My friend Kassandra grew up feeling more comfortable with the animals in her life than she was with the people. Her parents and siblings were sometimes volatile while her dogs, cats and rescued baby wild animals were consistently loving, appreciative and kind. We all respond well to gentleness. And gentle is what Kassandra was.
Many people can remember talking with their animals telepathically while they were children. I do, and so did my friend, Kassandra. But, she simply never let go of that skill. Then, seeing a need as an adult, she began offering her services as an animal communicator. She would help concerned owners to understand the underlying problems their animals were experiencing. That is how I met Kassandra. A friend told me about her and I had a question about my horse's well-being. So, Kassandra came out to the barn and put both my horse's and my own mind at ease.
As the years went on, Kassandra and I got to know each other quite well and became friends. One day, we were out walking and came upon three hebe bushes in full bloom. They had lovely purple and white flower spikes that were rising up from the tips of all their branches. They were putting on a beautiful display and hundreds of bees were busily buzzing around them gathering nectar.
I wondered if Kassandra had ever spoken with an insect, so I asked her. She said to me in her characteristic drawl, "What do you want to know, Josephine?" I thought for a moment and asked, "Do bees know God?" Kassandra turned toward the hebes and bees. She got quiet for a moment with a open expression on her face. Then, instantaneously one individual bee came right up to us, hovering just two feet away from our faces and remained perfectly placed in the air before us. Kassandra's eyes grew a little wider and then she said, "The bee says, 'We all serve The One.'" With that and my understanding of her words, our bee zipped away and became lost in the crowd of her fellows busily working away.
All of life holds such incredible beauty and profound wisdom to share. May we all remember how to listen with such care.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
Peace Pilgrim said that if we smile at the world, it smiles back at us. When we connect with the grace and innocence of our pure love, for both the animate and the inanimate world around us, then our connection with Nature's voice is awakened.
In modern times it has become progressively easy for us to connect with other humans, but what we have forgotten is how to connect with the Natural world around us. However, we don't have to re-invent the wheel here, we humans have been listening to the subtle communications coming to us from Nature since time began. We've gone on vision quests and written in pictographs. We've seen the forest as our brother and the river as our sister. Reclaiming this part of ourselves is as easy as stepping outside.
Of course our dutiful beloved subconscious minds are always going to protect us from something we have been taught to fear. And make no mistake about it, all of our fears have been taught to us. We learn them from our families, our religious groups, our friends and even our government. Unless our subconscious programming along these lines is intentionally changed, it can sabotage our attempts to open our hearts to hear Nature's voice. Beliefs like "People will think I'm crazy," or "I may loose my grip on reality," or "This is against my family belief system," are all scary enough to stop you in your tracks.
This is where self love steps in. We need to love ourselves enough to give ourselves what we need and really want in the world. Many of us yearn for this connection with Nature and when we get whispers and glimpses of it, it brings us so much joy.
I feel that joy is the basis of our spirituality an that it is our job as humans to nourish the Universe with our joy. So, if we'd really love to have that beautiful connection with our mother, Nature, we need to free ourselves from the tyranny of our own minds.
Identifying our fears, so we can move through and past them, is how we do so. Once we have become aware of them, we can use our intention plus our attention to change those old thought habit patterns and manifest new thoughts instead.
Our spiritual practices can also help us to listen to the voice of Nature. Self love, meditation, dream interpretation and prayer all help us to calm our minds, activate our inner vision centers and connect with the Divinity in everything, including Ourselves. When we do this, we open our hearts and let the love flow. We free ourselves to smile at the Natural word. And then it smiles back at us. We step into our joy with open hearts and Hear From Our Source How We Can All Serve The One.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
Years ago, when I was a child, I used to like to sneak onto the golf course that was near my home after the course had closed and no more golfers were around. My friends and I would roll down the hills and frolic in the sprinklers. Often I would go alone, just to spend some time amongst the trees, the grasses and the open sky overhead. It was wonderful and I enjoyed it deeply.
To get onto the golf course, we had to scramble under the chain link fence that bordered the course on one side. We had dug a hole using some sticks and it was just large enough for us to slip through. Since we didn't want our entrance to be discovered by the greens keepers, we located it underneath a large shrub that was growing along the fence. This bush had it's boughs on both sides of the fence, hiding our hole from view. Each time, after we used it, we scattered some fallen leaves and a few sticks over it to disguise it. It worked like a charm. And it actually was charmed.
That little spot helped me to discover something quite fascinating. I had long known as a child that I could hide quite easily if I was deep inside of a little stand of shrubs. But what I hadn't known was that I could actually nearly disappear if I shifted my attention right into the shrub. This came about when I was a little older. I had taken some classes in plant physiology in college. I became familiar with the inner workings of the cambial layer, or the vascular system, which is like the arteries and veins of the plant.
In an overly simplified description, the cambium moves water from the roots up to the leaves. There, the water interacts with sunlight and carbon from CO2 in a process known as photosynthesis to create sugars. Then the cambial layer transports those sugars down from the leaves to the roots for storage and as food for the plant.
Sometimes late at night, when I was needing some time to be alone out in the beauties of nature, I would go to my secret little entrance under the fence and slip on through, so that I could be with the trees and the open sky full of stars overhead. Usually, my little hidey hole would need some freshening up, as my childhood friends and I had all moved away from home. I would find a stick and clean and re-dig it a little so I could slip under again.
This was almost like a shamanic experience, entering through a largely unknown doorway. Occasionally folks, out for an evening stroll would walk by, some of them with their dogs. My shrub wasn't very densely foliated and from the right angle, you could see under it quite easily from the street which was immediately adjacent to my little entrance. Since I didn't want to be discovered in my clandestine activities, I needed to become invisible. So, instead of focusing on the people and the dog which would always reveal my presence to them, I learned how to slip inside the body of the plant, casting my full attention into the cambial layer and streaming with my mind and the water up into the leaves, which were resting from all of their daytime activities. I would slide back down to the roots and feel the moisture deep in the soil and get busy exchanging nutrients there. People could come and go, a mere three or four feet from me, and no one, not even the dogs would know I was there.
Years later when I learned of the concept of shape shifting, I realized that I was already familiar with the principles and had experienced a beginners version of what is needed to move into that best of all possible means of camouflage by using just my attention and the focus of my mind.
This coming weekend, on Saturday, in Morro Bay, at the Ruby Dragon, I will be teaching a day-long class on plant communication. With permission from the plants, we will be doing a similar exercise to the one I have described here, traveling in our awareness into the internal environment of the plant's bodies in order to commune with them and receive communications from them. I'm hoping that you will be free to join us. To sign up call the Ruby Dragon at (805) 772-1100. Blessings to you and see you there.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
We humans have been reading the subtle communications of nature ever since time began. From the simple request of a cat wanting to be let outside to the complex structure of weather patterns, if we pay attention, we can tell what nature is saying. We can also receive intent, inspirations and even energy from nature. This does require a shift in our awareness and our beliefs. Whatever we believe is true, whether it is that the glass is half empty or the glass is half full. If we allow ourselves to believe that we can, we can! This simple but profound shift is what lets us sense subtle energies from the worlds of animals and plants.
Contemporary research has shown that plants communicate with each other, they cooperate, they eavesdrop on their neighbors, call out for help, and even nurture their young. Plants do have a social side. They behave more like animals, and thus like us humans, than we have formerly believed. They don't have eyes or ears, but they do interact with their environments, and that includes us. Not only does this happen on a purely physical level, but it can also happen on a more etheric level.
When we stand outside in nature, rooted in the present moment, we can enter our right brains. This lets us be interconnected, nonjudgemental, expansive, open, creative, subtle, nuanced, and insightful. We become filled with new and novel perspectives. This lets us realize that we are full of possibility, while being completely aware of everything around us and one with all. When we let ourselves do this we can easily hear the voices of nature.
We use our right brain all the time. When we walk, when we talk, everything that we do involves some of our right brain skills and function. But it's our left brain, our analytical brain, that is dominant in our contemporary western culture. This hasn't always been the case. Ancient peoples the world round were well adept in right brain function. They have long communed on deep and profound levels with nature. We can reclaim this skill, quite easily, if we try.
I first began this exploration when I wondered, How in the world did people of old discover the medicinal qualities of the plants around us? So I decided to go out into the garden and try it for myself. I sidled up beside a Hypericum plant and sat in meditative silence. I knew nothing about the medicinal qualities of these plants at the time. But I decided to have a go at listening. Why not? And before I knew it I was feeling things in my body, I was receiving ideas as if they had been planted in my head. I just let the Hypericum talk to me, and it was delighted to do so. To my great and pleasant surprise, everything I received was accurate.
The natural world is just waiting for us to connect. Why not step outside and give it a try? You might not be interested in medicine, but maybe you'll find that the answers to your problems, inspirations for things you'd like to do, or directions you'd like to take in life, will suddenly pop into your head. You may even find that you like it.
© Josephine Laing, 2014
