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Diggimg out the roots.

"understanding the darkness in yourself is the surest path to seeing it in others..."Carl Jung

We all have parts of ourselves that we believe are unacceptable that we try to hide.  Many also try to deny that each and everyone of us has those pieces of themselves that they don;'t like.  That they have been taught by others, parents, teachers, siblings, peers, is unacceptable to their society.

Unfortunately the more we deny our darkness the more it controls us.  It is only by taking the time and devoting your focus to understanding and embracing  those parts of ourselves that the darkness begins to dissolve and loose its power in our lives.

Once we face and discard those old beliefs about ourselves  we become whole and begin to see the darkness in others and develop the ability to truly turn the darkness into light.

This is the hero's journey.  The call to the quest.  Many people have confused this most important journey with attempting to convince the rest of the world to believe as they do but this is not the true call.

The true call comes from the individual soul to journey deep within oneself to battle the dragons and other monsters that dwell within the hidden caves of each of our psyches.

It is only when the hero has fought these battles that he/she is truly equipped to deal with the darkness in others,

The knowledge of self allows us to acknowledge and understand the motivations of others who try to manipulate and control you for their own purposes.

Self realization leads to self actualization and the ability to lives one's life to the fullest and is the silver shield and magical sword that will allow you to hack through the jungles and dark caverns of life incarnate.

Below is a link that tells a beautiful Native American metaphorical legend about how you must fly into the darkness and rescue the light, not just for yourself but also for others.

http://www.childrenofthesun.net/raven.html

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Carl Jung
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/darkness.html

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Carl Jung
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/darkness.html

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Carl Jung
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/darkness.html

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Carl Jung
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/darkness.html

Seeds

"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."   Joseph Campbell

I asked the Universe "why after all of my searchong for and finding answers to my questions about life do I still feel stuck.

The Universe replied, "you have grown used to being  inert...lazy.

A body at rest stays at rest....unless energy from outside body is applied.

You must seek inspiration which becomes a passion which becomes the driving force that transforms inertia into an explosion.

Whispering leaves.

I asked the Universe. ..

Why do I hear the voice of my soul in whispers and the voices of emptiness as screaming.

The Universe answered "when the rushing of the rapids  overcomes you, you must seek the stillness of the trees."

One finds the wisdom of the soul when they are willing to go deep within themselves and be still. 

"Not until we are lost do we understand ourselves"   Henry David Thoreau

Fruit of the Dreamer

Dreams, hopes and plans, where do they come from?  They come from our soul..They are the voice of our higher selves calling to us to grow and become the highest expression of that self.

Like our newborn selves our drams must be nurtured and protected, because they are easy to kill and quick to die.

Like our newborn selves we must not share our dreams with those that feel threatened by our dreams. Those souls who have allowed their own dreams to die.

Our dreaming reminds them of their own death


We must be cautious who we confess our dreams to...choose wisely  for dreamers die as easily as dreams.

Trust your dreams only to other dreamers whose souls are alive with the music of inspiration and are willing to share the road less traveled with you.

The Seasons of Growth

         True life is lived when tiny changes occur. Leo TolstoyThe changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.  Leo Tolstoy

Becoming the person you want to be seems to be an uphill journey.  Always pushing the limits of confidence and fear of success.  I say fear of success rather than failure because for me success is more fear inducing than failure.  Failure can be so much easier.

Like the law of physics that state a body in motion stay in motion and a body at rest stays at rest until energy is applied.  How does one initiate the change one wants to be.  Some say fake it til you make it and I personally have had success with this idea.  Others say this idea has faults.  That others will recognize your inner lack of confidence. 

I believe its not really a matter of faking it...you;re not really faking it , its practice.  Its like learning any new skill, you have to start somewhere.  A musician doesn't start out playing concertos,  she starts out learning to play the scales.

Fruit of the Tree

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically.
We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly.
We grow partially. We are relative.
We are mature in one realm, childish in another.
The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward,
forward, or fix us in the present.
We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
-Anais Nin 


Each apple on every tree in every orchard for all of the time that apple trees have existed is unique.  No two pieces of fruit are the same.  Each an individual expression of the tree's desire to create, not perfection, but diversity.

The tree accepts that it has no control over the season.  It will have no power to control the frost, the rain or sunshine it receives.  So, in order to continue the existence of its DNA it creates as much diversity as it can.  Knowing that it is diversity and not perfection that will give it the best chance to do this.

One apple may have thicker skin to resist insects better.  One apple may be shaped to catch the best rays of sunshine in cloudy weather.  Each idiosyncrasy exists for a highly developed purpose.

If each tree was able to reproduce only one perfect type of fruit the species would soon cease to exist. Nature's goal is diversity not perfection.

This is why we must seek our own diverse truths.  We must prune away our mangled branches and discover how we can best express our individual voices.

It is in the work of seeking our own truths that we make space for others to seek their truth.When we raise our vibration we are like tuning forks for others around us.

 As seekers we all eventually realize that the only person we need to really understand is ourselves and when we discover that the most important approval is our own we begin to set higher standards for ourselves.

True power is internal not external...

Pruning Tools

"The biting chill of the winter has left the wind, it has become softer and I can feel the promise of spring.  The orchard will soon be in full bloom."

Once we have figured out that we were told who we are by people who didn't know who they were we are then faced with responsibility to become who we were meant to be.

How do we do this?  This is the hero's journey.  The quest of life, to discover how to best express our uniqueness in the time and space we are allotted. 

The most difficult part of this can be leaving  people behind. Those people that may have at one time been integral parts of our lives but who now become threatened by our desire to grow. They want us to stay the same so they can stay the same.  Growth takes work and many are unwilling to do the work.  Our willingness to grow makes them uncomfortable being them. As painful as it is these people will become less important parts of our lives and their voices are replaced by voices we discover when we seek inspiration.

It must be said that great discretion must be used when we first begin this quest.  Mind and heart can easily be deceived,  we must always trust our gut reaction, which has nothing to do with emotion but it is that deep knowing of our souls.  We must not seek approval from others .  We must seek approval from our soul.  When we love and respect ourselves we make choices that reflect that respect and are less easily deceived.  

The Universe has supplied many tools and signposts to help us on our journey. When we trust this journey these signs become obvious everywhere. Three that I have found indispensable are Joseph Campbell, John Bradshaw, and a book called A Course in Miracles.

Pruning

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

Liberty Hyde Bailey

I asked the question "How do I become the change I believe in?"  The Universe answered "You must prune your tree.  Cut out all the dead and decaying branches for they steal energy from your fruit and make your orchard susceptible to wind storms.

When we choose to incarnate into this dimension of existence we are born completely dependent on our caregivers for life.  The perception of a newborn is that if its parents fail them they will die.  Parental connection is a life and death matter. An infant must put complete trust in their parents.  As we all know human parents often fail this trust. As we grow more and more people in our lives fail us.  We begin to loose trust of the world and realize that it is full of dangers. We see ourselves reflected in our families and realize we also fail and we loose trust in ourselves.

Mathematicians have calculated the chance of each of us being here and now .  It is one in 400,000,000,000,000.  Each of us is a miracle.  Our responsibility is to share our specialness with the world.  We are all a manifestation of the perfection of the Universe.  Our individuality is our gift to the world.

Learn to trust yourself.  Forget who you have been told you are and become who you know you were meant to be.

Prune your dead branches by discovering your true self and graft in new ideas by surrounding yourself with people that also want to be a part of the change.

The fruit of our labor

I asked the question "why is it so hard to become the change I believe in?"

The Universe answered, if the tree is planted in depleted rocky soil that makes becoming a sturdy productive plant difficult, it creates a low expectation.

Sociologist, anthropologists, and psychologists say our idea of who we are is given to us by our culture, society and primary relationships.  This socialization happens in different cultures and in all species.  Our family's teach us who we are by how they respond to us.We grow up believing that our true selves are unacceptable.

We only really become mature when we realize that we must return to our inner self and rediscover who we were meant to be and become that person.  We must stop living  life within the words of a script that was written for us  by people who  hated themselves but claimed to love us

Stop expecting the fruit of your soul to be worthless. Figure out what the highest expression of yourself is and live it.

Neuroscientists who once believed that the brain stopped growing with physical maturity now know that the brain, if maintained, continues to grow throughout life.  It is always possible no matter how old we grow to become a new person.

We must go through the dirty business of transplanting our selves into nutrient rich soil, replacing our inherited antiquated ideas of who we are with the belief that we can be whomever we choose at any given moment.

We must begin to see ourselves as the person we want to be before we can become that person.

Why an Orchard?

When I asked to understand how I could trust the Universe when my experience of this world had not taught me to trust but to doubt.

The answer I received was that the Universe was the tree and the world was the fruit. That the quality of fruit, was the responsibility of the pomologist [orchard keeper].

We each perceive the world as individuals, but our collective beliefs and actions resulting from these beliefs create the world we live in, the orchard.

My expectations of the fruit from the  tree will determine how I care for my orchard.  If I water, prune nourish, protect from pests, maybe even play music for, my tree it will bare delicious crops throughout life.  If I expect that the tree will bare rotten fruit, let it become infested with worms and bugs, overgrown with choking weeds, it will.

Is it the tree's fault?  Has the tree betrayed me? No...it was my expectation of the value of the fruit that was the culprit.