We gathered together as a class at the Wildlands Restoration Project to collect seeds from the prairie grasslands afoot the front-range due south of Boulder. We were a group of 15 community volunteers that gathered together to harvest wild grasses. The purpose of our endeavor was the collect a specific plant so that each seed could be turned into thousands more. These seeds in turn would be used to repopulated areas ravaged by landslides and wild fires so as to prevent erosion and repopulate affected area with native species. Many foreign species have moved into Colorado and so part of this project seeks also to preserve the natives species so as to prevent major changes in the fragile ecosystem.
We were shown a sample of the prairie drop seed grass which we were to collect, and we moved out into the prairie in front of us with our bags and sheers in hand. The prairie ahead was hidden in the thick mist that had rolled in while preparations and discussions were under way.
As we moved into the cold mist, I got chilled and put on my sweater. It didn’t take long for me to have a startling realization about this place. What looked like a dry, yellow, boring, barren, flat and unexciting patch of land which I’d drive by without a slightest acknowledgement, became an incredible fantasy land of vegetation and life that was as rich as any rainforest I had seen prior. The more time I spent looking, the more detail and variety I beheld.
Gazing through the mist onto the fields around me I saw more shades of color than I had noticed before. The yellow flat land became a sea stretching out in all directions which undulated in waves of patches and ripples of various shades and hues as certain plants spread more immediately within their surrounding. What looked like a field of one grass became a field of a hundred to two hundred grass varieties each with a different texture, shape, stem, and color gradient which could be seen as undulating patches of brilliant color. The generic color ‘yellow’ had now become gold, crimson, brown, auburn, rust, copper, canary yellow, white, frosted yellow, gray, burgundy, strawberry, brick, mauve, orange, and beige.
The presence of the cool, moist mist that softened my face, opened my pores, enveloping me in its blanket, made me pause, take in, and become present to what was. The gray monotone of the mist revealed all these shades to me, as I was no longer distracted by the mountains to which I normally would raise my gaze. As my face began to feel supple, I saw the plant life around me was supple, bulging, and rich in its seed.
Hunting for the one seed I needed to find made me focus incredibly. While looking for the one thing I needed to find – so small, hard to see, and inconspicuous, I found everything else that wasn’t it, and everything that looked like it, but wasn’t. I honed in within a few minutes on the specific differences that made the plant unique, its specific type of undergrowth, twig pattern, color differences at various stages of maturity, and seed pod organization. Soon its uniqueness stood out.
I started to wonder if there are creatures out there that only eat this type of seed but none other. What I saw around me was the buffet of food available for the hundreds if not thousands of prairie species that feast every day off of this land.
The earth beneath the plant life glistened with mica and other minerals – her beige rocky clay provided the container for all these life forms to be taken into her bosom, nurtured, held, mothered and birthed. Whatever she had, she’d given freely. Whatever water was given to her, she passed on to her children. Whatever folds in her flesh gave way to grooves, mounds, dips, basins, or hollows permitted her to capture and receive more moisture herself, so that she could give it all the more abundantly to the children that dwelled therein.
Whatever life occurred on her surface she folded into herself and integrated over time – she herself becoming the product of all the food the children left behind, trusting that there will always be enough for her. Giving first, and receiving second, with no ‘in order to’.
I’m reminded of the point Abundant Splendor (XI 40) where the self-realized Earth constitution becomes present to all the abundance that is available and already present in her life so that she no longer feels so compelled to overproduce, overharvest and obsessively store and yearn for more sustenance, not realizing she’s already full and straining to capacity.
When we obsessively overharvest, we stuff our faces, spirits, and minds with food of indiscriminate quality for fear that there will never be enough for ourselves. Whatever we can get our hands on will simply be good enough. The irony is that all the effort we put in to harvesting literally leaves us never enjoying the fruit of our labor. We become heavily laden with our harvest and burdened by our commitments, but never have enough time to process, fully absorb and be nourished by our work.
The poor quality and quantity of harvest ends up clouding out minds, our spirits, and manifests as phlegm, fat, or turbidity within the body, mind and spirit. In this way, like a bog or mud pit, we absorb everything around, obsessively collecting, never satisfied and never full. Ultimately, a bottomless pit, we end up accumulate experiences, toys, books, papers, garbage, memories, heavy emotions, physical and emotional fillers and trash – like the gaping yaw of a landfill.
As a junction point between the Stomach and Spleen Official, Abundant Splendor grounds the Stomach’s Yang and curbs the Stomach’s obsessive need for ingesting more and more by connecting its hunger to the deep stores of food that have already been taken into the self, so that the food can be fully absorbed and integrated. When the Yang of the Stomach no longer orients itself to the external acquisition of abundance, its Yang can go to the Spleen to help it in transforming whatever mundane and lesser substances the Stomach acquired in its voracious hunger into food that nourishes the spirit, the soul, and the mind. The stinking bog becomes dried out by the Earth’s transformative power into rich peat and compost which bursts into life like an oasis, once again giving of its abundance rather than constantly absorbing it.
It is in this way that the Yang of XI 40 helps the Spleen process, transform and transport out acquired mundanity such as excess fat, phlegm, fluids and bodily accumulations that were acquired in haste due to poor diet, poor nourishment, and lack of proper processing of food into compost which serves to nourish our lives. The phlegm and turbidity are evaporated and life starts to bloom, over-absorption ceases, and abundance starts to pour forth. The accumulation of experiences, possessions, and a material harvest cease having the same importance they once had, as we integrate them, get nourished by them, and move on to give out what we’ve learned.
Similarly, if the person is empty, having harvested nothing and integrated nothing, like hardened clay, unable to absorb any nutrients, Abundant Splendor can reorient the barren, malnourished, and despondent soul back towards the outside world from where nourishment can once again be absorbed. In this case the Stomach Official has ceased to be interested in the external world and shuts down the function of receiving. When we’ve lost the ability to see the world as full of abundance, and our inner world as malnourished, food which we have rejected and found undesirable begins to get collected, enjoyed, and integrated once again as we start feeding ourselves once more. Needling this point brings a shovel to hard and barren clay, breaks it up, creating space for water and seeds of new possibility to arise.
In this way XI 40, Abundant Splendor is an important point in mitigating both bulimic and anorexic patterns of behavior and restoring balance to process of harvest and integration.
We brought in the harvest at lunch time and sat around sharing our food with eachother. After lunch the sun came out and the prairie took on a bright showy coat of splendid colors as seed pods opened, flowers expanded, and insects buzzed with excitement – resuming their busy harvest to stock up for the long winter to come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment