The Adventures of Flower Bear in the Park - Part One: The Secret Tree

Spring has finally put in an appearance and seems to be serious about sticking around this time. Unfortunately, it is still way too early to do any serious gardening up my way just yet. So I took advantage of a beautiful, sunny day recently and hopped the bus into town to do a little shopping and visit my favorite health food store (they make these decadent chocolate cookies with avocado that are to die for).

Around lunch time I got a veggie pita sandwich, and some pineapple coconut water to-go, and walked over to the sweet little park that surrounds the county court house. As I sat on a bench munching away and enjoying the antics of the resident squirrels, my attention was drawn to a young woman in her late 20’s who had stopped beside one of the giant maple trees adjacent to the gazebo.  She was digging something out of the wallet she was carrying. That something turned out to be a folded piece of paper. With her head down as if she did not want to be seen, she wedged the paper into a crack in the trunk of the tree, then simply walked away. She had sunglasses on so I could not see if she was happy or sad. She never looked back.

I have to admit that I love watching people and have often assigned myself the task of making up stories about complete strangers that intrigue me for one reason or another. Sometimes they are mystery stories, sometimes love stories, sometimes tales of sadness or of renewal. This time, however, I was seriously hooked. What was in that note? The time and place of a secret meeting? A illicit love affair? A break up? Had she said yes or no? I wondered how long I would be able to hang around to see if someone actually came to pick up the note before I had to leave to catch the bus home? Who knew that when I went out in search of sunshine and chocolate cookies that I would stumble on an adventure!

Sometimes our best adventures are the ones we don’t plan in advance. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to be more spontaneous and more flexible, with my time. There are some areas in my life where I have regular time set aside for things that are really important to me like morning prayers and meditation. For anything else that doesn’t require me to be somewhere or do something specific, like a doctor’s appointment or a family gathering, I like to take some time in the morning and ask myself, “What can I do today to make myself happy?” I can’t begin to tell you what a difference that has made in my life since I started doing it. I could never have imagined doing this when I was younger and so caught up in the dreaded “should’s” that I kept putting myself last instead of first in my life. Now I put myself first and every day is Adventure Day if that’s what I decide to choose.

So, back to our mystery. Checking my phone I saw that it was just about time to head on over to the bus stop to catch my ride home. As I was gathering up my lunch mess to toss in the trash can on the way out of the park, I saw a young man approach the Secret Tree, as I had decided to call it. He was about the same age as the young woman who had left the note. He was obviously a hard- working man which was evident from the worn work clothes he wore, his soiled baseball cap and the lunch box he was carrying. Looking around to see if anyone was watching him, he stepped up and took the note out of the tree. He stood there for a moment reading it, and then a smile spread across his face. It was a look of pure joy. Had she said yes?  He folded the note back up and put it in his breast pocket, then stepped back on the path and made his way along the same route the young woman had taken earlier. Whatever the note said, it had certainly made his day. Another mystery to work on! Don’t you just love a good adventure?

And so it is.

Live Long and Prosper

I admit to being something of a Star Trek snob. It is my personal belief that the only true Star Trek was the first TV series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. The rest were just copy cats. Not only was it decades ahead of its time, but it opened up the discussion about the human condition with all of its frailties for the first time on national television at a time when such things were rarely spoken of outside of a therapist's office. Such was the case with one of my very favorite episodes. 

During one of the many malfunctions with the machine that made "Beam me up, Scotty" a part of our everyday speech, Capt. Kirk, played brilliantly by William Shatner, has his personality split in two. One half is kind and gentle, but also weak and easily frightened. The other side is strong, forceful, decisive and also capable of violence. This second side is what we would come to define in later years, according to the work of the great psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung, as our Shadow Self. This is the side of our personalities that we tend to hide from the world, the self that houses our darkest desires and impulses, the place where our ego resides. However in this instance, Capt. Kirk was unable to lead and command with only his kind but fragile self in charge because it was those very qualities of his Shadow Self, the strength, courage and dynamic forcefulness. that, combined with the other half, made him who he truly was, a capable, brave, yet compassionate leader.

We don't like to admit to ourselves that we occasionally lose control of our Shadow Self when it pops out in stressful situations. I have been made uncomfortably aware of my own "other side" recently. There is once again major construction going on in the house where I rent a ground floor apartment. There has been constant, heavy duty noise over my head, sporadic internet interruption that puts my work schedule into a tailspin, freaked out cats (mine) who, like their owner prefers the peace and quiet of country life, and a crying dog (my landlord's) who doesn't understand why she can't come out and play with the construction workers. There have been moments when my Shadow Self not only popped out under duress, but refused to leave ... for days ... causing me headaches and a pattern of whining to anyone who would listen that was definitely not my most attractive side. The fact that this construction work is expected to go on for some time did nothing to lift the dark cloud hanging over my head. So I did what I have been trained to do by my most trusted teachers: I meditated on it.

What came out of several heavy-duty meditation sessions, plus some wise advice from my meditation teacher (whose new video just "happened" to be all about handling a grudge or difficult situations), was to acknowledge that what was going on was not all about me, that it was not personal, and that I could choose how I reacted to it, knowing full well that a negative reaction would just produce more negativity - and more headaches - while a positive, affirming response would open up other possibilities for growth and understanding. I was led to remember how many times I had thrown a hissy fit whenever I would try to grow roses and failed miserably, only to discover that my talents did not lie with roses but with other varieties of plants that proved to be some of my favorite success stories. The point is that I needed both sides of my personality, my kind, gentle, lover-of-nature self, plus my determined, persevering, driven self, to find positive solutions to my everyday challenges without making enemies with myself or others. It is a daily practice to keep the two in balance but when we do, our lives are richer, less stressful, and more rewarding.

As Spock would say: "Live long and prosper." And so it is. 

The Beauty in Imperfection

When I first started gardening some 20 odd years ago, I had no clue what I was doing other than a few pots on the window sill, little more than when we were in elementary school and started seeds in paper cups. So, being the academic type, I decided to learn from the experts. At first it was all PBS and Victory Garden, and subscriptions to gardening magazines. Then cable finally came to my neck of the woods where I discovered HGTV (Home and Garden Television) and I was hooked. Back then there were gardening shows with prominent, accomplished, and very English gardeners, taking you on tours of their always perfect borders and beds. All the planting was done so that as one season's blooms died back, the next would pop up as if on cue, and then the next and the next. First came the snow drops, then the pussywillows, then the tulips, daffodils and crocus, followed by lilacs, hydrangea, roses, etc, etc. Something was always in bloom, there was always color and, most of all, order. 

Alas, my first attempts fell way short of the standard I had laid down for myself. Then I began to pick my head up out of my own garden, and started looking at Mother Nature's garden. Along the river bank the pussy willows came out on cue all by themselves. Wild flowers of every kind, first purple and white, then pink, then yellow, all put in an appearance when they were ready. There was a profusion of color, greenery and beauty in the randomness of what, left to their own devices, the plants and trees had been doing quite successfully from the beginning of time. 

So, the following year, I waited to see what my garden would surprise me with. What would come up from last year, and what wouldn't? Where had the birds and squirrels dropped seeds and what would come up from their handiwork? Pansies bloomed in random abandon all over the yard. Blue bells and Queen Anne's Lace appeared in the barrels I was using as planters. It was lovely, and wild, and totally without order ... and it was beautiful. The annuals I added complemented the colors already there and provided a different look with each year's new plantings. It wasn't as perfect as the English lady's garden on TV, but to me it was the most beautiful garden I had ever seen. 

We are so hard on ourselves over what we perceive to be our own imperfections whether they concern how we look, where we live, how we dress, if we went to college, and if we are living by our culture's pre-planned design. Yet the beauty in each and every one of us is our uniqueness, our one-of-a-kind spirit and our overwhelming need to grow, expand, learn, and bloom. How dreary the world would be look if there were no wildflowers, no splash of color in our lives and no surprises in our discoveries. If it's the fear of not "fitting in" that keeps us from seeing the beauty in our imperfections, we need to take a page out of Mother Nature's gardening book and realize that it all works perfectly, both the weeds and the flowers, living in harmony. 

I cannot wait to see what pops up in the garden this year, or what new surprises will show up along the river bank. Whatever blooms this year will be just perfect. There are no imperfections in nature, and we are all as much a part of nature as the lilac tree or the pussy willows. You, dear friend, are perfect just as you are. 

And so it is. 

An Eagle, An Egg, And A Lesson In Patience

Growing up I always remember my mother telling me, "Patience is a virtue." That was because I got so impatient waiting for special events like Christmas, Easter and my birthday to arrive. After what seemed like a eternity they always did come but seemed to depart much faster than it took for them to get there. In school, our teachers would always remind us that is was the tortoise that won the race by being slow, steady, focused and patient.

I don't think I've ever learned more about patience than I have the last 8 years watching the beautiful and courageous Decorah Eagles on their Ustream channel. If any of you have followed my blog over the last 3 years you know that a year does not go by without my mentioning them at least once. Through funding from a program called The Raptor Project, cameras have been set up high in the trees on the grounds of a working farm and fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. There we are treated to a bird's eye view (no pun intended) of the lives of this remarkable and beautiful pair of bald eagles as they return every year to the same tree to repair and rebuild their birthing nest, lay their eggs, hatch their chicks, and raise them until they are old enough to go off on their own. As remarkable as these creatures are when it comes to parenting - we humans could take a few lessons from them - what I have been most struck by this year is their patience. 

From the moment the first egg is laid, there is one parent or the other on the nest 24/7. One day I took some time to just watch the mother eagle as she kept her eggs warm, rising only to roll them from time to time and rearrange herself. The rest of the time she sat. And sat. And sat. There was such a presence of patience and peace about her. She was keenly aware of what was going on around her, always on guard for any threat to her eggs, but looking at her I realized I was envious of her ability to sit still and be totally present to the moment and her surroundings. She was living in the moment, doing what she needed to do, not worrying about having to be somewhere else, or about completing and endless to-do list. She just sat, serene, regal, patient and, from all apparent appearances, at peace. 

Ah wouldn't it be nice if we could all find that kind of patience and peace in our everyday life? When I am sitting in meditation, I can guarantee you that I do not even come close to Mother Eagle.  If I could get even 1/10th closer to being able to be that patient, what a gift that would be. Then I was reminded that in the garden, just like in that nest, the plants and trees do exactly the same thing. They grow. They flourish. They sit in silent splendor and do their thing. It is only we humans that defy nature by trying to be everywhere and do everything at once.

So maybe this week we should try to take a page out of Mother Eagle's playbook and make some time to just be, to sit in stillness, totally aware of the present moment, and patiently wait for the Universe to lay its wisdom on us. Think what we could hatch with that kind of connection! 

And so it is. 

Straining to Grow

This time of the year is always difficult for me. I begin seeing the first shoots of the daffodils and crocus starting to push through the dirt and I get the urge to haul out all of my gardening paraphernalia and get moving. I want to clear away all of the dead branches, the fallen leaves and the dead foliage from last year and start preparing beds for their new plants ... and then I have to stop myself. I have lived up in these parts long enough to know that just because we've had a few warm days and the green is starting to return in tiny increments, it doesn't mean that it is time to garden. I would be surprised if we did not yet get hit with some snow or a late frost. Doing all of that clearing would take away any protection the plants beneath would have against such a drastic weather change, and delicate new plants would hardly survive.  Even though I am straining at the bit (to borrow a little horse wisdom) to get the gardening season underway, wisdom and experience tell me that by being patient, watching the weather and starting slowly, the end result will be well worth waiting for. 

It is natural to get excited when we are hit with the creative urge, or when a new idea takes hold. We want to jump in with both feet and "get it done." However, sometimes by pushing and forcing our will on the project because of our attachment to the outcome, we are unhappy with the final results. Last month when we looked at the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, he reminded us that: "Grass doesn't try to grow, it just grows ... Flowers don't try to bloom, they bloom." When we calm down, sit back and sense where our idea or project wants to go, and then take one small step in that direction, we will be lead naturally and without strain to the next step, and the next, and the next. It is in our detachment to a specific outcome, and our allowing for the infinity of possibility to open up to us, that we not only end up with a much better outcome than we could have imagined, but we find that we have enjoyed the journey even more.

So yesterday on the first day of Spring, while the sun was shinning but the wind was still blowing cold, I walked around the garden beds and started making a list of what I could do now, and what I would hold off doing until later. Then I took myself back inside to sit by a window and watch the robins, back from their winter vacation, pecking at the bread crumbs I'd left them while I sat in silence to see what message from my gardening muse might be trying to surface - but I left my gardening work gloves out, just in case!

And so it is. 

100 Pieces of Paper

I have to admit that I'm an old-fashioned kind of girl in some respects. Here in this age of technology and information-at-our-fingertips overload, I still write things down by hand. Maybe it goes back to all those years I spent in libraries doing research and having to copy things from the reference books that we couldn't take out. Or, it could go back to my days as a reporter for a small town daily when my notebook was never further than my purse. Perhaps it's just because I love the feel and the sound of pen on paper, of words taking shape under my fingers - the love of a writer for what she does. 

However, my addiction to writing things down had, I am ashamed to admit, gotten out of hand. You see, I didn't always write things down in a notebook. No, I grabbed whatever piece of paper that was within reach and wrote down whatever quote I had just seen that touched me, or a line from a book I was reading that I wanted to reference back to on some project I was currently working on. Since I am a committed recycler, I cut up paper that has only been used on one side into the size of a notepad and use it as such. Hence the piles of little 3 x 5 slips of paper that are sticking out of the front, back and middle of the notebooks I bought to one day actually copy them all down so they are all in one place. Oh, I do make use of technology from time to time. I keep my cell phone handy and use the memo app to write down my grocery list as I think of things I need and, if I see or hear something I want to remember, I use that feature to write it down ... until I end up with a list a mile long on my phone as well. It got to the point that it was seriously affecting my work because I could not remember where I put that quote I saw the other day that would be just perfect for that new chapter I was working on, or for Flower Bear's Thought For The Day (daily on her Facebook Fan Page). So, I finally stopped all of my other work and made the decision that I would spend a couple of hours to copy all of the little slips of paper on my desk and the endless memos on my phone into one place. Little did I know when I sat down to do this that a couple of hours was not going to even make a dent in the pile because it had grown to a slightly over 100 little pieces of paper! It took me working a couple of hours a day for an entire week to complete the project. I now have all of my quotes and bits of information in one notebook, with another one empty and ready to take on anything new. I have committed to checking in every morning right after I finish journaling to enter anything I may have jotted down on the run the day before. And you know what? My writing started to get better. My mind was free, ideas started flowing, and I felt as if some great burden had been lifted off my chest. My piles of paper were literally and psychically weighing me down.

The moral of this story is that we let so much of our outside life pile up into piles and piles of little pieces that it blocks our creativity: lists of things to do, places to be, people to see, projects to work on, It's more than just putting everything down in a day planner or on a calendar. It's making a point to take time each day to review, remove the unnecessary, consolidate and make sure that none of it takes away from your real life, the one you were put here to live, and the work you were put here to do. Life was meant to be enjoyed not managed.

Gee, maybe I could arrange all of those quotes by subject: gardening quotes, spiritual quotes, women's quotes ... somebody stop me!

And so it is!

Making Our Own Music: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Week Seven

"When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music."

Kahlil Gibran

The seventh, and final, spiritual law of success is the Law of Dharma. The Law of Dharma states:

Everyone has a purpose in life ... a unique gift or special talent to give to others. 

And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals. 

You have a gift. I have a gift. Each and every one of us has a gift, a talent, something we can do that no one else can do exactly the same way that we can. It is why we are here. It is what we were put on this physical plane to do. It is that one thing that, when you are doing it, time passes without your notice and the Universe speaks to you in a way that only you can hear.

I would be willing to bet that the most asked question on the face of the earth is: "Why am I here?" You are here to fulfill your purpose. Which, of course, is followed by, "But what is my purpose?" There are three tools you can use to find the answers to your questions:

1. Finding our true self - inside each and every one of us is "a god or goddess in embryo that wants to be born to express our divinity." The best way to do this is through prayer and meditation. There is a reason why just about everywhere you turn you are hearing people praising the rewards of meditation: it works. When you sit in the stillness and silence of your innermost soul, and listen for the answer to your questions, in time, they come. I start my meditation every morning by asking the three soul questions: Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? Sometimes I only get one answer. Sometimes I don't get one at all. What I do get is clarity. When I let go of the past and the worries of the future, the present moment opens up to me in all its infinite possibilities. In that moment, I can be anything and I can do anything.

2. Find what makes your heart sing - as the opening quote from Kahlil Gibran tells us, we are the flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. What makes your heart sing? Is it being out of doors in nature? Is it playing a beautiful piece of music or, even better, composing it? Is it putting words to paper and expressing the dreams and desires we all share? Is it caring for children? What do you do that makes the hours fly by? Make a list of those things and keep it handy because we will use it to address our third tool.

3. How can I serve - How can I take something from my list, infuse it with my own brand of spirituality, and use it to serve others? How can I make a difference in even one person's life? It can be anything as simple as smiling at everyone you encounter during the day, or holding a door for someone, all the way to using your time and talents to save the planet, the animals, the children, or to lift someones spirit and help them to soar.

When you can put the answers to these three questions together, you will have found your dharma. Then you can live each and every day with purpose, clarity and joy. As dear Dr. Wayne Dyer was always fond of saying, the only thing we can do with our lives is to give it away. Find a way to serve. 

How will you make your own music today?

And so it is. 

Note: My sincere thanks to Deepak Chopra for writing The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and sharing your own gifts with the world. You are surely living your dharma.