One spring I volunteered at a botanical garden, spending many days uprooting what to my untrained eye looked like lovely flowers and plants, because they were “non-native.” This particular garden cultivates only indigenous plants, so any errant seeds that have the misfortune to blow in and bloom are routinely removed
I found myself apologizing to the blossoms I pulled, innocent flowers who happened to settle in the “wrong” location. And I began to contemplate how much of our sense of borders and boundaries trickles down to everything we express as a species. While I’m not a horticulturist, my sense of deep ecology evolved out of my own healing journey.
Living Beyond the Lawn
Growing up in suburban America, I observed fairly rampant homeowner disgust with the dandelion, scourge of suburbia’s well-manicured lawns.
Much later, I discovered that dandelion is one of the most healing herbs available to humanity, offering itself in abundance wherever we may dwell. It’s a supreme liver tonic, known to help detoxify the body’s “processing plant.” In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the liver equates to anger. If you want to release that pent-up rage in a healthy way, the remedy is probably available, free and easy, right in your own backyard.
Dandelion can act as de facto compost, gently surrounding and helping to decompose back into rich loam that which no longer serves. Yet we curse the weed and uproot it, spray poison to keep the green carpet unsullied. When we can stop “livin’ for the lawn,” focusing predominantly on the external, and make the subtle shift from ego mind to Universal Mind, we see with great clarity the incredible gifts all around us. Our teammates are everywhere, in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms — if we have eyes to see.
Reimagining Inclusivity
As we move ever deeper into our collective rebirth process, we’ll be releasing people and places that no longer resonate with our lives now, and preparing to welcome in the new. Doing this with lovingkindness is our mandate. It’s a ripe moment to ask, who or what in my life seems like an outsider? Am I willing to look again, to enlarge the lens, to see beyond imaginary borders, to become inclusive rather than exclusive?
The Dandelion Principle says that where some see a weed, others see an herbal ally; a tonic not a toxic.
Where in your life is the medicine you need staring you in the face, masked as an undesirable…and all you need to do is shift your perception?
Below are seven practical steps to enlarge the lens this spring (fall, for our southern hemisphere allies): to slow down and look with the eyes of wonder, like a child. You’ll find many more on my mp3/CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation:
- Keep a journal. Buy a beautiful blank book and a pen that feels comfortable in your hand. Then allow yourself to write whatever and whenever you want. No one else need ever read it unless you choose to share, so send the censor packing! Journaling is like ingesting dandelion leaves with your pen — a great way to purge emotions and discover what really matters to you. And writing by hand is very different from writing on a digital device.
- Dance your evolutionary process. Do you instinctively sway as you talk, or dance around the room when you get excited? Express your change process as flowing movement. Maybe it’s yoga, or tai chi, or free-form dance.
- Make art. Are you a natural with a paintbrush or clay? Splash your emotions onto canvas, pour them into a mold, sketch them into being. Remember, this is art from the heart: done for the sole/soul purpose of enlarging your own vision.
- Sing! Is your voice your most powerful expressive tool? If you love to sing but don’t know any songs, make up nonsense words to tunes you like, and sing them — in public. This is also a fabulous way to break free of the “What will people think?” trap.
- Be in Nature. Sit by moving water. Sit inmoving water. Sing while sitting in a stream!
- Prepare a meal that is as aesthetic as it is nutritious. As you combine ingredients, imagine that you are cooking up a grander vision for your life.
- Hush. Spend a day, alone or with others, in total silence.
© Copyright March 2021 by Amara Rose. All rights reserved.
About the Author:
Amara Rose, Managing Editor of Ascension Lifestyle, is widely published in health, business, lifestyle, and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Visit LiveYourLight.com, where you can also subscribe to her monthly e-newsletter, What Shines.
Today is the Ides of March. You know that saying, “Beware the Ides of March,” coined by the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, in his play, Julius Caesar. I am sure you will hear it at least once today recited by someone.
This month, approximately 75 countries worldwide will create an annual illusion: saving time. We move the hands of our clocks ahead, and think we’ve harnessed the sun. In the U.S., our participation begins at 2 am on Sunday, March 14th.
Holding the both/and
Our brain is always active and it is certainly a good idea to nourish it. We can maximise its potential with simple practices.
Many countries in the world have been going through lockdown and quarantine. In some places this has been the norm for almost a year now. During this period, I have been reflecting on the good and bad things about it.
There are many effects or influences occurring that we can observe in the world now.
Thoughts, influences, and experiences shape our perceptions. If we are unawares of how we are aligning, or entraining to anything, then we may unknowingly behave as the creators of those influences wish us to behave. Marketing and advertising have achieved untold levels of leverage over human consciousness via digital means. We know that via documentaries such as “The Social Dilemma.” What we need to become even more aware of is how we are influenced or imprinted on other levels of our mind, even in our own bodies. Entrainment, resonance, and imprinting is the way mammals operate and learn from each other. Unfortunately, these beautiful traits are now being used against humanity.
Witnessing the chaotic patterns and disintegration of patterns in our world now is difficult. So many seem so hypnotized, or plain lost. Millions have no other concern other than simply surviving. Did we really want it to be this way? Our understanding of how human consciousness works and interacts is the key to extricating ourselves. Creation is born out of chaos and resonance by informed choice, arrived at by meditation/spiritual hygiene, critical thought, and practical action, is necessary to reverse the direction we are now finding our world going towards. The disintegration of the old order must continue, even as there seems to be no new framework to rely upon to replace it. The old consciousness is simply unable to offer any solution to the problems it has created.
Lastly, fastidiously monitor your interactions and usage of electricity and technology. Currently the Dual-Headed Gods are Science (orthodox) and Technology (digital), but they are false gods. How they came to dominate our world is a story for another time. Our task for now is to take responsibility for allowing it to happen thus far by compassionately understanding how we have been sleepwalking with it for so long…and then taking the necessary steps to change ourselves, and by extension, create the potential world we would all like to create and inhabit. Where everyone is healthy, where everyone thrives, where loving kindness, cooperation and creativity are paramount.
Practices like cleaning your home, rearranging furniture, organizing your closet, and getting rid of objects that are cluttering your space can have a profound impact on your mind, body, and spirit. It is this feeling of “cleaning house” that we lean into during this season so that we may fully embody true change, not just intellectualize it.
Incarnated in this lifetime as a clairsentient,