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Harvest Full Moon, Autumnal Equinox, Homecoming and More
As I wrote in yesterday’s post I am visiting my brothers on the family farm in Wisconsin. I was here for yesterday’s full moon; it was huge and bright here as only it can be in the countryside where it still gets much darker at night than what I usually experience on the east coast. Here is where I got part of my starry-eyed wanderlust when I was a kid looking up at the brilliant night sky, the dense and bright Milky Way streaking overhead and the astounding constellations of the Wheel revolving through the seasons. I was thrilled to see the aurora borealis occasionally in the cold winter nights. And I always loved the rising of Sirius around the time of my birthday. The sky part of being back here hasn’t changed over the years; I can still come back to that.
To celebrate the Full Moon we were out in my brother’s garden bringing in a pail full of green beans, a few remaining peas, an awesome head of cauliflower and some still sweat lettuce coming back after welcome rain. So we did our harvesting for the day and are now enjoying the bounty.
And I’ll be here for the Equinox on Sunday – equal parts night and day. This will be a time for reflecting on balance. And it is good to be here in the place I grew up to ponder the balance in my life: the maturing urbanite and the farm-boy, the world traveler and the small-town bumpkin, the spiritual seeker with the grounded and earthy dirt-farmer son. It is always a good thing to look for balance, not just at equinoxes, but all through the year. Balance begins with inner reflection; the inner is always reflected outwardly. Outer signs of balance, like Sunday’s Equinox, are there to remind us to go inside to find the balance.
I must admit I am somewhat unbalanced by this visit to the family farm; as I wrote yesterday I have discovered it is no longer “home” for me; not even a little bit. I continue to reconcile, or balance, this finding for myself. I think I will be doing some grounding work when I get back to Maryland; the grounding that may have been a vestige of my youth here in Wisconsin needs to be transplanted once and for all. Or maybe it just needs to be replanted in my heart as the physical grounding to place recedes as an important element in my life.
Sandwiched between Full Moon and Equinox is my 50th High School reunion! I will be joining my former classmates for a dinner tonight. Will I recognize anyone? Yesterday my brother and I had breakfast in the hometown café; a couple was also in the restaurant; I knew I knew them but could not place faces with names. The wife recognized me not by my looks but by my voice! And I thought I had worked so hard to neutralize my Wisconsin accent! Betty Lou, three years my senior, looks much the same as when we rode the school bus together the seven miles into town. But recalling names is quite another matter. I hope they give us nametags so I’m not guessing wrong!
Saturday is the big Homecoming event: parade (my class will have a float of some kind since we are one of the honored classes), football (one of my nephews will play) and the evening “banquet” (I put this in quotes because it is probably not what you think; substitute glasses of milk for a fine offering of wine and you’ll get the picture!)
I’ll spend Sunday visiting and catching up with family. I fly home on Monday to get back to routines, qigong classes and a re-balancing. And I’ll take a piece of my old “home” with me in my heart.
Where do you call home? Do you attend school reunions? How do you balance all the experiences of “home” with your life now? Take a peak inside for the answers.
What’s Hiding in Plain Sight? – Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary’s messages always contain truth for me. And they often challenge me to go deeper, to examine, to look for the hidden message, often staring directly at me when I “have the eyes to see.”
Tonight as I write this I am spending it in my family farmhouse in Wisconsin. I’m not sleeping in my old room but in the guest room just adjacent to that room I spent hours in and dreamed my boyhood dreams. And with every experience on this visit, I am looking deeply for the lessons.
I am particularly struck tonight by these words from Rosemary: “Sometimes people think they are missing something, or broken and need to be fixed. Sometimes they feel they are not complete and are looking for someone/something to complete them.” I’ve often felt that I left part of me in Wisconsin when I moved away more than 40 years ago. I first left “home” right after graduating from the University of Wisconsin; I traveled to Ethiopia as a Peace Corps volunteer and stayed away for two years. I returned “home” for a couple of years but then left for good in 1972.
Of course there were many visits back “home” while my parents were alive. I now have two brothers who still live here on the family farm; I’m staying with my middle brother on this visit. And here’s what I have found: this is not my “home” and I can find no piece, not even the smallest piece of me here anymore. Does this mean I’ve grown up? Well, many would say I’ll never grow up; but perhaps I’ve finally, after all these years, found my true home. It was hiding all this time in plain sight!
This does not mean I no longer have a part of a Wisconsin farm in my heart. It does not mean the memories of growing up wild and free and at home on this then sprawling dairy farm are gone and forgotten. What it does mean is my home is inside me. It’s not a place, nor a time, not even relationships. It’s a beingness that was, is and always will be there as an integral part of who I am. It’s a home I can experience anywhere and any time. It’s always with me, right there in front of my eyes.
And this confirms another piece of Rosemary’s article. She wrote: “You are complete RIGHT NOW!!! You don’t need to be fixed or completed. Everything you NEED is inside you now.” My home is inside me right now; all of it. I don’t have a piece in Wisconsin, a piece in Colorado and a piece in Maryland. It’s right here.
This gets at wholeness. Home is only one part of that wholeness. Relationships are another part and that begins with the relationship we have with ourselves. Can we find the home inside if we never visit there? If we avoid an inner examination of who we really are, can we find any form of completeness? If we don’t have a good relationship with ourselves we may never find home!
It’s taken me 68 years to come “home” and discover I’ve been home for all of those 68 years! Do you know where your home is? Can you come home again?
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: What’s Hiding in Plain Sight?
Are you thinking that something is lost or missing and that you don’t know where to look for it? What part of YOU are you searching for?
Sometimes people think they are missing something, or broken and need to be fixed. Sometimes they feel they are not complete and are looking for someone/something to complete them. I call this the ‘Jerry Maguire Syndrome,’ from the movie that proposed this idea.
Let me set the record straight. You are complete RIGHT NOW!!! You don’t need to be fixed or completed. Everything you NEED is inside you now.
I can hear the objections starting to pop up. Do you feed the ‘if only’ complex that your mind tries to get you to buy? ‘If only’ I had more money. ‘If only’ I had a new relationship. ‘If only’ I had a better job. ‘If only…’
If there is something in your life that seems to be working in a way with which you are unhappy then you need only to look within yourself for solutions. The Field of All Possibilities is not out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. It exists within you.
I’ve had some moments recently where I’m surprised at what was blocking me in that moment. It can be as simple as a ‘letting go’ of an old idea, or an embracing of a path of joy instead of a struggle. But nothing outside could change until I changed on the inside.
One client I work with had an ‘aha’ when we connected her to a new way of looking at a project before her. It became exciting instead of stymying and she smiled her way into it. With another client we did a visualization exercise and connected her to an image of her essence that had come up in the past and she felt empowered now to embrace that part of herself.
What you might be looking for doesn’t have to be outside of you. Look inside. What have you ignored or disowned and become blind to? What can you change about the lens through which you look for solutions?
I believe that everything you have done up to this point is perfect for the lessons you have had to learn. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been bumps in the road but they were necessary lessons rather than mistakes. Even if you think you would have done something differently, you are looking from a vantage point with more information than you had in that moment.
If you feel that you are struggling right now, then take yourself forward 90 days and look back at now to see how you solved the problems.
Your inner self knows the answers and can reveal them to you when you are ready to see them.
Whatever you think is hiding from you is in plain sight when you have eyes to see!
PS: Are you ready to find what’s hiding in plain sight? Are you ready to unlock the mysteries you carry? Do you want to hear mystic messages specifically for you? Apply for a FREE Discovery Session with Rosemary! Apply Here
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Hiding in Plain View!
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” video for the week: Hiding in Plain View!
PS: Are you ready to find what is hiding from you? Do you want to hear mystic messages specifically for you? Apply for a FREE Discovery Session with Rosemary! Apply Here
MONDAY’S POEM: Eanna, Goddess of Beer
Early on when I began this blog I was studying Inanna, Queen of Heaven and War for the Sumerians. The recent issue of Archeology had an article on the latest finds in Uruk, perhaps the oldest and largest City-State of Sumer. The article referred to Eanna as the temple to the Goddess and also referred to her as “Eanna.” I like the sound of Eanna and like to think of her as one of the earliest of The Divine Feminine. In a separate article in the same issue of the journal there is a craft brewery attempting to replicate a recipe for beer from Sumer. I am confident Eanna was not only Goddess of Heaven and War but surely of the harvest, and beer!
Eanna, Goddess of Beer
The harvest is in,
The golden grains
Carefully fanned
And filed by field.
The scribes record
In clay to remind
Through millennia
The wealth that mattered.
The brew is set,
The jars are new and clean
To receive and store
The precious liquid gold.
The set-aside
Is of the best,
Saved in perfect
Vessels marked.
The day of lowest Sun,
The longest night all year
Is time to commune and celebrate
Eanna, Goddess of beer.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
PS: Apologies to Ninkasi, the Goddess of Beer from about 5000 years ago, whose poem is the source of the recipe for Sumerian beer.
Adjusting Our Tolerance Levels
In yesterday’s post I wrote about tolerance and my view of what tolerance, what we come to tolerate, means. As a follow-up I want to explore today how to set those tolerance levels for optimum effect and performance.
Why? Because when we tolerate things to an extreme it drains our energy. When we are lax in our standards, when we tolerate something beyond a reasonable level it saps our strength; it depletes our ability to cope and to move through life with ease. And we may overlook important lessons if our allowances are too lenient.
But there is another side to this tolerance coin as I mentioned yesterday. We can also set our levels too high, our expectations too demanding to the point of spending too much energy holding ourselves and others to that high standard. Again, we lose energy, in this case actively.
So, where’s the balance? How do we determine the best level of tolerance in a given situation? This goes to the heart of values. We first assess our values, list them and prioritize them. For our highest values we establish an approach to live by those values. And we set boundaries around these values (we may even do this subconsciously based on our life history, family of origin, socialization, beliefs, etc.). The boundaries become our measures of tolerance, both for ourselves and others.
Here’s an example: I was outraged a few days ago when I learned through a news report that three US Congressional Representatives, led by Michele Bachmann, traveled to Egypt and made a speech about the turmoil there and praising the Egyptian military for its actions to overthrow the elected government. They did not have their facts straight, they did not speak well, stumbling over their words, and their general demeanor seemed typical of the superior, high-handed western approach. I had to bite my tongue not to explode in reaction to this total misrepresentation of facts, American ideals and me as an American. Did I expend too much energy on this? Certainly! Why? Because I set my standards too high for politicians these days. Let’s be real: there is a very good reason that our US Congress has one of the lowest levels of approval in history!
OK, so what do I do about this? I have several choices: 1) stop believing that the representatives in the US Congress actually represent me; 2) stop expecting these representatives, and senators, to have much in the way of standards; 3) relax my standards on what it means to be a) an American b) an elected representative c) a politician d) a participant in a democratic experiment; and 4) lower or even remove the notion that living in a republic is a useful value!
Sorry that sentence got a little complicated but I think you get my drift here. I can lower my expectations of how I think a member of the US Congress should behave, especially internationally, and save a lot of wasted emotional energy worrying and railing about it!
I use this example to illustrate my approach to the process. I chose a value of lower priority in my scheme of life to keep it light. My practices, on the other hand, are high on my priority list. And I spend a lot of energy on these practices. They keep me both grounded and connected to what is real. They offer me a way to assess and reassess these values that are so important as a gauge to adjusting my tolerance levels. Values change with the flow and evolution of life and consciousness. Tolerance levels rise and fall with lessons learned.
Do your practices help you adjust your tolerance levels? Do you have a way to assess your values and apply them consciously to the events in your life? What is your approach?
I Am Tolerating WHAT???!!! – Richard’s Commentary
Tolerance, a “permissive attitude”, can be a lackadaisical approach to life or it can be a philosophy and intentional approach to life. Which is it? Maybe it can be both.
Tolerance in a carefully machined automobile part is the amount of deviation from a standard that can be allowed for the part to function properly. In this example machining the part further to comply with a tighter than needed tolerance would take more time and energy and would not necessarily improve the functionality of the part. A more relaxed tolerance in this case can save energy rather than expend more energy.
Personally I can tolerate a certain amount of dust on a windowsill or a few dust bunnies under the bed; if I vacuum the rug every two weeks rather than every week I am saving myself time and a bit on the electric bill. The tolerance level here is the amount of deviation from perfection that balances the energy saved with the energy expended on accepting the deviation.
If you are a parent, how much do you tolerate from your kids? Do you have a “permissive attitude” toward their behavior? And how far do you allow that permission to extend? Again, energy can be a measure here: the energy you spend on parenting can be balanced by the energy the children spend on testing the boundaries of your tolerance. They are busy learning about those boundaries and you must be busy setting them so they learn how to be balanced, creative, socially adapted individuals.
And then there are the personal boundaries that we develop and evolve as we grow and mature, learn and expand consciously. These boundaries form the tolerances in our lives. Some are external; they involve our family, friends, community, even country. Some people choose to leave their country of origin because they can no longer tolerate the living circumstances, whether those are political, religious, social, or economic factors. And then there are the internal boundaries, the tolerance levels we set up as standards for our own behavior and how we live life within those standards, or values. It is these values around which we balance the energy we expend on maintaining our adherence to those standards versus the energy drain from letting down our guard and giving in to a lower standard.
As an example one of my standards, a practice, is to write three longhand pages of text everyday, early in the day, preferably first thing in the morning. This is a practice I adopted from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I have been doing this for years, and I find it very worthwhile. It is a way for me to meditate, to journal, to dump the cobwebs from my psyche, to rail at the Universe, to give thanks to the universe, to channel the divine. I love this practice. Do I do it every day, first thing in the morning? No. Clearly there are things that get in the way, that disrupt this practice. This morning I am writing this blog post first before my pages. Lately I’ve been eating some breakfast before my pages. These are tolerances that I can live with; energy spent obsessing about always writing the pages first is not balanced by the positive effect of the writing. On the other hand there are some days I miss writing altogether. When I occasionally miss one day it seems to be OK, I can tolerate that. But when two or more days go by and I fail to get to mypages, I begin to notice the effects: I get more irritable, less tolerant! Then the balance tips in the direction of energy drained from me that is out of balance with energy spent in writing the pages.
How do you measure your tolerance levels? Do you do this consciously? Are you aware when your boundaries are crossed and your energy drained? It’s good to think about your boundaries so you can maximize your energy levels and live fully, in the present.
Now I’m going to write those pages!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: I Am Tolerating WHAT???!!!
We all have some things in our lives that aren’t perfect. They can be as mundane as a kitchen we wish were updated or shoes that aren’t quite comfortable but look oh, so good with that one outfit. Or they can be huge, like a spouse who abuses us or a job that we dread going to each morning.
What are you tolerating in your life today?
What has bugged you in the last week? Was it a friend who called and you couldn’t wait to get off the phone? Was it the traffic in your long commute to work? How about that dripping sink in the bathroom that keeps you up at night? Or that orange carpet that you keep planning to replace?
Look around you and ask yourself if you are surrounded by things that you enjoy seeing, people that you enjoying being with, activities and work that feel fulfilling. Is everything in your house in working order or are you tolerating some things that don’t quite work right?
Everything around you that is just a ‘tolerance’ is draining your energy, your very life force, your ‘chi’ or ‘prana.’
Think of the energy it takes to look at that ‘tolerance’ every day and wish things were different. Do you judge yourself harshly for not having taken care of it yet? Are you silently passive/aggressive, getting angry at your partner or kids for not taking care of it? Are you constantly reminding yourself that you ‘can’t afford’ to do anything about it, which keeps your focus on lack instead of abundance?
You CAN do something about the things you are tolerating in your life!
Make a list of those ‘tolerances’ this week. Big, little, mundane, significant. And then look at the emotional impact of having those tolerances in your life. Are you giving away your power, your energy, to something that you can change?
No one must tolerate being abused by another person. No one. There is always help if you feel you must get away, whether it is a partner, a family member, an employer. If this is on your list, make it a priority to do something about it.
Not every tolerance is physical. Are you procrastinating about your spiritual life because you are tired or too busy or overworked? Are you tolerating a schedule or energy drain that doesn’t allow you to have JOY in your life? You deserve joy. Is there something in your life that is blocking joy? Take care of that block.
Sometimes the shift is as simple as thinking in terms of ‘and’ instead of ‘either/or.’ Sometimes a huge effort is required to make a change. Whether it’s getting a new job or leaving a relationship or painting a room, you can do it.
Find a friend in whom you can confide, or a trusted counselor, and talk about your list of tolerances. Someone else might be able to offer a simple solution that you haven’t considered and you can cross that one off the list. Others might take some time to clear.
Think of the energy you are freeing up, though. Imagine if you spend next weekend clearing away the tolerances in your home [you can start with the easy ones like fixing the faucet or painting the room] and see how much better you feel. Then work on the ones that might require more work or outside help.
Remember, you are claiming your energy and your power. It’s worth the effort!
PS: Are you ready to let go of those things you tolerate? Are you ready to unlock the mysteries you carry? Do you want to hear mystic messages specifically for you? Apply for a FREE Discovery Session with Rosemary! Apply Here
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: What Are You Tolerating?
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” video for the week: What Are You Tolerating?
PS: Are you ready to unlock the mysteries you carry? Do you want to hear mystic messages specifically for you? Apply for a FREE Discovery Session with Rosemary! Apply Here
Monday’s Poem: The Moon
We had a New Moon in Virgo last week, the subject of a couple of my posts. And as I mentioned I am fond of tracking and very attuned to the moon. Grandmother has been the subject and object of many poets through the ages. I am not immune to her pull on my inner waters! So, to celebrate her waxing time, I offer this:
The Moon
The moon waxes
Reminding us of the
Fullness of time.
The moon climbs
Reminding us of the
Need for effort.
The moon shines
Reminding us of our
Inner work.
The moon wanes
Reminding us that our
Fullness ends.
The moon sets
Reminding us of the
Need for rest.
The moon hides
Reminding us of the
Inner dark.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Men and The Goddess 