Hope

There was a time in my life when I believed the statement, hope is the carrot in front of the carthorse that keeps him plodding along. It is a very cynical point of view that implies hope just keeps us going on blindly, with little chance of affecting real change. I don’t like to use the word hope because so many have it associated with a desperate clinging that is not hope but more resembles a FEAR of NOT getting what you desire or the famous, hoping that what you FEAR does NOT come to PASS. So what is hope? Hope is the desire for change to become present in your life; true hope is absent of fear.

Imagine a group of people gathered together around a large patch of earth. Each reverently holds a seed in their hand…this seed represents something they wish to have grow into their lives over the next few months. It is the precious hope of the change they wish to invoke. They have visualized themselves living this change while holding the seed until the seed literally is the change.

One by one they pour their own energy into the seed and plant it in the ground with care. A seed is the perfect representation of creation and growth, perfect in itself it contains all that is necessary to sprout…it only needs the spark to bring it to life and the conditions in which to flourish.

What Do You Plant?

After each has planted their seed they are asked, what they have planted. The answers are varied but special thought has gone into each seed, special care has been taken in preparation for the planting. I see how clear the desires become, how positive the focus is, and how it is released to nature, how the creative power inherit in the earth is recognized as being all that is needed to do the rest.

Now whenever I want something to manifest in my life, when I am hopeful, I remember the seed that perfectly embodies the unseen side of this process and I think about giving my idea the spark and planting it. I know I have created room for it to grow by making space in my mind which creates space in my life for something new. It will remain safe and dormant where I planted it, sheltered by earth; which is both womb and grave until the conditions which already seek to come together, attracted by the very act of intention, are right for it to sprout. Most importantly however, I know that nothing else is required…the earth, the mother of all life on the planet, will nurture it through the dark stages of existence before it is born into the world and joins me in the place where my physical eyes can behold it.

So try approaching life with a pocketful of seeds that you can release when you need or desire change…and experience true hope; which is the freedom that comes with knowing you can plant a seed for good at any time.

Challenges

Yesterday my daughter and I headed out to our favorite hiking spot. It is fun because we never know just what trail we will take and sometimes we go exploring to see where the new ones we find go. We had just gotten to the end of our driveway when she trips and lands flat on her face on the pavement. I look down fumbling with my cell phone (I had been checking our time of departure), pull the dog away from her (our puppy exhibits the proper dog etiquette of playfully mauling anyone foolish enough to get down on the floor with her), offer her a hand up, brush her off, check the damage and then as she snuffles and composes herself we continue on our way. In less than a block she had forgotten all about it and gleefully ran off toward the trailhead.

Living with a toddler and a six year old this happens so often that I do not even blink an eye. You know they’re o.k. Sometimes we go through a little ritual that appeases the mental side into believing that, such as kissing it to make it better or applying a spray or bandage but truly we always know they are o.k. This is part of living with young children who are constantly pushing the limits of what they know how to do.

Pushing Limits

Children are always learning something new. On this same day right after the 2 mile hike we head out to pick my son up from the bus stop (I had been watching the time to make sure we would not be late). My son had been asking to ride his bike and the weather was now nice enough to honor that request so when we got him to the house his bike was waiting for him. My daughter, who received her first bike for her third birthday had not really been interested in it until she saw her brother with his. She wanted to ride too. We take her bike out to a level spot and she gets the pedals confused and breaks unintentionally. This in turn makes her pretty angry as she watches her brother fly down the street seemingly effortlessly. With dogged determination she keeps trying while I explain the one leg at a time approach and the waiting until the pedal crests the top before applying pressure on that side. She is not listening though, she is watching Sebastian down the street…riding with ease. After about five minutes of timing issues she is screaming with tears rolling down her face, yet she will not take a break, she will not try another bike, she will not slow down…she knows only one thing. She knows she will ride. So she screams. I let her have a try on a gentle slope and give her some space. She gets it once and I tell her so. Slowly she gets it a few more times. She was no expert when we left the scene but she had reached some success. It was painful and she suffered because learning and growth often involve pain.

Avoiding Pain

Watching my children tackle new skills I remember how hard won all of the skills we accomplished adults have acquired really are. I can remember doing just what my daughter was doing on the bike, trying until you get it, refusing to leave until you did, letting the feelings fly because it is such hard work to attain the skill. As children, this is life…everything is new but as adults we seem to get used to ‘knowing how’.

I wonder at this, because it seems like as an adult you should know how to do things and avoid that which you don’t know. Many people who are in a state of learning as adult try to learn in a way that strips it of its vitality. My daughter was learning in a way that frightens many adults whose own unprocessed fears spark when they witness this sort of thing. She was facing the guardians at the gate of acquiring this skill and calling them out, letting them know she was scared but that it did not matter. Here was the battle…raging and raw, stripped of pretenses and supposed-to-be’s…she was facing her demons.

The Cycle

Every new situation and challenge is a beginning. Every beginning is a symbolic death…it is the root of our deepest fears and a shadow that we must face. It is the terror of being vulnerable, the fear of our own power…the thing that drives us to face it is desire and longing. But the desire is really for those split off parts of ourselves that we have denied, through which we can be complete and free to love. This requires courage because where there is no courage there is no love. Love demands honesty which is frightening or it is pretense and vulnerability or it is hollow. It engages our deepest powers or it has none. When we step inside of the beginning we leave behind our pretenses, masks and roles because we cannot get through the door to face the challenge unless we drop all that we are carrying and step through as we really are. Once we cross the threshold the fear is gone and only the truth remains…there is nothing to fear, every beginning is an end and every end is a new beginning.

My children are courageous and loving…meeting their challenges in this manner. They remind me not to play it safe…not to go with what I know but to face my fears, plunge ahead, learn, love, enjoy the challenge…and trust the life force inherent in this process.

An Email about Immigration

It’s funny how things will come to my attention. I received an email with a link from my father-in-law to a movie about immigration in which a gifted speaker (Roy Beck) illustrates how our current rate of immigration will affect the country. In this video he illustrates the past levels pointing toward the period before 1965 as the ‘Golden Era’ of immigration up to the current levels and what the picture will look like in 2030 if we continue on as we have been. He notes that Americans really like immigrants and view them as being hard working and family oriented, that immigrants and immigration are not the problem…that the numbers are the problem. He talks about what the population picture will be in 2030, how our resources are being taxed at the current level of population and to try to imagine what that will mean at the new projected levels. Then he moves on to ask what kind of life we want to leave for our children and grandchildren that are born and raised in this country. He also talks about how even when we take a million people per year from third world countries that this does not even begin to alleviate their problems and adds to ours such as California needing to build a new school every day of the year in order to keep up with its rising number of children. He suggests the way to help third world countries is where they live and that immigration used in that sense is a poor tool.

Playing with Reincarnation

Thinking about all this brought a thought to my mind. Leaving the world better than we found is a natural motivation when thinking of our children and grandchildren but most of our population believes that our personal problems will end when we die and that we will not live to see the end of our resources, many also think of this world as fallen…these viewpoints encourage us to take a more passive stance because there seems no sense of urgency or it seems beyond our ability to make a difference. Noticing how these beliefs shape our motivation to make changes I began to wonder how much more motivated we would be to take care of this world we live in if we thought that we ourselves would be coming back into the mess that we have created and that we just might be born in one of the third world nations that are already overpopulated…where people already don’t have enough? Could we then reach into the depths of our selflessness and see the interconnectedness that we share with our world and each other. Could we then give, trusting that we would reap the rewards of that work and effort, trusting that all life would benefit from our generosity? Could we then experience the growth as a society that comes from the inner knowledge that we are doing our part to uphold the sacred necessities of life itself…acting in accordance to what all can agree upon as needed and right?

Life is Sacred

Regardless of what ideas you hold about what happens after your physical dissolution I suggest that everyone look at their relationship with the environment and the resources of our world as something sacred that no one has a right to own or profit from and that all are deserving of. Protect these resources, love them, cherish, care for, nurture and revere them…because these are the very acts that preserve life.