Tag Archives: energy

Beauty is in the Eyes (and Heart) of the Beholder

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I’ve been doing a lot of gardening this summer, and a lot of standing around and admiring plants.

I get such pleasure from seeing plants and their flowers. So many of the plants I see are my friends that I am always greeting any number of them by name: “Hello, Clover. I’m so glad to see you! I’m so glad you’re in my garden! Hello, Lavender. You look gorgeous today with your purple buds, and you smell so delicious!”

One of the most wonderful things plants can do for us (and it doesn’t cost a cent!) is to offer the healing of their presence. Their beauty, forms, colors, scents, their feel, all can give us delight and sooth our spirits not only at a surface, physical level, but also at a deeper, heart level.

When I was in my late teens and living alone, I was very depressed (though I didn’t realize it at the time). Many times of the year were bad, but one of the worst was the end of the winter, because of the darkness and the cold, rather bleak landscape. I discovered that walking down my street and watching the crocuses and then the daffodils and tulips bloom soothed a hurt inside and would lift my spirits at least a little.

I walked everywhere, and over several years got to know many little nooks and crannies, as well as large swaths of lawn, where the spring flowers bloomed.
I made a point of looking for them, and would be cheered by them. It became my spring habit to look for the first blooming plants wherever I lived.

Each street around my home, in whatever city I was living, would have its little areas that I would map out and check on to see what was blooming when, and to linger over my favorite spots.

Why did simply seeing flowers bloom cheer me so? Why did they help to lift the pain in my heart? I’ve never quite been able to figure that out.

I have thought of the colors and the effects they have on the human brain and psyche.
There are theories of what colors represent and I’m sure studies have been made of how people’s brains react to different colors. I know that at different times I crave certain colors in my life, and they can make me intensely happy.

Another really important aspect of flowers is their spirit.

I believe, as do many indigenous and spiritually connected people, that plants have spirits of their own. They are beings with awareness and connectedness to a universal all.
The spirit of a plant can touch our own and have a profound effect.

Plants, at a basic level, are energy. Each plant has its own unique energy, as do we. That energy can touch us and interact with our energies to change our moods and our perceptions.

I believe much healing happens when we are simply around plants, whether we have a geranium on a windowsill, a few potted plants on the patio, or a whole garden. The spirit and energies of plants, as well as their colors and scents, can affect us deeply, even without our conscious awareness.

So take a walk around your neighborhood or around a public garden, come home with a few flowers to put in a vase and cheer up yourself and your home.

How Do You Feel?

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No, really, how do you feel?

Do you know? Have you been paying attention? Do you have words to describe what you’re feeling?

man-puzzle faceChances are good that some of you can say how you’re feeling in great detail, and some of you are going “huh?”

It’s okay either way, it’s just a chance to see how much you pay attention to how you’re feeling.

Some people make decisions by how they feel, other people would never do that and make decisions only by what they think and reason out. Again, there’s nothing right or wrong with either way, it’s just how people function.

I pay a lot of attention to how I feel, sometimes so much that I can’t get out of my own way for feeling…feelings.

As you might guess, that’s also how I make many of my decisions—by how I feel.  Years ago I taught myself to feel in my gut (around the third chakra) how a “yes” or “no” feels for what I am considering. Often a “no” is a sinking feeling as of energy being pulled out when it shouldn’t be. A feeling of being drained, so that I know if I decide to do what I am thinking of, I will regret it. Sometimes it takes a while to see how my gut was right, but I do find out eventually.

When I don’t feel any disturbing energy stirring in my gut, all is quiet, then I know that answer is yes, and again I can act on it with assurance.

I have learned to be very grateful for that inner guidance, my “gut feeling”.

But following my feelings is a tricky road to walk, especially as I have spent so much time in the land of depression with its attendant anxiety and despair. When I am feeling I can’t go on, is that a clear message from my gut to stop and do nothing? Or is it my depression, anxiety, or fear nudging me to take the safe road and do nothing?

When I am feeling “awful”, any number of ways to feel including chronic emotional pain, I struggle to push myself into any sort of action, whether getting out of bed or going to work or getting on the computer. It is a real battle sometimes to know what feeling to honor to know whether I can push past the feeling into action or to just say I can’t right now and let myself be.

 

There is also the question between what we feel and what is actual intuition and what is just emotion. What is the difference between feeling emotion, pain, etc, and feeling intuition?

Ask yourself this question and find what your own answer is.

Simply Grounding

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It’s been an intense summer so far! I’m not just talking about the heat, but also the energetic waves that some people are being affected by. It is odd, perhaps, but those who are most energetically sensitive are the most affected by these energy fluxes.

Many people are feeling a number of physical and/or mental and emotional discomforts and symptoms right now, without knowing why. Symptoms such as dizziness/vertigo, can’t sleep, sleep too much, flu-like symptoms, nausea, emotional issues resurfacing, anxiety, and many others. If you are worried or unsure, check with your doctor, but it may “just” be ascension symptoms, our beings feeling changes as the energy of our world gets rebooted and upgraded, so to speak.

I have been reading the writings of a wonderful mystic and teacher whose information has helped me feel less crazy when I feel flu-ish one minute, and fine the next, or the mental off-kilter mindset I had years ago resurfaces for no reason at all. Ohhh, it’s tough! If you are interested in learning more, here is a link to her website that will give you much good information http://www.alunajoy.com/articles.html

bare feet on sandBut in the meantime, what do you do when you feel off-center or just kind of unfocused and not sure what to do with yourself? My solution is to go outside and feel the earth under my feet and the dirt under my fingernails.

My default setting when I am feeling off or uneasy/anxious/scared is to go crawl into bed and hide out. But I am working on changing that, so my new solution is to go outside. Sometimes all I need is to feel the grass under my feet to start feeling better.

Other times I need to walk a bit and see the plants, greeting my plant friends, and smell the air. I have a garden plot near my apartment and often I just cannot resist pulling out a couple “weeds” (plants growing where I don’t need them) or harvesting a bit of something for a meal or medicine. Next thing you know, I have dirt under my fingernails!

With hot weather comes the need to water, so I have to stand with the hose and water and water until the soil is drenched. This leaves me lots of time to have the grass and earth work their energetic magic on my mood. After a while I start feeling less anxious, the world feels safer, and I feel rebalanced. Wow, and it’s for free!

Okay, but what about you? I have earth and soil and garden, and you may very well not. But you can still connect with the energy and power of our Mother Earth.

Go outside. Stand there. If you can find soil or grass or similar with no tar or cement, great! If not, stand on the tar or cement or whatever. (And if you can be barefoot, so much the better!) Imagine, if you are shod or on tar, that your feet are on the earth and grass, feeling the lusciousness of soft grass and firm earth supporting you. Feel the energy coming up through the soles of your feet and infusing your body. Feel your own energy coming to meet the energy of the Earth and the two mingling together. Let yourself feel and luxuriate in this for a few minutes, or as long as you need. (Perhaps you will need to find an out-of-the-way corner, or pretend to examine something, so as not to attract undue attention.)

When you are ready, thank our Mother Earth for sharing her energy and grounding with you and go about your day, continuing to sense your connection with her.

You can also, if you like, reach down and put your hands on the earth, palms flat against the soil or the tar (wash up afterwards) and again feel the Earth’s energy coming into your hands and mingling with your own energy. Continue as for your feet.

How do you feel? Yeah, better. Just repeat as necessary.

Money is Like Plants…

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Lady's mantle and morePlants are energy. Money is energy. Plants do better when you pay attention to them, and money does better when you pay attention to it. Money is energy that is neither good nor bad, it just is. By paying attention to it you allow it it into your life and let it grow there.

Welcome money in. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t ignore. Make paying attention to it a high priority. It is nutrition for your soul, it is nutrition for your life, it is nutrition for your business. Don’t ignore it and don’t neglect it.