Mother Earth

            

The other day I was clearing some ground with the intent of fencing it off so my chickens and goats don't eat whatever I decide to plant.

            The weeds and grasses were soft and lovely and pleasant to step on with my bare toes. The earth felt alive.

            I thought about how beautiful that little patch of earth was, with all its old buildings, and decayed fences.

            Yet beyond the judgment of the decay, being with what is has a special kind of grace to it.

            Old bits of wire tell stories of many different generations of animals. Tipping fences, and empty cages tell stories of horses, chickens, rabbits, and pigs, and cows, donkeys, and llamas, and emus that once lived there.

            If I dig very deep in places, I find purple glass, and metal, and wood, and old pieces of porcelain dolls. They tell the stories, like a time capsule, of the people who lived in this place before my family owned it.

         

   On Mother's day I dug up this old little bracelet encased in a dirt clod. A gift from the earth. I let it sit in some soda and vinegar so as to clean off the grime. 

            The earth. Supple. Beautiful, totally moldable. Surrendered to the alchemy of life. How beautiful it is. How forgiving it has been to every single one of us. How many treasures it holds. How many mysteries, and wonders it has for us to discover.

            While I was working I stopped every once in a while, and just sat on an old railroad tie, and appreciate the day. The alfalfa field was purple in patches from the flocks of stink weeds that have sprung up.

     

       I feel much like the land. An old soul.  The barn has seen better days. The shingles, and doors have fallen off. It's patched together, like a torn quilt.

            Fences swayed, from trees pushing through them.

            There has always been so much happening here.   

            So much has come and gone.

This land has always been growing something.  Always had my dad or someone spraying the weeds.

            Now that the weeds have grown up. They've turned into a sticky jungle of jumbled brown tumble weeds, creating hidden nooks, that look wild, and unkempt. The cats like to creep through the nooks, looking for mice, and birds.

      

      The other day, we discovered that two of my cats had kittens! Happy mother's day to them. Oh my....

            Yet. For all the weeds, and kittens, and jumble. There is beauty in just being with its isness.        

            To the earth, and space.

            It's perfect. There is so much life in a single little spot of earth. Bugs, and ants, and spiders, birds of every kind. It's a wonder that so many people get board. All you need do is step out your door, and sit with the dirt. It will show you something interesting.

            There have been so many, many doves this year. More than I ever remember. They love to dive over our heads as we milk the goats.

            The busy land seems to feel itself. And it feels holy.

            At rest.

            Letting the weeds spring up.

            Letting things decay.

            Embracing its rest.

            This place has always been a bubbling emporium, a place, mostly for people to find their footing, and then leave.

            Now that most of my nieces and nephews are grown.

            The emporium is enjoying its own emptiness.

            Feeling its own sun. And its own moon.

            And for the first time.

            Doesn't feel the need to be anything different.

            The emporium. Now feels like a soulful emporium. A place where we are both pondering our own spaces, our own soil.

                        I love every part of it.

                        My bare toes kiss the ground as we meet.

                        I walk through the alfalfa field in the dark, and talk to the moon.

                        It and I are good friends the land and I.

                        I feel connected to it, though it's not mine. It's my dads, and he told me last week of his plans for it. It made me realize, yet again, everything is always in flux. Life is always asking if you can let something else go without having to manipulate life to your preferences.

              And for now. They are just plans. And for now, my sister, and I let our goats graze on the alfalfa, and sometimes we call them back in with a funny yodel. I love it when they come in when we call.                      

            The land is ever so much better than houses.

            As my sister said. Houses are just tombs mostly for our bodies while we sleep.

            It is funny because you can own something, but not love it---Love something, but not own it.

            We can be attached to things, and not love them.

            Love things we have no legal rights to.

            If the land could speak, if the soil could talk.

            I know it would chose my sister and I.

            It would say that we have loved it, and it loved us back.

            That we have expanded our souls together, and found beauty in seeing, and being seen.

            Found quietude in its spaces.

            What strange thing.

            Yet I realize, that most of us don't ever get to know our own soul soil. Most of us have already divided land, split into many kingdoms and compartments.

            Most of us are only renters on our own lot.

            Most of us haven't found the beauty in the stillness of our own trees, and forests.

            We sold it long ago. Let someone else decide its value.

            We don't know that our greatest real-estate is our own being. We don't know that our soul-soil is the only land worth making a claim to. It's the only land that can't be sold, or built on by foreign powers.

            It is the only land who's kingdom does not diminish.

             But most of us don't dare step onto that ground.

            It's too risky.

            We want someone else to tell us how well developed our land is, how valuable it is by what it produces. We want to build skyscrapers, and fill our land with things that look valuable to other people. But never realize that it is valuable all by its self, regardless of the skyscrapers, wigwams, or little Teepees, or bird's nests that sit on top of it. 

             Growing stuff, more or less, just happens if you let nature do its thing. The rain just watered some flower seeds I sprinkled out the other day, and I felt like it was a gift from mother nature. Everywhere I go, there is a bit of earth to enjoy, without having to lay claim to the sunsets, or the roads, or the fields I travel through.

            Here the sun shines, warm and beautiful just as much as it would most anywhere else. Here, I don't own the sun, and it doesn't own me for either one of us to appreciate the other.

            Though we can appreciate the moment. Here I can sit with it, and it sits with me. No need to deed it to anyone. To charge a fee for your moment together.  No need for me to section of a bit of the sky, or a bit of the sun, stars, or moon and say I own them.

            How laughable to think I could? Yet we do this with people, children, with ground, and possessions, with so much that will never be ours.

            Yes. I love this bit of earth. But all the earth, wherever you are, is to be loved.

                        Not owned. Or fought over. Or dug up until it all the topsoil has been ruined, and mined, and plowed, and pillaged.

            It always troubles me a great deal, all the poisons going into poor Mother Earth, the life giving ground. Here, in the farmlands, there is, more often than not, the afterglow smell of poison in the air, where it should be clean, and crisp.

            I wonder what it does to the earth, year after year, what it does to our food?

            The poison they put into the soil to poison the rodents?

            What does it do the alfalfa I like to juice?

            There aren't may places on this earth bare souls can walk without poison.

            I wonder if there is not a better way to control the pests, and bugs? I thought about my cats, and how they love to catch the gofers. Maybe we could use their skill to figure out a better way to catch and keep the pests from overrunning the farms.  Not poison the rodents so their predators, the hawks get poisoned, as well.  Early yesterday morning I got out of bed, and jumped on my bike to catch up with my sister who was helping my dad irrigate. It was freezing. I had shorts on, and some slipper shoes. The air was chilly, crisp, and fresh. The alfalfa looked like it enjoyed the water. The fields beyond were full of feathery, lime-green tufts of wheat. Beautiful, white waterfowl docked on the land looking for goodies. The air felt moist, electric, living.

            We clogged off some gofer holes that were leaking water like bubbling geysers. While I was clogging off a hole, I dug up a scorpion. He looked a little frightened, and not too happy I had disturbed his home.

            I set him aside, and resumed clogging the hole. After we'd finished, we picked some asparagus on the side of the ditch, and I walked bare toed in the field, and collected asparagus in my hands, and huge piles of mud on both of my feet. By the time I got back into the house, I could not feel my feet! They felt like frozen chunks of ice. I ended up going back to clog off more, and more holes that were leaking tons of precious water.

 My point---I can see why farmers have a difficult time with the rodents. As they do cause troubles. I ended up going back along the road, and helped clog off more, and more holes that were leaking tons of precious water.

            Yet, our lovely earth gets poisoned in so many ways, in the name of the better good. I wonder if we paused for just a moment. We might learn a higher way? Sometimes we get so busy clogging holes, we never have time to do anything differently.

            I thought about the earth being a symbol for mothers, for the feminine. I thought about how everything in our reality mirrors something hidden on the spiritual side.

            I thought of the divine feminine.

            I thought about how much women have been poisoned. Made to keep her power under control. To be made silent. To give, without demanding anything back.

            To never have boundaries. To give all of her gems, and jewels, and fruit, and life to everyone freely. Full of forgiveness, unconditional love, and compassion. To house the entire planet, and everything on it, and never say ouch when mistreated. And if she does, she's called fickle. Her weather is always being complained about. If she cries, it's bad. If she doesn't, she is also bad. If she's windy, it's too much. If she's warm, it's too warm. Yet for all our complaining about her weather, she is always ever present, loving, freely giving. Silent. Yet she speaks to those with ears to hear. 

            I thought about the state of the world. How some parts of the world are drying, up, while others are flooding away. I thought about the earthquakes, and the volcanoes. I thought about the wind, the lightening. All of it.

            I thought about our mother figures in this world.  Overspent, tired, busy, unhealthy, overburdened, and working too hard. Women, who very much like the earth, have allowed themselves to be plundered, and their soil overrun, covered with too much meaningless clutter, things that hide her realness. On her, there has been too much war, division, greed, and mistreatment.

            Where are the sacred spaces? The women that embody the space of love and healing where all good things can find peace, and a place of rest, and restoration?

            Where are the spaces, the human temples, the soul Oasis keepers in the dry desert lands of this world, where we embody the ground itself? A place cleared of our own stuff, so clear crystal spirit can find a dwelling place? Where souls can dip from your well, and find a bit of water before going on?

            Most who embody this energy are shamed, their spaces pillaged.

            It is an energy of being. And it is beautiful, even though many women who do embody this energy, have to clear their ground over, and over again, and again. Or they flee, like refugees, planting trees along their path.

            Our dear earth has been so poisoned.

            So have so many of us.

            And most don't even know it.

            Forced by circumstance to solidify the best, most divine aspects of ourselves into matter, passing the same blueprint on to our children, and thus adding to the illusion of Mia, and the whole earth is subject to the same kind of poisoning. Men, women, children.

            No earth is left untilled.

            No spot safe for naked feet to walk.

            All the edges trimmed.

             All forests, and wild places trimmed, and claimed, with tidy houses, and tidy yards.

            But where are the untrimmed places?

            The nooks?

            The Caves?

            The forests?

            The unplanted fields, fields that have no purpose, except to wander through them.

            Uncharted places, that haven't been explored, or mapped, or dug, or lived on, mined to death.

            The places to gather asparagus where farmers don't poison the edge of the ditches.

            I remember I used to collect pollywogs, and there would be so many toads in the summer, and me and my neighbor friends would gather them to see how many toads we could find.

            Now, I hardly ever see toads.

            I had a favorite Russian olive tree overgrowing one of our ditches. It was a good space. Sometimes I'd climb onto it when the water was in the ditch, and watch water flow below.

            The tree is now gone.

            It got in the way of the ditch.

            I remember crying when they chopped it down.

            I was angry.

            Yet.

            The tree said nothing.

            Yet we tend to carry on the slap, and chop other people's trees down as well. Thinking it has to be done. And we perpetuate the harsh reality we all live in, without realizing that somewhere, beyond the poisoned, chopped, dug up person we feel we are. If we spend time with our mother.

            The earth.

            If we are still.

            We will start to hear the stirrings of our soul. The untouched land. The uncharted territory where there will always be good ground.

             I thought about my mother.

            My mom's hips are very bad, stiff, she has a hard time flexing, or raising her feet very high. Some days she's able to move. Others hardly at all.

            I thought about mother earth

            Just as the earth has been silent. So many rules, wars, cities, and kingdoms have been imposed upon her.

            Though, we seem to all embody this chopping energy, once too many of our trees get chopped down.

                        I thought about myself, and my sister. I thought about the entire world. How very angry, hungry, and desperate we all are to find oil on other people's soil. We rarely are ever still enough to dig our own wells, or plant our own orchards, mine our own gold. Men and women alike are all looking for themselves in other countries. Every single one of us Mother, father, brother, sister, all have been through so very much. So much poison. All our ground has been robbed of its natural goodness. Most of can't see the land the way it really is because each of us have had so much garbage placed on us. Some of us are pieces of land that look like landfills, so covered in trash, not our own. But if we were to look beyond that, we'd see that the soil is still beautiful.

            Each piece of ground is so unique. We all get confused. We judge the ground by what we build on top of the soil, what we grow, or what accumulates on it, never seeing that we are all of the same ground.

            But if you are a real gardener, you know the truth. You can see the soil with eyes that are soft, and with a heart of compassion.  Some ground is totally flat, salty, with no mountains, vast spacious, but dry. On such flats one can drive for miles, and see the sky beautifully.

            Some land is covered in sage brush, and rocks, and holes, and cactus. This land is perfect for the desert lands, where rabbits, and lizards like to live. Here the terrain is wild, and harsh, formed from the sand, and wind, and dry conditions.

            Some land is full of sticky, prickly goat heads, ryegrass, foxtails, and weeds that no feet, or socks should ever traverse through.

            Some land is wet, and mushy, and marshy, full of water birds, cattails, and interesting smelling water, with minnows, and mosquitoes.

             Other land is acidic perfect for growing fruit, and cherries, and peaches, and raspberries, but not other kinds of things.

            Other land is perfect for potatoes, and beans and carrots, and beets, but not grapes, or climbing vines.

            Other land is perfect for dandelions, and milkweeds, that butterflies and bees like to find.

            Some land is wet, and jungley, moist, and rainy, perfect for tropical trees, and grasses, housing all kinds of life, both good and bad.

            Other land is grassy, and hilly, and windy, and rocky.

            Some is cold, and icy, perfect for growing mostly snow, and evergreen trees.

            Some land is perfect farmland, and other lands are not.

            Some lands grow the same thing year, after year, and gradually their soil gets depleted, as they don't know how to rotate their crops.

            Some land is easy, some is hard. Some land seem to respond to love, and drink up water. On other land, the water just sits on top of the soil, and seems to reject any kind of water, or love.

            Some land is rich, and dark, and fertile, full of trees, and grass, and life.

            Yet other lands feels like a wasteland. A war zone where floods, and fires, and rivers, and mudslides have come through.

            Yet...

            We are all just land. Some of us have had all these conditions so we can better understand the souls soils we come across. For land to heal, we know that what it needs most is to rest, maybe a bit of manure, or dead leaves, or something to amend the harsh conditions. Not much. It starts to green up when it is ready.

            Other lands may take years of rest to green up. But that is not for anyone but the land to decide. 

            All of us are very unique soil. The hardest bit for me to learn, has been that, sometimes the only thing we can do for land that has had a lot of prickly patches, and soil that doesn't seem to want care, is to let it be exactly as it is without changing it. To let it be sandy, and beachy, or whatever it is, without digging rows, or thinking that it needs flowers, instead of sticker weeds. This is the trick. To allow without condition the unique soils to be what they are. Who am I to think I know better than the land. To think that the land might like to grow zinnias when it is good at growing wildflowers, or cactus, or rocks.

            Who am I to know what should be? Or what the soil needs, especially if I have not sat with it, been present with it to see its natural rugged beauty. No need for revision.

            Perhaps the goat head weeds are growing there because the ground has been sprayed so much, the soil is angry.

            How do I know what your soil needs? Who am I to think that your soil needs to grow anything at all? As the soil is beautiful, green or not. Rocky, or not. 

            Maybe all our real job in this world is, is to see past our own brushy weeds, and overgrown trees, and junk, and whatever is obscuring our view of our real value, and  bring awareness to that. To see our own soul's spaciousness. To clear our own land. Possess it fully. To be with it, in its isness, without tilling, and planting, and always looking for ways to make things grow faster, and better, so as to add value to ourselves. To know, that beyond what is, and isn't growing, the soul-soil is the same,   Our soil is what is most precious.

            And if we can see that, love our own land, in rest or in action, if can see all countries the same. All land, with compassionate eyes. Give rest to our own soil, and in so doing, create a grid for other people to love their land without condition as well---in all conditions.

            Here, the being is the clearing. Here, the loving is the planting. Here, the allowing what is what makes the soil soft. And in that softness in seeing, in perceiving clearly our own little lot, the beautiful spaces in ourselves, we can see the beauty in each other, despite whatever may be growing, or not growing on the outside, despite the fact that most people can't and don't have the soul space, or capacity to see the value in their own soil, much less anyone else's, and may never see the truth in this lifetime.

            But maybe it's not their job to see.

            Maybe it is the gift of the soil soul seers, to see the value in all real-estate, the 'real' estate of all the kingdoms of all souls.

            A space so beautiful, that once you find it, most action, and endless planting actually diminishes the loveliness of the land. Here you just pause, and listen, and the land will tell you its secrets, it will tell you what it wants. And usually it only wants very little.  Here in the space of you, is where the real oil is found. The beautiful hidden, treasure no one can see.  Right in your own center.

            This is where true peace starts.

            On your own little patch.

            Here. If you are quiet. If you dare to look lazy, and childish. If you can learn to dance to your own rhythms, and play. The wind, and nature itself will do the work for you. It will the uncover the city of your soul, the Atlantis---the holy grail of you.

            Here in your own garden you will find the wisdom school of the ages, here for anyone to harvest, attend and learn from by just stepping onto its soil. 

            People may try and wipe out the mystery. Overrun the land with buildings. To dig up already beautiful growing things.

            To hold up wisdom as something only a few can find.

            Yet. Nothing can wipe out the mystery school of the soul soil.

            Nothing can dig up the roots of the real.

            True wisdom is everywhere to be found, if truly sought.

            Nothing can burn the real. Really.

            The real will always come back stronger, and bigger than before, like a burned forest. The ashes will eventually make the land fertile.

            The strength of the soil. That's what scares people.

            The real mystery. The rebirth of what can never truly die.

            The real mystery school can never be really hidden.

            It can be dormant.

            Winter my nip its branches.

            But the mystery is still there hidden even in winter.

            In plain sight, for those who can see clearly.

            The real mystery can never be taken away from this earth.

            Ever be wiped out, poisoned.

            The students will always come.

            As the mystery school is life itself.

                        Life.

            The greatest mystery school will always be full of students.

            The teachers will always be the best, most qualified for each student.

            We will be schooled in private, in public, and one on one, daily.

            With no breaks, except the breaks that break apart our ego.

            Always it will come at you with another exam.

            A test.

            And it will always be multiple choice.

            And if you don't get it right. Don't worry. You will, no doubt, take it again, sooner or later.

            This mystery school has no building.

             It's open source, as God is. No walls. No ceiling. No roof.

            So you're sure to get leaked on, rained on and stormed on.

            It will give you as much wisdom as you can handle.

            Your karma will be the tuition you pay, but the knowledge will always be free, as Truth is light and free, and giving as nature itself.

            The only requirement to find this mystery.

            Love of the genuine.

            Love of the truth.

            No institutional schools required.

            The only place you need look is deeply your own soul---there you will find all the apocryphal knowledge that you need, buried by layers of your own conditioning.

            Here in your own secret soul you don't have to rely on institutions to tell you about the mysteries. You are the mystery. 

            Life is the mystery.

            Every day it unfolds for you to see something more.

            How beautiful. Just when you think there's nothing else for you to understand, something folds out.

            Here you have direct access to the Spirit. Where all truth comes from in the first place.

            Here, there isn't a tribunal of biased hierarchy translating text that can be used to juice the souls and bodies of their congregations to power their coffers, and covert agendas.

            Here is where the real, raw translation is found, buried in your own monastery.

            The codex of your own soul. The thumbprint of the totality of creation.

            You are Papyrus on which the kingdom is found.

            If something contradicts your truth.

            Your blueprint of you.

            You have every right to disregard, and follow your own map.

            To uncover all the bits of you that have been buried, to find the lost cities, and places where you used to play, to find your greatest enjoyment. To remember and bring to light the scrolls of our deepest loves, and dust them off. To find what makes your soul sing, and do that.

            To uncover the deepest truth of you, and not put your relics in a museum, but to oil the rusty gates, and glue all the bits and pieces of yourself together that have been lost, and broken.

            Here, in these tombs, the burial grounds where your own inquisition covered the best parts of you, must be excavated, and seen anew.

                          Here in the deepest recesses of your self, in the stillness, the ultimate codex is found. The holy grail.

            Few, if any will understand spirits unique language of light, especially as it is so foreign to most. And you might not understand theirs.

            But that's not your business anyway.

            You are the translator of what light you are given to see by.

            And your doing will only work in the now moment.

            Life is the school.

            What do you master?           

            Yourself.

            What kind of degree will you get?

            The kind that requires all papers, and egoic icons of yourself to disappear in a light that needs no distinctions.

            What alter do we go to?

            What man made temple do we visit?

            None, but alter of our own heart that breaks, until it opens and you find the source.

            Your inner ashram where all true holy texts, actions, and deeds are birthed. Where there are no contradictions, or questions of morality. Or justifying actions by the translation of another. Only absolute Love, peace, and harmony, that never deviates from its source. Ever.

            Here you will know.

            In your own consecrated ground you will find the gnosis carefully placed in clay jars to be found, when you are ready. A gnosis that can only be skewed by egoic shadows.

            A gnosis that needs no other translators.

            A map that has been given to every man, written and coded into your dna. 

            Here you need not argue.

            If there is an action. It will come in the moment.

            Always.

            Virgin actions. Where you surrender the fruit of them to a higher power. Like the bagavgita says, where your actions become, merely worship. Nothing else.

            Life.

            The mystery school that teaches everyone perfectly.

            No soul is left without a lesson plan. Here, you grow at your own pace.

            It's no one else's business to hurry you along. Or to tell you that you're slow. Or that your not adept. Or you need to be different than you are. You'll unfold when you unfold. And not a second too soon, or too late.

            This mystery school cannot be wiped out. Try as we might to hide truth. To invert it. To skew maps. To demonize the good. To hold up idols of ourselves and others that keep us always away from the real mystery..

            The library of your own souls DNA will unfold the alphabet of you. And your hidden texts that come to light will always have the correct translation if seen with the eye of spirit that burns away anything that is not real.

            The map.

            Father, mother, son, brother sister, friend.

            All there.

            Inside your own holy of holies.

            The mystery school of the ages.

            Where the mystery is found in the simple places, and the simple spaces. Where you dig deep until you find your true essence, your own sacred earth, beyond the boulders civilizations have placed on you, trying to hide the rawness of your you.

            Where the things you overlooked were where the greatest shafts of light were found.

            And you find the mystery. Your soul.

            That is the greatest mystery of all.

            The real untouched land that is you.

            No one can own that. Or sell it.

            Ever.

            Here is the land of you---The holy grail everyone wants, but no one ever digs deep enough to find.

            Here is the mystery.

The place where you find your true Mother land.

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