from planting a seed happens.
 
 
 <img
 class="img-float-left has-img-center-in-mobile lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/delayed_gratification_img2_f18ed1977d.png?updated_at=2023-03-31T06:12:05.464Z"
 alt="delayed-gratification-img2"
 />Many people express how meditation has immediate rewards and speak of
 the benefits they feel on a daily basis – calm, more relaxed and
 peaceful, more at home in their own skin. I have experienced all this,
 but that is not the reason I meditate. Besides, those words do not
 always describe a meditation session. Sometimes it is uncomfortable,
 challenging, difficult, anything but peaceful. Sometimes I wonder why I
 am doing it at all. I feel the urge to bolt, the sense that cleaning
 drawers would be a better application of time, that my mind will never
 stop its antics and I might as well get something practical
 accomplished.
 
 
 I keep doing it for the same reason I planted those seeds as a little
 girl. I didn’t have the experience or knowledge to know what the outcome
 would be, but I trusted my father. He was the one who knew until my own
 experience validated his words. In the same way, I trust my spiritual
 teacher.
 
 
 The timeframe is larger than for a radish seed’s authentication, but
 maybe, relatively, it is similar. Maybe as ability to delay
 gratification develops, the time period extends. Maybe it will take more
 than this lifetime to know from my own experience what will be the
 outcome of regular meditation.
 
 
 A few weeks did seem like nearly a lifetime to a three-year-old. Maybe
 gardening is the very best activity to prepare for what meditation
 requires.
 
 
 When considering spiritual practices, even the words delayed
 gratification or postponed reward do not accurately fit the gap between
 what I am doing now and what will unfold as a result.
 
 
 Conventional psychology teaches us that humans are motivated by
 pleasure. Delayed gratification occurs when an increased pleasure
 further in the future makes waiting and forgoing the immediate one
 worthwhile. With spiritual practice, the idea of doing it for reward,
 for anticipated pleasure, or for gratification doesn’t really resonate.
 It is more about meaning.
 
 
 It helps me understand karma – the connection of what I do now
 to what transpires in the future. In the garden, I cannot know all the
 influences or conditions that are at work. Sometimes a seed doesn’t
 germinate. Sometimes worms come and burrow through the white flesh and
 the brown tunnels of their travel leave the radishes inedible. Sometimes
 unpredictable weather upsets the growth. The radishes get all leafy and
 the root is hard and hot. They get pithy and dry. And sometimes they are
 just perfect.
 
 <h5 style="text-align: center"><hr /></h5>
 <h5 style="text-align: center">
 That intelligence of&nbsp;life, 
 the pattern of growth, the weather 
 – all&nbsp;this is beyond&nbsp;my control. 
 Yet I play a part. 
 My teacher was fond of saying: 
 When the track is laid, 
 the train must travel over it. 
 But we can choose the track we lay.
 </h5>
 <hr />
 
 I notice how often I think I can control it all and get the perfect
 radish every time. I can’t. But I can enrich the soil with compost, keep
 it watered, plant at appropriate times, cover to keep the flies that lay
 the eggs that become the worms away. But even so, I am just helping
 things along. That intelligence of life, the pattern of growth, the
 weather – all this is beyond my control. Yet I play a part. My teacher
 was fond of saying: When the track is laid, the train must travel over
 it. But we can choose the track we lay.
 
 
 There is something about faith here too. It’s faith built on trust. It
 means trusting a much larger time frame and process before the evidence
 is clear. But for sure, the garden teaches me that making no effort does
 not allow a desired outcome to happen. Cannot guarantee it will happen –
 too many unpredictable factors at play.
 
 
 But it is also a window on the relationship to effort and grace. Without
 the effort of doing what I can in creating a receptive environment for
 the seed, the grace that lets the seed’s intelligence unfold will not do
 so to its potential and maybe not at all.
 
 <hr />
 <h5 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h5>
 <hr />

Delayed Gratification

<h5>
 Nature is giving. ALANDA GREENE shares with us the giving nature of one
 plant in particular that has been used as a medicine, cosmetic and tea
 for thousands of years by human beings.
</h5>
<h4 style="text-align: center">
 <hr class="vertical-space1" />
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h4>
&nbsp;

 I want to be like a calendula plant. This plant with its luminous orange
 blossoms just seems to delight in giving, and, in the process, gives
 delight.


 What a great solution to flourish! Make yourself so agreeable, so
 joyful, so beautiful, so easy to be with, so useful, that everyone just
 wants to have you around. That is calendula.


 <img alt="nature-spirituality-calendula2" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/delight_in_giving_calendula_img1_7e6b51147c.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-30T13:06:02.070Z" />Right
 now it’s autumn, and a lot of flowers have done their course of
 blossoming, feeding bees, giving beauty and they have now gone to seed.
 But the calendula is still blooming like in early summer. There are more
 blossoms than ever, their color is deep and bright, and when I look from
 my house down towards the garden, the garden bed is filled with
 calendula like someone has turned on a bunch of orange lights. The days
 lately are dark, with deep gray clouds blocking the bright autumn sun,
 but this doesn’t seem to deter the calendula plants, or dampen their
 spirit or brightness.


 The herbalist, Matthew Wood, commented that he thought it impossible for
 someone to stay sad or depressed if they had the company of calendula.
 He called it the sunshine herb.


 Dried calendula flowers make a soothing, pleasing tea that calms an
 irritated stomach or just brings a pleasing infusion to the taste buds
 and insides.


 Tincture of calendula is the best remedy for wasp or bee stings I have
 found. It soothes the burning, eases the effect so the swelling calms
 and decreases, and settles the reaction.


 Calendula oil soothes irritated skin, rashes, scrapes and skin
 eruptions.

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 I want to be like a calendula plant. 
 This plant with its luminous orange 
 blossoms just seems to delight in giving, 
 and, in the process, gives delight.
</h5>
<hr />

 Chipmunks appreciate calendula as a food supply. As the seeds mature and
 curl in a circle of elegant spiral curves around the centre of the
 stalk, the chipmunks pull the stems downward or climb up the sturdier
 ones. They stuff the dark curled seeds into their cheek pouches until
 they look stricken with a bad case of mumps, then run off to stash their
 supply as a winter source of nourishment.


 The days grow colder and shorter, everything else in the garden has been
 harvested, dug into the earth and covered with mulch. But I cannot bear
 to pull out the calendula or cover them. Even when frost lays a thin
 sheen over the straw packed around them and over the leaves, the flowers
 hold their luminous shine and bring a glow to the gray days before
 winter sets in.


 I want to grow old like calendula: be of use by easing pain, bringing
 beauty and delight, just keep on going without needing much.

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">Article by ALANDA GREENE</h5>
<hr />

Delight In Giving: Calendula

<h4 style="text-align: justify">
 ALANDA GREENE shares her gratitude at the bounty Nature gives at harvest
 time in her garden, and asks what are we all doing to work with Nature
 to provide the food we eat.
</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: center">LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN</h2>
<h4 style="text-align: center">HARVEST AND GRATITUDE</h4>
<hr />

 It’s harvest time. Plums are falling from the trees every day. Tomatoes,
 cucumbers, zucchini and beans need daily picking along with the plums,
 or they become too ripe too quickly. I’m making sauces, soups and stews
 to freeze, and blanching chard and the last broccoli.


 Sometimes it feels overwhelming. A friend phoned a couple of days ago
 and invited me out to Alberta for a few days. “Sounds wonderful and
 impossible,” I say. I explain about the garden and harvest, but can tell
 it doesn’t make any sense to her. She mutters something, not for the
 first time, and not without kindness, that I’m a slave to the garden.
 “It’s not meant to be like that, is it?” she offers.

<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center">
 There’s another dimension 
 to the gratitude for the food 
 that grows here. 
 When the idea was beginning, 
 to build rich and healthy soil, 
 to grow as much as possible 
 right in our own yard, it was also 
 my own contribution to sustainability 
 and what I would call, in the 
 Buddhist ideal, right livelihood.
</h4>
<hr />

 Feeling overwhelmed by all the work needed to deal with harvesting, I
 can easily forget gratitude for this abundance. I joke sometimes about
 my reminder to myself, “Remember January. Remember February.” In these
 cold months when the garden lies quiet under a thick cover of snow, we
 feast on the bounty of the freezer and the root cellar, on food still
 rich with colour and flavour and nourishment.


 But my gratitude is about more than having food stored in the cellar
 during winter.


 <img alt="nature-spirituality-harvest2" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/harvest_and_gratitude_img1_380bde6cfd.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-30T07:21:10.642Z" />One
 autumn some years back, I heard on the radio a report of refugees
 in Somalia, struggling to find food, having migrated through terrible
 conditions of drought and heat as they sought a place to live where
 enough food was available to survive. “Wouldn’t any of those people,” I
 told myself, “just love to have your problem of too much food to deal
 with, food that you have in enough abundance to cycle through the
 seasons until the next harvest?” A new level of gratitude emerged, for
 my good fortune in being born in a place where food is so accessible,
 where land is available, where the climate supports abundance, and where
 warfare is non-existent.


 There’s another dimension to the gratitude for the food that grows here.
 When the idea was beginning, to build rich and healthy soil, to grow as
 much as possible right in our own yard, it was also my own contribution
 to sustainability and what I would call, in the Buddhist ideal,
 right-livelihood.


 The food industry has become disconnected from the small plots of land
 surrounding dwellings and villages. Here in Canada, fresh mangos from
 South America arrive in the cold winter months, lettuce and broccoli
 from California, avocados from Asia. Packaging and fuel are huge addenda
 to the food. In a world where we are seriously overtaxing the planet’s
 ecosystems, wasting resources and polluting at an alarming rate, what
 does one person do?


 Growing my own garden is such a small step compared to the enormity of
 these environmental challenges, but it is still significant. Over the
 years, I can tally the savings in packaging, fuel, other transportation
 costs, freshness and vitality.


 Measured in a cup for cup or pound for pound comparison of what is saved
 compared to the big picture of what is being used up, it seems nothing.
 But small acts are not nothing.


 <img alt="nature-spirituality-harvest3" width="1101" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/harvest_and_gratitude_img2_808e304155.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-30T07:22:10.786Z" />


 Systems thinking shows that very small behaviours can significantly
 altar the functioning of very large systems. And Rupert Sheldrake in his
 work with morphogenetic fields suggests that the actions of one element
 of a species can effect other members of the species, even when no
 contact occurs, even when the members are on another continent.
 Sheldrake reports about laboratory tests in the United States where rats
 learn to negotiate a maze to get a reward of food. The first generation
 took a long time to learn the maze, while subsequent generations took
 less time. Strangely, rats in Australia, when meeting the same maze test
 for the first time, learned it quicker than the first generation of rats
 had done. Many test situations have been done in many parts of the world
 that suggest species are connected with each other through a field
 beyond the physical.

<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Actions taken to support sustainable 
 food production, even on a small level, 
 can make a difference. 
 I am grateful to know this, 
 to have reminders, 
 as I cut and chop onions for 
 another pot of soup.
</h4>
<hr />

 Actions taken to support sustainable food production, even on a small
 level, can make a difference. I am grateful to know this, to have
 reminders, as I cut and chop onions for another pot of soup.


 Turning my mind to remembrance, to gratitude, I feel it growing. The
 beauty in the food – these glistening plums of deep maroon, their flesh
 soft and sweet and juicy; the intensity of colour in the combination of
 green pepper and red tomato, chopped together in salad.


 Being part of this process is a source of delight. Indeed, I get tired
 sometimes with so much work as the food ripens and follows its schedule,
 not mine. But there is a lesson in surrender here too. To happily be
 part of the process that is much beyond my own schedule.


 Yes, the harvest requires much effort. But being able to work is a gift
 and a privilege. I choose to do this work and forgo other pleasures or
 pastimes. Giving time to remember why, so I don’t feel oppressed by the
 effort required, reminds me year after year why I make this choice. It
 is not just about remembering January. It is being present right now
 with all the blessings and benefits given.

<hr />
Article by ALANDA GREENE
<hr />

HARVEST AND GRATITUDE

<h5 style="text-align: justify;">Modern physics has shown us that everything is&nbsp;vibration, something that yogis and
 shamans have&nbsp;known for thousands of years. ALANDA GREENE&nbsp;explores the way this theory of vibrations allows
 her&nbsp;to communicate with the tomatoes in her garden in&nbsp;British Columbia.</h5>

<hr class="vertical-space1">

I visited the tomato house this morning: a shelter&nbsp;constructed of arched white
 plumbing rods covered&nbsp;in plastic. It keeps them warm in a mountain area&nbsp;where spring can stay cool until
 late June and nights&nbsp;stay cool most of the time.&nbsp;Right now the tomatoes are strong and full of
 large&nbsp;green fruit between deep green abundant leaves. The&nbsp;fruit is just beginning to tinge towards red and
 I’m&nbsp;excited at the prospect of eating delicious vine-ripened&nbsp;tomatoes, grown from the tiny seeds begun
 indoors in&nbsp;March.
Every morning I visit the garden and relish what is&nbsp;growing. Today when I step into
 the tomato house,&nbsp;I feel a sense of welcome. I feel like the tomatoes are&nbsp;as happy to see me as I am to
 see them. I suddenly&nbsp;feel the urge to stay awhile, hang out with them,&nbsp;communicate and enjoy their
 presence. I sit down&nbsp;and begin to sing, having the distinct sense they will&nbsp;like it. First I sing The
 Garden Song, much loved by preschoolers: “Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make&nbsp;this garden grow.” I
 recall good old Pete Seeger who&nbsp;sang it so well. But it wasn’t the right song for today&nbsp;so I changed to a
 bhajan, a devotional song, and&nbsp;the tomatoes liked it, and I liked it. We celebrated&nbsp;the
 abundance, creativity, productivity and joy of&nbsp;creation.
I have never sung to tomatoes before. Sometimes I&nbsp;sing while pruning or weeding or
 watering, or hum&nbsp;while staking and twining. But to deliberately sing&nbsp;to the tomatoes, to pick a piece I
 thought they would&nbsp;like, is a new way for me to be with the garden. It’s a&nbsp;keeper.
Many indigenous peoples hold that every plant has&nbsp;its own song. When a healer or
 shaman has the right&nbsp;to use the song of a particular plant, it is because&nbsp;the plant has given permission.
 Why is this idea so&nbsp;foreign for most people in our culture? Why can’t we&nbsp;hear the songs of plants? Why
 can’t I hear the song of&nbsp;the tomatoes?
It doesn’t seem so strange that each plant has its song when I remember that everything
 is vibration. Modern physics and ancient teachings have moved together in that understanding. Penetrate an atom to
 its smallest known parts and there are no parts there, just oscillating waves or particles that manifest in form as
 they vibrate. Sound is vibration. Our ear is tuned to perceive a certain range of vibration and understand it as
 sound. Humans manufacture instruments that perceive a range of vibration higher and lower than the human ear can
 perceive and suddenly we can hear the song of distant space, of electrons, of stars.
Everything is vibration. Everything creates sound. Hafiz wrote, “Listen to the music. I
 am the concert that flows from the mouth of every creature, singing with the myriad chords.”
Many indigenous people claim that it is by listening with the heart that our capacity
 for hearing the song of other beings like plants occurs. What sensitivity has to develop in order to be receptive,
 to hear the song emanating from every creature? My own heart sings in the garden, leaps with joy when I meet various
 plants emerging, blossoming, fruiting or just being. I feel that the tomatoes perceive my affection, that they
 appreciate my singing to them. I wish I could hear them sing back, or with me. Maybe I do, but it is in a different
 way from the kids at school who sing with me.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Everything is vibration. Everything creates sound. 
 Hafiz wrote, “Listen to the music. 
 I am the concert that flows from the mouth of every creature, 
 singing with the myriad chords.”</h4>
<hr>
Modern biological science has developed highly sensitive tools that perceive the
 continuous movement of living cells, including plant cells; movement that creates a fluctuating rhythm. This
 knowledge seems to match the insights of indigenous science, these ancient ways of knowing that also perceive the
 vibration of plants, their song. But they perceive it through other states of consciousness, through the heart’s
 perception rather than the senses we usually&nbsp;employ in the world of matter.
The cells of the heart oscillate also, and all oscillating patterns demonstrate the
 capacity for entrainment, for their rhythms to synchronise, whether it is the pendulums of clocks or individual
 cells. When entrained, the rhythm or song of one cell matches that of another. On this day, is it my heart’s
 response to tomatoes that allows me to perceive their song? Is my impulse to sing to the tomatoes because they are
 singing to me? Are they always singing? Is this the day I perceive the sensitivity and delicateness of their song?

Something today allows me to respond in song to them. Maybe indeed we are singing to
 each other –they in their tomato song way and me in my human way.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article and photography by ALANDA GREENE</h4>
<hr>

SINGING  to TOMATOES

<h4>ALANDA GREENE is an avid gardener from British Columbia, Canada. She explores the natural cycles of birth, life
 and death and what we can all learn from the plants around us.</h4>
 <hr class="vertical-space1">
 My hands are busy in the dirt as I dig holes for daffodil and hyacinth bulbs. I plant the bulbs to surround a
 grey standing rock that marks my father-in-law’s newly placed ashes.
 Here, when it is spring, fresh green sprouts of grass emerge along the cliff edge. They entice the deer to
 forsake winter shyness, to forage in clear view. Deep violet and golden crocuses have returned with the new
 grass many times. Now larger blossoms will join them around the rock, which sits perched on a ridge at the
 cliff’s edge. I raise my head from planting to see the lake below and the grey-blue mountains across the valley,
 wrapped with woolly strands of cloud. I imagine how this scene changes through the seasons. But I do not imagine
 seeing my father-in-law again. This finality is the hardest part to grasp. My thoughts turn instead to the
 flowers and how they will please him.
 I place each bulb carefully, noting that the dirt is pale and sandy, poor in nutrients. The bulbs carry what they
 need for the spring’s bloom, so I make a promise to later carry to them the compost, garden soil and organic
 nutrients that will give them what they need to store food to bloom in yet another spring. For now, it is enough
 to make a start. Not a perfect start. In earlier years, I might have thought that to place and plant the bulbs
 with proper soil was more than I could do. I would have left it undone. Now, I understand it is enough to make a
 start.
 Years ago, all the soil here was like this pale and rocky earth. Yet today I look across to the garden and see
 terraces of rich black loam, nurtured and built through season after season of digging organic material into it.
 Just yesterday I planted garlic in that loam and marvelled at the plenitude of earthworms uncovered with each
 shovel I turned. They cultivate and enrich the soil. Every fall, the leftover harvest goes back into the ground,
 or into the compost which I later carry to the garden. The worms thrive and multiply on the decomposing matter
 and the vegetables just get better each year. Not only is nothing lost, there is a sense of gain. “When have I
 ever become less by dying?” asked Rumi, the renowned Persian poet of the twelfth century. The garden becomes
 more and more. It’s easy for me to grasp it here and to understand the cycles.
 <hr>
 <h5 style="text-align: center;">Today I look across to the garden and see terraces of rich black loam, 
 nurtured and built through season after season…</h5>
 <hr>
 Earlier today I gathered dill seeds from the now brown flower heads that spray like fireworks frozen in time.
 Many seasons ago, I planted the ancestors of this dill. Each year, seeds fall and sit in the soil all winter,
 covered by snow. In spring, when grass shoots are pleasing deer on the cliff, the delicate fernlike fronds of
 dill emerge also, in places that leave me wondering if the seeds move around from bed to bed under the snow. All
 summer dill grows between the potatoes, cauliflower and calendula. I snip the leaves to make small freezer
 packages whose distinct flavour will enliven winter meals with garden memories. The seeds season soups and stews
 when I manage to gather them before they fall to the dirt. These plants today are at their natural end and I dig
 what is left back into the earth.
 At times, I have been reluctant to cut down plants until they have ‘run their course.’ A few years ago, when the
 autumn temperatures stayed warm long beyond the usual, I kept harvesting tomatoes as they reddened on the vines.
 At last, realising that little time remained to finish the garden work before the winter snows, I breathed
 deeply and headed to the tomato patch to pick the last of the fruit and dig in what remained. These plants had
 produced all summer in prolific quantities. I felt as if I was betraying their efforts by cutting them down
 before they finished their cycle naturally. But when the process began I felt relief. The feeling penetrated my
 mind as clearly as the pungent scent of tomatoes penetrated my nostrils. It had never occurred to me that these
 plants might be tired and ready to have their work finished. Since then, I watch for signs that a plant is
 weakening, its leaves becoming pale or small, and take that as a signal that the plant is ready to nourish the
 worms at its roots.
 My friend has a great-aunt who is one hundred and four. She is frail. All of her close friends have long ago
 died. She says, “I don’t know why I am still here. I don’t know why I can’t die.” Like the tomatoes, she is
 ready to go. She anticipates relief. But the willing embrace of death seems rare in humans. My father-in-law
 feared death. He sought repeated reassurances from his doctor that his problem would be healed. He did not meet
 death willingly.
 <hr>
 <h5 style="text-align: center;">Everything in nature tells me of this 
 cycle: birth, death, rebirth. 
 When has it ever been less by dying?</h5>
 <hr>
 I held my mother in my arms when she took her last rattled and shallow breath. She had been in a coma for three
 weeks. I felt relief then, too, mixed with grief, a sense of loss, and also doubt. My father had died a few
 years earlier and I find I often pause to recall them. The pang of missing them, missing their presence in my
 life, often surprises me. My dill will grow again each spring, recognisable and connected to the dill of other
 years. I will not see my parents in any recognisable form again. I will not see my father-in-law.
 A story about Ramana Maharshi claims that when he was sick and obviously dying, his disciples gathered around
 him, crying and begging of him, “Babuji, do not leave us.” 
 “Don’t be silly,” he laughed. “Where would I go?”
 His perspective on dying was different than that of his disciples, or mine about my parents’ death, my
 father-in-law’s, or the anticipated deaths of those I love and cherish. What is it that Ramana Maharshi
 understood about his death that let him be light-hearted with his grieving followers? What did my father-in-law
 not know? Where did my mother’s fear of death come from, before she slipped into her coma?
 The bulbs are planted, covered with earth patted firmly and carefully around the rock. My eyes sting from insect
 bites and tears. The beauty of the coming spring blossoms feels like a fitting tribute. These flowers will bloom
 season after season. The nearly empty garden, the dried and brown grasses, will surge again in new life.
 Everything in nature tells me of this cycle: birth, death, rebirth. When has it ever been less by dying?
 <hr>
 <h5 style="text-align: center;">Article and photography by ALANDA GREENE</h5>
 <hr>