Shared air

I found this post waiting patiently in my draft file; it was written before "shared air" became something that we're all being taught to avoid .. these are strange days indeed.

But in looking it over I think it may be even more relevant now than when I wrote it.





It strikes me that we're all part maple out here where I live. And white pine. And yes, corn and soy when the crops are growing. We share the air - the trees and plants exhale, we inhale. So we're all part deer too, come to think of it, and bluejay.

There is a sense, living out here in the so-called boonies, a delicious awareness in the background, of we humans being vastly outnumbered by, well, everything else.

And no it's not for everyone, this place. It's for anyone who wants it, but that's not everyone.

There are also those who feel envy when I write about this place but what's the point of that?

I remember when I was living in the city and cleaning rich people's houses and sometimes I'd work with a partner and sometimes the partner would be envious of the lovely kitchen or furniture or fancy car in the driveway of the client and I always wondered, what's the point?

And sometimes there'd be a hint of envy from the client towards us, because we - the cleaning ladies of the world - seem to hold some mysterious understanding of How Things Work in a household that those who hired us just don't have - which is often why they hired us in the first place. I was sometimes accused of black magic because when I cleaned a house it stayed clean for longer than when the client cleaned it herself.

Envy is not conducive to growth. You want what they have? Really? Then get it. Want to know what I know? Just learn it.

I'm not one to give much power to the idea of "disadvantage". Not one to offer much empathy to those who say "I want that but I can't have it because fillintheblank".

That's because from where I stood, say, 20 yrs ago, where I am now would have looked impossible to reach. You can't get there from here, said the map.

I'm not one to give much credence to maps. As the saying goes - the map is not the territory.

Besides, maps (these days) are designed to show you which road to take to get to your destination. And I'm more interested in rivers, myself. Roads are humans constructs. They're all about straight lines and speed limits and getting from A to B as quickly and conveniently as possible.

Rivers?

Ah, rivers flow. They meander and undulate. They're an environment in themselves, not a means to an end.

Not the greatest of metaphors, and falling apart as I write it .. ha!

But let's get back to that shared air. Breathing is important, yes? Stop breathing and you die, yes? So here's the question - what do you smell as you breathe in? What is the air around you made up of? What if you were to follow your nose to what you want, sniffing the air like one of our animal cousins, rather than follow the route set out for you by conventional thinking?

Picture the colour of the air around you. Is it pretty? Do you want to breathe deeply of that air?

You know this is another metaphor, right? I'm not talking about diesel fumes vs the smell of pine trees (although it's that, too). I'm talking about the nature of the vibe, I suppose you could say. Is the vibe of your world a pleasant one? What is your contribution to that vibe?

Do you exhale sweetness and light or worry and fear?

The interesting thing about the vibe around us is that we can affect it so strongly. That we are not - SO NOT - at the mercy of incoming vibes from others, if we choose not to be. Once we choose the vibe we want, all we have to do is conjure it up internally and live it. In the blink of an eye (almost) we'll find the people and events around us shift to match it.

Honestly.

That's really how it works.

Except in order to get the hang of it, there's a couple of things that we have to understand. The whole thing starts with appreciation - doesn't everything? - but it's not appreciation of the outward appearance of events and people. It starts with appreciating ..

drum roll please

ourselves.

Oh no! I can't do that!! That's "pride" and it's a sin!! I'm fallen, I'm weak!!

No you're not, that's just what you believe about yourself. A belief is just a thought you've been thinking for a long long time. You can get over that. Now hush, and let me explain further.

Our beliefs about ourselves and the world are reflected back to us. The stronger and more entrenched the beliefs, the more "obvious" the evidence that we're right is reflected. So by looking at what is, by looking straight on at "reality", we can get a bead on what we believe about it. And that can get really messy, especially at first, when we want something different from the world than "reality" seems to be offering.

So what we have to do is look to - and tinker with - the inner landscape first, then watch for ways the outer landscape changes in response.

Affirmations may have their place here, but oh-so-often all they're no more than lip service to what we believe we should believe. The belief itself has to be living, active within us.

It takes time. Old beliefs carry momentum, and it takes some time of living the new one before its momentum outpaces the old.

And here's a cheerful thought - as well as beliefs that hold us back, we probably also have lots of useful beliefs that are - or could be - serving us well if we let them come to the fore. In fact, the process of cleaning up our vibration is best undertaken with that in mind.

It's sort of like when we learn how to forage for wild food and medicine. There's that aha! moment when we come to understand that those most common and ordinary "weeds", the ones we've been taught are useless or even harmful in the garden are actually the most useful for food or medicine.

So - That stirring or tendency we may have that we've been taught should be "weeded out" of our personalities might just turn out to be the one thing that will nourish us into wholeness.

You never know.