6/18/2010 – Walking through the Wondrous Wonderland

All the deliciousness of wonderland lake and the blue flowers and butterflies zooming around has me totally enchanted. Its full summer here. All the grains are hanging in preparation for maturity before they start ripening. The dandelions are completing their growth spurt, finishing their seed, and are ready to be carried away. Flowers everywhere – splendidness, opulence, and yumminess. Oh how dull the world would be without all of this wonder.

Its 4:30pm, the sun is on the hotter side of warm, the air slightly muggy, filled with sparkles of light floral scents. Grasshoppers are buzzing and birds are singing gorgeous songs. The sounds are cheery, playful and fully awake.

All is community, community protection, community wellbeing, work and play. The smells are light and grassy. Sweet flowers are scented with in the highest notes - floating in the breeze, expanding in the warmth of olfactory crispiness. Grasshoppers move from my path as I walk, and the bees circulate everywhere - in full communication with their neighbors as well as the plants. All of nature is about communication right now. Prairie dogs are popping up their head out of the holes in the ground, hanging out, basking in the sun and chitchatting with their neighbors.

The father of Japanese Acupuncture, Sensei Sawada Ken said “Disease is not a special condition, it is merely a condition of blood circulation out of balance. The purpose of treatment is to improve circulation of blood which nourishes the body” recorded by Shiroto Bunshi, Essence of Acupuncture & Moxibustion, 1978, p20.

This makes me think of circulation as communication. When life is flowing and all is circulating, it is in full communication with the whole. No part of nature is out of touch with another, isolated and left to stagnate. What part of ourselves have we dissociated from? What have we disowned and are not in conversation with? Here in the Garden of Eden called Wonderland Lake, nature is in full communication and no one is disenfranchised.

Now the fields and meadows are dry again, ablaze with various greens and golds, reds, purples, and violets, but not that long ago the thunderstorms ravaged through this place. It was as if there was a quick alternation from yang to yin, and yin to yang again. Thunder is an expression of Fire within the Water element raining brimstone upon the land with its foreboding fiery lightning and hail.

Thunder and Lightning is like water that has to assert itself with a grand expression – rather than more muted expression of light rain and drizzle, or the ever-present water of winter that is calm and still. Yet there is nothing quite like the thunderstorms of summer. Not too long ago the waters had dried up and as the plants start to thirst and petition the skies, the gods sent the water element to control the fire in its exuberant display.

What that reflects about human beings is that we must always temper our expression of opulence, lest we burn out. We must have water to balance the fire and to calm it down in the language the fire element will understand - a dramatic display of “You do not have the resources to continue doing what you’re doing! – BAM! Thunder clap! Let me knock you down a little bit, let me cool you off. Let me reset some of your over exuberance lest you kill all of your adoring fans”.

The flowers here are very sexual. One particular flower here expended its midsection, thrusting it up and up! Wanting to copulate with the sun and the bees itself. And as its petals fold down, exposing its center at maximum, it presents itself - unabashedly rompful!

Smell of grasses, smell of wheat, wheat mixed with strawberries – kind of sharp, light, warm – cereal-bar like envelop my nose.

The gorgeous bird I saw earlier is still singing his song, and sitting on the same fence post as he sat on for the past half an hour. He’s looking around and singing in praise of the day, preening and weaving his odes to how glorious it is to be alive today. Its what all life is ultimately about.

Some people say that all this racket of noises, squawks, squeals, tweets, and composition of animals and the glorious blooms and expositions of flowers exist only purpose of attracting a mate for continued reproduction. But isn’t it the very fact that if we do the very thing that is authentic to us and are brimming over with joy for life that we are the most attractive in the first place? We don’t do it in order to get a mate, we do it because it is our authentic self-expression that says this is how I’m celebration being alive and then others may remark – wow, look at that... that's a person who’s being true to themselves – I’m attracted to that – to the lack of pretence, the lack of timidity, the presence of self-value, self-esteem, the presence of love, lack of trying to be somebody else, but truly being uniquely themselves. How more beautiful can they be?

Herein lies the secret of the Fire element and of plants expressing their bloom. If we were lonely we’d be putting on a show for everybody else to make them like us, to woo them, to convince them, manipulate them into loving us, liking us. And so we’d be exhausted from all this effort, but the plants and animals do this effortlessly because it’s just their authentic way of being. So, when you do it for no reason than to please yourself, to do it for your own good, rather then needing to do it for the good of another, then that self-expression becomes what’s attractive and what brings people to you de facto. Therefore, to they own self be true.

I read somewhere that the meaning of the word ‘true’ in the sentence “to thine own self be true” is to be loyal to oneself. What does it mean to be loyal to yourself? Perhaps its to not let yourself down, but be authentically who you would want to be.

Nature is loyal to itself and all of its constituents. The plants express their own nature, and not the nature of another. The animals express who they are and do not try to become anyone else to please others.