Since we began sending Gaia Knows Best out into the world ( our gift with any order until at least 2023), we have been hearing back from you about your experiences sharing this Essence in your world. All you have shared with us is so precious, and we thank you for your notes, letters and today, photographs. We love thinking of so many of you dear ones giving back to Gaia by putting Gaia Knows Best Flower Essence in places on her. At least a couple times a day, we cry happy tears, feel shivers up our spines and find ourselves awash in gratitude to be part of this circle of healing. WOW! Thank you!
If you would like to send us photos of where you have shared Gaia Knows Best, I will post these photos in another blog ( or blogs). Here are the two photos we received today from one of you Beloveds who lives in Aquinah on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
One other thing I wanted to share with you. As I passed the Gaia Knows Best garden one afternoon this week (probably with a wheelbarrow of mulch), I heard singing. Awash in tears yet again, I stopped to listen to the song. It was Gaia singing to all of you sharing this Essence. When I asked Gaia what was going on, she said you could all listen in your hearts and hear her singing to you. It may feel like just your imagination but it’s not. Gaia is singing to YOU.
Welcome Dear Friends to the annual meandering news from Green Hope Farm!
If meandering is not your cup of tea, in brief, the Venus Garden Flower Essence for 2022 is GAIA KNOWS BEST. It is a GIFT and a bottle of this Essence will be included with all orders. Mother Earth asks you to put drops of this Flower Essence in places on her where you feel called to put drops. This will help heal and uplift her and support us all to co-create a New Earth..
The second thing is that this growing season, as you shared with us your concerns and hopes, a group of Roses stepped forward to explain their timely support for these concerns. The qualities they embody and share via their Flower Essences are described by them as already within you. These Rose Flower Essences’ gift is to help you access these strengths as your very own.
Building from what you requested, here is a list of the Rose Flower Essences and the strengths they help you access from within yourself.
If you wish to get any of these Rose Flower Essences, please order the Flower Essence by name of the Rose not the topic. The Going Inward Rose Collection is also offered as a set for $120.
ONE REASON FLOWER ESSENCES HELP
Flowers become themselves. A Zinnia seed does not grow into a Daisy plant. Flowers have no interest in becoming something they are not. They remain ever true to themselves.
Flower Essences help us be like the Flowers and become who we are. They don’t thwart our process of self actualization or take us in rogue directions. They waste no time encouraging us to be what we aren’t. Instead, they help us let go of anything that blocks our unfolding into our true and authentic self. Often these blocks are limiting ideas we hold about ourselves.
The process of becoming our authentic self is a letting go as we are asked to let go of definitions that we thought helped us know who we are. Flower Essences reveal we are always much bigger than these self definitions. By releasing self definitions, we experience our vast and timeless self beyond duality and limitation. Flower Essences help us do this work.
A SUMMER OF “I DON’T KNOW”
This year’s growing season of virtually no rain and baking heat was a big shift from last year when in July alone we received nine inches of rain. In fact, our extremely hot and dry summer was different than any in the last four decades here. We also heard from many of you about extreme and unfamiliar weather. Farming always requires flexibility amidst unexpected variables and an acceptance of very different outcomes. This summer was a particularly unpredictable adventure.
The season started with a bang or rather a crash. Our enormous thirty year old arbor and centerpiece of the Arbor Garden collapsed in a big wind. To rebuild or not rebuild? That was the question. Every day I spent time in the garden space, open to what the garden wanted. Like all land, these gardens have their own destiny. I get to be a part of that destiny but not in charge of it. The cooling shade and feeling of sanctuary provided by the old Arbor was gone, yet with the arbor removed (a big messy project!) the surrounding gardens, long in deep shade, were now open, sunny spaces. Elsewhere in the gardens our perennial beds have filled in with trees and shrubs making these gardens much shadier. This gave the suddenly sunny Arbor Garden a certain appeal. A small arbor that survived the blowdown looked surprisingly happy and easily managed the now pruned grapevines. Its presence meant we could still call the Essence we make from this garden, The Arbor Garden, regardless of whether we built a new arbor. One day I knew the garden wanted to be left open. The loss of the Arbor had proven expansive and liberating to the space. I was glad I waited patiently in an “I don’t know.” state of mind. So was Jim who was happy not to add the construction of a new arbor to his long list of farm projects.
No rain fell for several months. What guidance did we receive to help the gardens through this time? The guidance was a single word I am deeply familiar with: MULCH. Building, nourishing and protecting soil with mulch has long been a focus, but this summer my Angelic and Elemental partners upped the game and had me put 20 cubic yards of bark mulch on the Flower gardens and umpteen bales of mulch hay on the three main vegetable gardens. If you want a visual on 20 cubic yards of bark mulch, it filled two industrial size dump trucks. My back can also give you more information. Every garden was top dressed with the nutritionally dense compost we make, organic soil amendments and then hay or bark mulch. Green Hope Farm is an organic farm so no pesticides, glyphosates or chemical fertilizers are used.
As one blistering hot day followed another, I questioned my feeling of calm. Was it nuts that I trusted the Angels and Elementals’ regenerative agricultural processes would help the gardens manage this extreme weather? I decided to remain confident. After all, the intelligence in Nature has been managing an ever changing planet for a very long time.
We still did some rain dances, talked about rain constantly, searched the two week forecast for predictions of rain and waxed poetic about last year’s rainy summer. I watered only when guided to water which was very infrequently. In conversations with my Angelic and Elemental partners, I stayed alert to any new way they wanted me to use my hands and feet for the team. Together we explored how we can co-create and heal the Earth in shifting circumstances.
In the end, it was one chubby woodchuck named Reginal Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom who caused more distress in the gardens than the drought. You can check out Reginald’s report in a September 21, 2022 blog if you want to read about his successful plundering of the main vegetable garden. Everywhere else, mulch made a huge difference. Even the potatoes that love a wet summer managed to produce a good crop under their foot of mulch hay. Much to our surprise, one crop actually liked the dry heat. This crop was our beloved Red Shiso. Last week the staff goddesses and I cut and hung the crop to dry, and it was a magnificent harvest of deep purple and abundantly ruffled plants. It was our best harvest in many years.
Red Shiso early in the season. The Calendulas didn’t mind the heat either.
Doing what we could to manage the extreme weather then waiting in the unknown to see if our efforts would be enough had finished with experiences of hope. Our gardens had not become dustbowls because they all had “skin.” Plants had survived, not because of pesticides and petroleum based products, but because the soil was bio-diverse and alive with worms, bacteria, bugs, fungus and other forms of life that made the soil healthy enough to support life under arduous conditions. Efforts we made together were met with a response that revealed the powerful healing and adaptive capacity of Mother Earth. May we all move forward listening to her wisdom and letting go of our mistaken ideas that humans alone know best.
The Venus Garden is the center of our vibrational work at the farm. Since 1993, this beloved garden with its ever shifting designs ( and names! ) has resulted in deeply healing Flower Essences of a very high vibration. The Venus Garden is the keystone of the whole farm and our work in the world. I consider it our finest co-creation at Green Hope Farm (though our resident groundhog, Reginald Montgomery Hogbottom, would feel differently. He prefers a garden with more edibles). Each year us humans and our Angelic and Elemental partners build from all we have learned together in past gardens to create a relevant and healing garden and accompanying Flower Essence.
Our co-creative process has its own rhythm. The Autumn Equinox marks our harvest of the previous season’s learning lessons. At this point, the Angels hear from us humans as part of their process of figuring out where to take the gardens in the following year. During the darkest time of year, the Angels withdraw to plan how to take the farm forward in its evolution. Their plans for all the gardens including the Venus Garden are ready for us humans after the Winter Solstice. I look forward to the Winter Solstice for many reasons. One of them is because it is always very exciting to find out what the plan is for the coming year’s Venus Garden. It gives me a glimpse of the season’s focus and just plain inspires me for another growing season.
In January of this year, I settled down in all seriousness to receive the precise design for this year’s Venus Garden. As with all the gardens here, I expected to receive the design from the Angelic architects of form per usual. However this year came with a lovely twist. From the first meeting, Mother Earth was more involved in the actual planning of the garden than I had known her to be before. It appeared that this was HER garden in a more specific way than ever before. In many meetings, I sat with the Angels overlighting Green Hope Farm and Mother Earth to transcribe their input about the design. I started off not knowing anything and the knowing came from these precious partners.
Nature has more perspective than I do about what is needed in the gardens to create healing spaces and healing Flower Essences and to serve Gaia in the best way we can. This means I have always been completely happy to give over the designs to Nature. In the beginning, I saw this as reflecting my appropriate “less than” status in the partnership. I thought my partners were just being nice when they said I mattered and was an equal partner. With great patience, they spent years reminding me that my notions of inferiority were as false as human’s more common notions of superiority. In point of fact, we are all one. To bring home their point, they had us create Flower Essences that would help me grow into experiencing our onenness. Endless synchronicities in and out of the gardens and wonderful dreams also showed me our indivisibility.
As I moved towards a greater experience of us as one, I saw my divisive ideas were simply hogwash. First of all, oneness can’t actually have more or less valuable parts because in oneness we are all one. Additionally, we may all have different roles, but that doesn’t make any one of us more or less valuable.
I have come to realize that humans working in partnership with the Angels and Elementals of Nature is going to become the natural order of things. Together we can co-create more expansive and powerful healing spaces in Nature than when our human illusions of inferiority, superiority and separation take us out of the co-creative process. The future will be co-creation, and it will be fantastic.
To get back to this year’s Venus Garden, while some years the number of Flowers in the Venus Garden is limited, this year’s design included a very large number of different Flowers. With my partners looking over my shoulder, I spent hours pouring through seed catalogs to find the specific varieties required. What a moment of delight when I knew I had found all the seeds.
In March, the office and greenhouse spilled over with germinating seed flats. They were everywhere! By April our new hoop house was packed with baby plants for this garden. What a treat to have a hoop house once again thanks to former staffer Rex Miller and Jim. In early June, after the danger of frost had passed, Green Hope Farm friend Kathy Skolem and I planted the garden. The complex design included twelve distinct wedges, each containing sections of specific Flowers, all circling an inner sanctum of high climbing Flowers. It was one of the more complex designs we’ve planted. Kathy and I were very happy (and tired) when we had everything in the ground per the precise directions of our Angelic and Elemental partners.
Flowers planted included Dorothy Eckford White Sweet Pea, Milky Way Morning Glory, Holy Basil, Genovese Basil, Sweet Alyssum, Rocket White Snapdragons, Mehera Marigolds, Marine Blue Heliotrope, Verbena Bonariensis, White Gomphrena, Moldavian Dragonhead, White and Purple “Leda” Ageratum, Italian Purple Eggplant, White Peruvian Four O’Clocks, many varieties of White Zinnias including Polar Bear, White Wedding, Benary Giant White and Oklahoma White, Woodland “Only the Lonely” Nicotiana, Moonshadow Hyacinth Bean, Starlight Dancer Nicotiana, Jasmine Nicotiana, Belle Blanche Datura, White Queen Cleome, Horehound, Sage, White Cosmos BonBon and Purity Cosmos, Blue, White and Violet Bachelor Buttons including Select Ultraviolet, Krausa and Italian Large Leaf Parsley and Milkmaid Nasturtiums.
After we finished planting the garden, we stood back to admire our work and water in the plants. At this point, much to our surprise, we were asked not to go in the garden for the rest of the growing season. Gaia said complete sanctuary was what she needed to create this garden and a new healing Essence. From then on, there was no weeding or deadheading. Flowers came and went with many Flowers arriving of their own accord. These volunteers included Mustard, Belerephon of the Open Door, Dandelion, Blue Vervain, Mallow, Ajuga, Mexican Poppy, Bells of Ireland, Cosmos Picotee, Cosmos Sonata, Nicotiana Perfume in shades of pink, Coral Pink and Red Wine Zinnias. These plants shifted a white and purple garden on paper to one that included a rainbow of colors. When I walk by any garden, I routinely deadhead any spent blossoms and pull any weed I see. It took great concentration for me not to step into the garden. We were not even to lean over into its airspace! I only goofed once to deadhead a Cosmos. Sorry about that Gaia!
The garden gave Gaia a chance to express herself in a co-creative framework of us planting exactly what she wanted exactly as she wanted it. This is different than what can happen for her in a wilderness free of humans or in a setting where humans are not listening. Humans, in this instance, gave Gaia the opportunity to express herself in an innovative and new way. Like the Rose window of a cathedral, Gaia’s light flowed out of her through a garden mandala designed by her and worked by humans per her specifications. It was a vibrational model for what is possible when humanity and Nature work in conscious partnership. One day she said, “I am your mother, but I need the relationship to evolve. I wants to co-create the next chapter with humanity.”
This co-creative project was full of surprises. Over the growing season, I saw my ideas about what Mother Earth would want in her garden were misinformed. She welcomed various grasses and other weeds I considered messy and invasive. These newcomers in no way bothered the Flowers we had planted but seamlessly joined the space. I watered the garden once in a while, mostly because I wanted to connect with the space. The garden kept its serenity regardless of scorching heat. Once Gaia asked Kathy, who is a wonderful singer, to sing the garden a song. It was a beautiful heartfelt moment as Kathy sang, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” The rest of the time, it was my enthusiastic but not very talented singing that filled the air. It was very hard not to burst into song when near this garden. This was something Gaia seemed to love even when it was me forgetting the words to a song or singing off key. The back and forth reflected the flow of love from this garden which filled our hearts which would then spill back over into grateful song. That’s another thing, Gaia is not a perfectionist. She just wants us to try. My song was enough.
Yes, even as weeds proliferated, and nothing was tidied, the garden’s energy blew our socks off. Gaia certainly DID know best! Even now, after the Fall Equinox and first heavy frost, the garden broadcasts an intense feeling of sweetness and love, palpable and holy. Sometimes tears as well as song come as I walk by this garden. Along with sweetness is a calm certainty radiating from the garden that all will be well.
Mother Earth named her Essence, Gaia Knows Best. This garden was a refresher course reminding me I do not know what Mother Earth needs to heal, but Mother Earth does. This garden helped me listen more deeply and hopefully leave behind some “know it all” ideas I didn’t know I had.
And now, Gaia graces us with a chance to help her. She asked us to give the Flower Essence from this garden as a gift to all of you when you order so that you can share it with her wherever you live. She created a Flower Essence that will bring her solace, comfort and healing each time you share drops in other places on her surface. It will also ground a co-creative vibration where it is dropped and open wide the door for more co-creative endeavors. We send this Essence, Gaia Knows Best, to you with love and gratitude for your support of our dear Mother wherever you live or roam.
GAIA speaks: “Take comfort in the truth that I DO know best. Let go of your ideas and let me take myself and all you passengers forward. I know it has been a bumpy ride. It will remain so for a time to come, but I know what I am doing. All will be well.
It is a precious gift to me for you to share this Essence with places where you live and visit. I ask you to follow your promptings about where to drop these drops. These promptings are messages from me. In moving my Essence around my whole surface, a network of light is amplified. We heal together, and in the act of sharing this Essence, you support me more than you can know and solidify our unity of consciousness and purpose.”
A TIMELY RUMI POEM
As I began to write about Gaia Knows Best, I found these lines from a poem,
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
These lines felt so expressive of Gaia’s Essence as each time a drop is dropped, it will be a different way to kiss the ground and express our love. When I went to find out who the poet was, I discovered it was 13th century Persian poet Rumi. I also found the whole poem.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty / and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study / and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. / Let the beauty we love be what we do. / There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Somehow Rumi so accurately expresses our times with its collective distractions and stuck knowledge in counterpoint to the opportunity to be a sacred, beautiful and loving expression of the present. Since Rumi was God realized, the poem feels particularly encouraging and optimistic. The Roses also share this abiding optimism that even though things appear to be a total mess with not much clarity about where we are going, we can and will find our way using strengths already within us.
Grace Rose who initiated the Rose project
THE ROSES STEP FORWARD
The Angels frequently remind me that when people are confused, it can be easier for them to move forward in their spiritual evolution. I suspect this means we made a lot of steps forward this year!!! Yet the thing is, confusion still leaves us feeling confused. At one point, as the staff goddesses discussed how we weren’t at all sure what you needed, because for goodness sake, we weren’t sure what we needed, we decided to ask for your input. What issues pressed in upon you? What were you looking for? How best could we help you? From many wonderful conversations, we built a list of strengths and virtues that you wanted support to embody.
Much to our surprise and delight, as areas of concern came into focus, the Roses stepped forward to say this was their time to help you shine. What they said next echoes in my heart still. The Roses explained that each of us exists beyond the limits of our self definitions in complete timeless possession of the virtues and strengths required right now. Accessing these gifts is not a becoming something we are not, but an inward discovery and remembering of who we have always been and always will be.
Ispahan Rose
WHY ROSES?
Most Flowers come into incarnation on Earth to evolve and raise their vibrations in the milieu of duality. They do this to be part of the great experiment of Earth and to give us role models to raise our own vibrations.
Roses are different. Roses come into incarnation in a vibration beyond duality, aligned only with their unified experience of self as Divinity. In this way they are both a glimpse of where we are going and footholds for us to rise up into our untarnished soul.
Our mistaken self definitions bind us and keep us in artificial dramas on stage set Earth. Roses pokes holes in the stage set as well as in our mistaken self definitions. They dissolve away our attachment to the unreal and set us free to experience who we always have been, who we are now and who we will always be i.e. Divinity in a sea of Divinity. To put it more succinctly, Roses restore us to ourselves. How on Earth do they do this?
As the Roses stepped forward to be the wayshowers of the season, they explained that they help us find our divine and imperishable inner strengths much as a flashlight finds its target in the dark. It is not a creating but an illuminating. For example, when we work with Margaret Merrill Rose to access CALM, we are not pulling in calm from outside ourselves but finding the CALM that was always within us.
On the next pages, specific Roses share the strengths and virtues they want to help us access from within ourselves with their Essences. Each Rose wanted a brief explanation of its healing intentions to clarify the timely strengths it helps you access. Roses, like all Flowers, bring forward their strengths in accordance with our needs. These Roses heard your call.
Again, if you want any of these Rose Flower Essences, order them by the name of the Rose or order The Going Inward Rose Set to receive the whole group.
Alec Mackenzie Rose
ROSES AND THE FIGURE EIGHT
Before specific Roses are mentioned, there is one more thing. As we move our energy in the world, consider the figure eight. I’ve previously written about the figure eight as a symbol of how to bring things into manifestation. Now the Roses want us to consider how the eight also represents us going inward to our eternal self to refresh and restore ourselves and access parts of our bigger self in specific ways and then naturally flow back into the world expressing our bigger self and the qualities that make us who we are. The Roses want to support us in this inward and outward flow process.
Crumbling institutions and the “powers that were” would have us forget our own volition and our own powers of alchemy and transformation. This Rose snaps us out of that daze to remember we are powerful alchemists, able to transform lead into gold. Alchymist Rose roots us in an expansive self identity in which we know our inner power to radically heal and transform ourselves, and in every way, participate in the co-creation of a new Earth.
With so many outside forces clamoring to push us into pockets of group think, this Rose helps us ignore the hubbub and seek the steadfast grounding of our own true self. Wild Rose knows there is nothing more important than knowing who we are, so it escorts us inward to an expansive and liberating experience of this.
No matter how chaotic the outer circumstances of our lives, when we go inward, we find an eternal wellspring of stillness and calm. This Rose inspires us to breathe, let go of the surface circumstances and deep dive into this inner wellspring of calm.
Right now, as we experience so many things falling apart, Alex Mackenzie Rose helps us find our courage and inner fortitude to change what we must change and choose a new course with fearless determination. This Rose shines a light on our inner capacity to do what we are called to do and reminds us we have the inner strength to persevere and even flourish, no matter the external circumstances.
In times gone by we could live a life anchored in institutional values, requiring few individual choices or shifts. Direction, positive or negative, was provided by the surrounding culture. These externals have proven impermanent. Now disconnected from collapsing guideposts and confronted by a lot of half baked new ones, we must choose our own way amidst a cacophony of divergent opinions, few of which suggest a heartfelt way forward.
So how do we choose our direction? Ispahan Rose helps us go inward to access our inner compass that knows how to proceed in alignment with a more timeless experience of ourselves. It anchors us in an inner place where we can calmly and confidently sort things out and find our authentic way forward.
Whereas I often do not know why a Rose has the strengths it does, Ispahan’s purpose feels rooted to its source. Ispahan Rose comes from the ancient Persian city of the same name, Ispahan. Once the midpoint on the Silk Road and considered the center of the world, Ispahan was an extremely progressive city, integrating many cultures yet clear in its sense of self. This remains our charge in this time; to welcome different points of view then choose our way with confidence and acceptance of other viewpoints. Let Ispahan help you!
At her forty fifth reunion from college, Julia Child towered above her classmates. But it wasn’t her height or her fame which struck me as I watched her go by in an alumnae parade. It was her infectious joy that made her standout. Like sunshine in our midst, she glowed with an enthusiasm for life. How appropriate that this deep yellow Rose was named for her. As a Flower Essence, Julia Child Rose pulls us inward to find our own unquenchable enthusiasm for life. We too have a wellspring of happiness within us that knows the value of life and loves life regardless of its challenges. Anchored in this wellspring, Julia Child’s inner light lit the world. We too can anchor in our imperishable self, access our genuine and spontaneous delight in the living of life and let it shine as Julia did.
The collapse of the old is the birth of the new. Amidst the drama of the collapse, it can be hard to feel the reality of the new. This Rose Essence pulls us into our center which can dismantle our conviction that the endings stand alone. This Rose is a particular balm to those for whom the losses have stacked up. It quietly supports us to keep the faith and trust the flickers of new life and hope we feel within us.
Golden Wings Rose describes itself as a secret weapon that cuts us free of the binding of fear. Could there be any more helpful support as where there is fear there is no love.
While Rosa Glauca helps us see our external world with clarity and focus, it also helps us look inward to focus on our imperishable inner divinity as well. Rosa Glauca quips, ‘It’s no joke that “what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
We necessarily seek a new way to live on Earth as institutions and circumstances we once considered permanent crumble and collapse. With fewer external pillars of society to revere or reject, we must build a new foundation from an inner experience of who we are versus an outer one. Ancient Rosa Gallica helps us anchor in this internal experience of true self as foundation, a foundation so much stronger and more imperishable than anything we could ever find in the external world.
This does not mean that Rosa Gallica dismisses the external world and our work in it as insignificant. Once we are grounded in an authentic foundation of self, Rosa Gallica helps us connect this foundation to Mother Earth’s grid so we relate to her as an inseparable part of our being. This dissolves patriarchal illusions of duality that would see us as separate and at odds with our planet.
I grew Grace Rose because of my grandchild, Grace. I thought it would be nice for her to have a Rose in the garden bearing her name. When Grace Rose first bloomed in all her ruffled peachiness, it stopped me in the garden to gently straighten me out about a couple things. Grace Rose pointed out that I had diminished the significance of her presence to her name. Grace Rose reminded me she existed in the gardens as the embodiment of grace, that all pervading Divine reality of love freely given. This conversation brought me up short. I hadn’t acknowledged the reality of the Rose or the reality of the grace she embodied either.
Grace Rose reminded me that grace is the inner reality that makes all things possible. It is a forgiving love which moves us beyond duality to love itself. It both oils the wheels of change and is the matrix of change. While grace is inseparable from our being, we sometimes lose track of its presence. This Rose helps us feel the grace of our circumstances and feel the grace of the omnipresent and personal love of Divinity that is with us always.
FJ as I call her, journeys us inward to experience the power of the small and simple things to bring joy. She ignites and expands any kernel of happiness in our memories or in our daily lives into a flood of renewing joy. She helps us feel this anytime, anywhere and regardless of circumstances.
Battered and bruised by uncivil dialog and stormy change, we all could use some kindness. Sarah van Fleet Rose anchors us in our inner kindness which brings a balm of healing both to ourselves and to those we encounter.
When we face any question or dilemma, Henri Martin Rose helps us patiently hang in an “I don’t know” space until a genuine knowing sweeps through us.
This waiting game may feel uncomfortable to us because we all grew up in patriarchy. This patriarchal mindset encouraged us to believe us humans are separate from and better than the rest of creation and the sole possessors of a de facto knowledge superior to anything else on offer in the cosmos. As children we were expected to learn the approved knowledge of our cultures in order to be part of this superior group of know it alls. Just as the Rumi poem says, we were taught to think we were empty and had to go to the study to fill up on recorded “knowledge.”
Where do answers come if we wait in not knowing? In this summer of unknowns, I’ve thought a lot about how often answers come to us after we’ve put the problem down and gone off to do something else. When we put the problem down, we accept not knowing, and then there is nothing in the way of the answers coming from oneness. While this may feel like no more than a giving up, when we let go of our problems, we’ve trusted in the oneness and out of this comes our answers. This oneness is the infinite self within us that is indivisible with everything and therefore tapped into a knowing far beyond the limitations of patriarchal knowledge.
Each night before I go to sleep I ask for help to let go of everything but my connection to my inner Divinity. So much of what I need to let go of are things I think I know because the culture told me it is so. Experiencing self as inseparable from everything requires letting go of all these bindings.
When we trust life and our inseparable part in it, we don’t need to “push the river.” We can wait peacefully in not knowing. Unknowing and knowing are part of the whole like the inbreath and the outbreath. We accept the answer will be found within us just like the question was. We rest in the truth that we have always been an indivisible part of an all knowing universe. We don’t have to be a separate someone or hold onto a separate frame of reference to have the answer we need. We already are the question and the answer. It’s all flow. The practice of just being in a place of not knowing reveals everything we need to know has always been within us.
Henri Martin Rose has always described itself as Bear Medicine. Bears live a cycle of being in the external world of unknowns, then going inward to hibernate in dreamtime to access the knowing of their bigger selves. Like the figure eight which the Roses talked about, Bears flow into spirit then return to express spirit in their waking physical lives. It is a seamless unity. Henri Martin Rose helps us with this. Knowing and not knowing move beyond duality into one state of being. It’s all Beauty, Love, Oneness.
This is a difficult and chaotic time, but it is not a purposeless one. Rosa Mundi restores us to this perspective in so many ways. First she helps us feel there is purpose beneath the dramas both in our individual lives and also collectively. We may not understand what the purpose is, but we can still feel there is a purpose. She also anchors us in knowing we are spiritual beings having a physical experience and not visa versa. Perspective is easier to maintain when we know we are in the world but not of the world. Perspective also frees us to do what we can with all our hearts yet let go of the idea that results define us. Rosa Mundi knows only Divinity defines us. Additionally when the plot is over the top, she helps us ground in the inner knowing that earth plane drama is not reality. We exist safely in Divinity and always will.
In this time when nothing much goes according to plan, we frequently need to find our inner resilience so we can go with the flow. Red Rugosa Rose helps us reclaim our inner skills to go with the flow and ride out the storms.
Resilience is essential right now. Being resilient is so much more useful than getting what we want. Deep diving into our pool of inner resilience frees us in a way that getting what we want never does.
The invasive technology that permeates our external world isn’t going to disappear of its own accord, and sadly it often leaves us prickly and defensive. Goldfinch Rose helps us find the inward place of imperishable tranquility and softness, no matter the invasive electrical and societal pressures of the modern world. We need and deserve this soft place. Thank goodness it is there waiting for us.
Roses encourage us on an inward versus outward journey. Take the Mary Rose for example. First of all, she helps us house clean our hearts. This makes room for us and for the pure vibrations of Divinity to live as one in our hearts.
The Mary Rose also loosens our attachment to an analysis of life based on external events. She ushers us gently inward to inhabit our souls where we naturally let go of any framework of judgment based on external events. In the sanctuary of our hearts, we know our soul remains untarnished no matter what happens to us. In the sanctuary of the heart we know all is well, we are safe and we can trust life.
If we were to fully grasp the vibrational truth of just one thing, this might be the most important one to grasp: We are not separate from Divinity. You and I are not we but one.
In closing I would like to thank you dear Green Hope Farm friends. How much sweeter our world is because of all of you. You shower us in love, you share your lives with us in such a heartfelt way, you are kind when we need kindness and you help us evolve. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And to you dear Green Hope Farm Staff Goddesses- Vicki Ramos-Glew, Jen Lenz, Sam Heaton, Elizabeth Sheehan, Emily McNamara, Anna Wolke, Sydney Johnstone and Indigo Copp. I thank you dear ones for your love, zest, humor, curiosity, creativity, dedication, patience, thoughtfulness, initiative, focus and just plain hard work. You showed such grace under pressure amidst our technology challenges this year and in every way rode with the adventure which is Green Hope Farm with wonderful panache.
Love also to all the animals we get to know kindness of your stories and photos and a special shout out to our canine office mates, Bailey the sweetest pup ever and dear Sheba who just can’t start a morning without a bit of a bark. XOX, Molly
Report from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019 Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022
This season I took up the challenge of life in the main vegetable garden of Green Hope Farm, a quaint little outfit in the hills of the ‘shire (New Hampshire to those of you from distant parts).
Until I did my own sleuthing, I was not confident in the advisability of this garden choice as I had heard the people on the property preferred Flowers to vegetables and had a dog that liked to bark at rodents.
Arriving at the property in early July, after a bit of a lettuce binge at an old stomping ground, I was quick to discover the dog was half my size and preferred chasing my brethren, the squirrels, to chasing woodchucks. While we never became closely acquainted, I could always count on this canine to provide an afternoon’s entertainment as she unsuccessfully pursued every squirrel to cross her path and many that didn’t.
As far as the Flower to Vegetable ratio, it was no problem. The gardener seemed to plant a lot of
everything.
As you know I am famous for my books, “Low Hanging Fruit” and “How to Ravage a Vegetable Garden Without Even Trying” in which I share my tricks as a fearless gourmand and Woodchuck influencer. Given the popularity of these and my other books, I knew you, my loyal readers, would expect me to try some new antics this season to create fodder for my next effort in print. Additionally my agent and publisher are after me for a sequel. With these pressures in mind, I had no choice but to up my game.
My first daring and original move was to dig my den in the center of the farm’s vegetable garden. Yes, the headgerow beckoned as a safer alternative but I was determined to set the bar high. The silly gardener made this possible because she had a sort of dome like structure in the middle of the garden. I learned it was a fort for grandchildren as climbing vines covered the dome each season making it a nice retreat for little people on the loose. What is it with gardeners and the way they waste space?
But back to my story, I tucked the entrance to my den under Artichoke leaves and various vine leaves and as close as possible to the arching poles that created the dome. This clever camouflage job meant my hole evaded notice for several weeks. I got remarkably cozy in my new den and had a chance to catch up on some correspondence. The WiFi signal from the farm house worked fine for my tablet.
Of course, I left my den for frequent snacks. I am known for my restraint in eating only three meals a day with snacks, but still, this does impact a vegetable garden. I could only wonder who she thought was “thinning the beet greens.”
Even though I heard the gardener refer to the garden as a “vegetable garden,” she did waste some space on Flowers. Fortunately Borage is one of my favorite greens second only to Nasturtium leaves. The denuded plants looked sort of sad without their leaves or Flowers, but what’s a woodchuck to do but keep eating?
Later in the season I would, by necessity, have to branch out and try other Flowers. Tuberose are a true delicacy. I can’t recommend them too highly. There is nothing quite like polishing off all the Tuberose buds the night before they open their perfume laden blossoms. The long months of attentive care by the gardener really made these a treat worth waiting for.
As we all know from my autobiography, “How Much Wood Can a Wood Chuck Chuck?” the real turn in a garden season comes when the clueless human finally notices that something is eating the crops. When this happened this season, the gardener found my hole and filled it in. I could feel her angst that first time she filled in the hole as she worried needlessly about trapping me in my den. Of course I dug myself out without any problems. Once she saw I could do this, she filled in the hole every day. Rather aggressively I thought. And why she pursued this futile course I do not know. It certainly didn’t slow me down.
In fact, I appreciated the opportunity to start my evening feasts with a little warm up digging. This bountiful garden could have made me just a little bit too plump if I hadn’t had the daily routine of a dig out. Maybe it’s time for a workout video about this? What do you think?
In any case, I needed the exercise because this gardener followed some tasty trends. It’s always fascinating to watch trends in the vegetable garden. I know you’ve enjoyed my “Market Reports” on Woodchuck TV as much as I have. Frankly every new trend is good news for us woodchucks. Do you remember how our community chuckled when Kale became so popular among humans? It’s simply wonderful how often humans veer towards crops we too revere for accessibility and onsite munchability. (That’s a trademarked phrase by the way, so write me for permission to use it).
You may wonder how I knew this garden was going to be a good one full of trendy vegetables? Because I did my preseason homework, OF COURSE!
As you will recall from Podcast episode 320 on “How to Pick
a Gourmet Gardener and thus Live a Gourmet Lifestyle,” it all comes down to
preseason scouting. The past few years while I lived down the street, I checked
all the recycling bins in the neighborhood before choosing a shift in location
and a new gardener to terrorize. Large
numbers of seed catalogs in the recycle bin as well as a small number of
processed food packets often indicate you have identified a good target. Green
Hope Farm met this criteria.
Compost heap analysis was another vital piece of the puzzle. On Instagram you will find my posts on CHA
aka compost heap analysis. I share some
examples of compost piles and then discuss what they tell us about their
humans. DM me with any questions. This kind
of analysis can change your life as well as your diet. After all, as my Grandfather Wilfred Otis Hogbottom always
said, “The better the peelings the better the dealings”
One last giveaway that a garden will be ripe for the pickings is a fence. In fact, I‘d go so far as to say the taller the fence the better, and the Green Hope Farm vegetable garden has a whopping 8 foot one all around its perimeter. I know this sounds like a paradox but hear me out. A fence like that guarantees no competition with deer but allows me to easily worm my way under its bottom. Perfecto!
Because of our annual “Woodchuck Nation” convention in late June during which I gave the keynote speech, “The Vegan Lifestyle,” I arrived at my garden of choice after the pea harvest. This was a bit of a bummer as a large portion of the garden had been planted in peas and from what I heard the humans say, a good harvest had been had by all but me. However I was not too worried about my long term prospects as this gardener had chosen my favorite plant to make the focus of her garden season.
Yes, the particular pleasure of rampaging through the Green Hope Farm vegetable garden this summer was that the gardener had gotten very interested in growing bush beans, shelling beans and a massive number of pole beans for drying. She even built rather professional looking bean pole rows and gathered heirloom seeds from all over the country. As I sat in the doorway of my den each night surveying my larder, I waited with some impatience for these bean crops to ripen.
You know I am a social creature. How else could I have 7.6 million followers
on Instagram? So when the first bush beans ripened (rows and rows of beans
including such treats as Red Swan, Roma II and the incomparable Empress), I
called in a coterie of neighborhood woodchucks to take the whole crop down in a
single night. As we ate and danced in
the moonlight, I could only laugh as I noticed deer outside our fenced-in
garden joining the fun by eating the entire adjoining field of potato plants. Oh what a night!
Then there was a lull while I only ate the arugula, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, spinach, borage, beet greens, parsley and broccoli. The foolish gardener somehow thought the poles would keep the pole beans safe from me, but I knew to hold our annual “Woodchuck Love Fest” on site when the pole beans grew abundant and tender. I will reveal how we ate beans growing four, five even six feet off the ground in my next book, “Bean Bonanza.”
And now the season comes to a close. I have eaten everything and therefore put on the necessary fat layer all successful woodchucks sport come fall. As I sit by my den surveying the damage, I know all is right with the world. I am not even worried about the gardener’s muttered threats about getting a “Have a Heart” trap to capture and move me. If only she kept track of the Woodchuck best seller list on Amazon she would notice that I wrote everyone’s favorite, “Have a Care and Outsmart that Have a Heart Trap”.
So thank you for reading my report and be sure and catch me on Instagram, FB, Tik Tok, Snapchat, on my podcast, on TV and of course in the gardens where it all happens.
How did the Bermuda Flower Essences come to be? I owe it all
to Lynn Tidman.
Here she is as a school girl on her island home of Bermuda.
I met Lynn at a party in 1991. She was a willowy blonde,
fifteen years older than me and very put together in a rather patrician sort of
way. After being introduced, I expected to only briefly chat with Lynn, but the
host of the party, Malcolm Grobe, asked me to tell Lynn about how I
gardened. I started in with a vague description
about fairies and the like. I expected
the conversation to go nowhere, yet an entranced Lynn kept asking more and more
and more questions.
The party was next door to the farm. The hostess, Teddy Grobe, didn’t have the food organized, so she asked me to take the guests for a tour of our gardens. As we wandered the gardens, Lynn had a million more questions. I remember her leaning in to me, sporting her signature light blue cardigan and asking again and again, “WHAT did you just say?” At the end of the tour, she wrote her name and address on a piece of paper and told me she wanted to learn more and would take ANY class I gave. This was followed by a postcard in the mail bearing the same message. The woman was on a mission!
All this surprised me very much, and Lynn would continue to surprise me. Right away, she had her own connection with the Angels and Elementals, and she took at once to life working with them. After Lynn took a class with me, she created an astoundingly beautiful and magic vegetable garden with her new partners. Then with time to spare, she began to spend several days a week here at the farm. She was, in fact, my first hire which meant I had no idea what I was doing and Lynn had to patiently wait for me get my sea legs as an employer.
When Lynn came aboard there was no office. We ran the business out of my kitchen which meant Lynn was suddenly in the middle of my life with three then four little children. She loved the scene, every funny moment of mess and chaos. Her own children, who became beloved friends as well, were older, and Lynn missed little people.
As our first bottler, Lynn bottled our Flower Essences with a measuring cup. However by the time we built our first bottling machine, I had discovered her lovely handwriting. From then on, she was our “Lady of Labels.” Lynn would go on to write literally millions of labels for us over the next two and a half decades.
Lynn had no problem working in the middle of our family life. In fact, when we finally built our first building
dedicated to the Flower Essences, she was devastated to be removed from the
kitchen. Almost at once she had become a
grandmother to my children and a dear friend to me.
Here she is in the role of Grandmother at Emily’s high school graduation.
From the beginning Lynn could see the Angels, especially the weather Angels with whom she had a particularly deep rapport. Lynn’s extremely preppy looks made her like a secret agent in the worlds she travelled in. No one expected her to work with Angels to move clouds around or stave off storms, yet she had these abilities and was happy to demonstrate.
Over time, people would call her to make sure their daughter had good weather on her wedding day or a graduation wasn’t rained out. She always delivered. At one wedding, I saw her hold off the most enormous cloud bank for several hours. Sometimes we would discuss the advisability of messing with weather this way, but she was fearless about the consequences. She and these weather Angels were ever simpatico, so what did I really know about it? Nothing.
Because she looked like a lady who slept with her pearls on, she opened spiritual doors for all sorts of people who might otherwise not have listened. She was a new Age seeker without a whiff of patchouli and very happy to tell people at the meat counter at her local grocery store ALL about what she was experiencing. When Lynn was sharing her experiences, you could almost see the wheels turning in her targeted audience. People were both wildly surprised that seemingly conventional Lynn was talking about gnomes and also a little bit intrigued. Her credibility went to a good cause.
Lynn also had an incredible rapport with dogs. All dogs. Our goldens, Cody, Riley and MayMay would greet her when she arrive for work with moans of adoration. Cody especially went nuts. “Lovers in a past life”, Lynn always said. With her connection to canines, Lynn helped us sort out what was going on with countless beloveds and always knew the Flower Essences that would help most. She was an animal communicator before we knew the name for this calling. Needless to say, her life at home was filled with rescues devoted to her.
Before we even knew each other Lynn invited me to go out to Bermuda with her for a week. She later said that it had surprised her when the invitation came pouring out. How glad I was to be the recipient of a very rare Lynn blurt. She had grown up on Bermuda and had very British manners so this sort of spontaneous invite was unknown to her. During the decade preceding Lynn’s invite, my main trips had been to either the diaper pail or the compost heap , so I was thrilled to leave the children in Jim’s care and hit the skies with Lynn.
How I loved Bermuda from the moment we first landed. The houses were playful bright colors compared to drab New England’s barn red and white, and each was capped by a serene whitewashed roof. The whole island was one big garden with Flowers blooming everywhere in orderly profusion. The beaches really did have pink sands, and the water was as beguiling and luscious as any water I had ever encountered. I was in bliss.
Lynn’s childhood had been a wonderful one of motor boats, sail boats, tennis, dogs, dances, ferry rides to school and one crabby teacher named Mrs. Cuppleditch whom she and her classmates called Mrs Cupplewitch. Lynn’s mother still lived on Bermuda, but she was in poor health. Lynn came out to Bermuda frequently to check in to see how things were going for her mom and to sort out any problems. I was happy to go along for the ride.
While Lynn had grown up in a house on Hamilton’s harbor, her mother had later moved out to a house adjoining Mid Ocean Golf Club. This was a more rural part of the island, providing plenty of places for us to walk. Most mornings we would roll out of bed and onto the golf course for a brisk walk around all the holes. Sometimes we went out to Frick’s Point where Ross Perot was blowing up a coral reef. Then after an enormous bowl of oatmeal, always oatmeal, we would set off on errands and visits to Lynn’s many friends. All of them had beautiful old Bermudian houses AND GORGEOUS GARDENS.
As far as I could tell people we met fell into two categories. They were either lifelong friends of Lynn whom she had always called Aunt and Uncle or they were women who had been in her enormous Bermuda wedding. As I recall, there were seven horse carriages that took Lynn and her attendants to her Bermuda wedding. All of her friends were more than open minded about our adventures with the Angels and Elementals and equally happy to have us wander in their gardens, chatting to the resident Angels and Elementals. Lifelong Bermudians all seemed to have had their own close encounters with things on the other side of the veil, and our stories seemed to confirm what they already knew.
Almost from the first blossom we saw, we knew it would be fabulous to make Flower Essences from these new tropical Flower friends. We sourced canning jars and got to work. Lynn’s friends were incredibly interested and supportive. If a Palm tree was in bloom over an al fresco luncheon, our hostess would find a ladder so we could pluck its blossoms. Phone calls would come from friends telling us of a Flower we just had to see. No matter when we stopped in, Lynn’s friends would take us at once to see Flowers they thought we would be interested in. So many Flowers were hidden in grottos and old gardens we never would have found on our own. Once we were taken to a grove of ancient Grapefruit trees well off the beaten track. That was a sacred encounter.
I had so much to learn about the tropical and semi-tropical Flowers of the beautiful islands that made up Bermuda. There was so much vitality and life force in these Flowers. Pomegranate Flower Essence proved to be a powerhouse for women. Avocado and Loquat brought deep healing energies to the digestive tract. All the citrus including Lime, Lemon, Orange and Grapefruit had strong cleansing and healing energies. Cotton was fabulous for hair. These new Essences found a place in our collection immediately, and it was hard to imagine life without them.
As we wandered in the gardens, plants would call to us. Sometimes it was dizzying how many new friends we met. Shell Ginger spoke of cooling firestorms as did so many of the Aloes we found including Aloe Ciliaris, Coral Aloe and Aloe Vera. Kangaroo Apple lit up the chakras above our heads. Chinese Hat Plant centered and calmed. Clitoria surprised us with its dramatic energy that zipped up our chakras like a kundalini rising. And the Palms (including Date Palm and Chinese Fan Palm)! There wasn’t a Palm we met that didn’t offer a profound healing energy.
The gardens we had access to were curated gardens that included
the very best tropical and semi tropical Flowers all waiting for us to discover. These beloved gardens had often been in the
same family for several hundred years and had been lovingly cultivated all that
time. Some gardens felt like something out of a fairy tale, others had energies
I had never encountered anywhere else.
In between visits I read everything I could about tropical and semi tropical Flowers. One of Lynn’s aunts had literally written the book about Bermuda gardens. Her book remains a treasure in my life. When we were in this aunt’s gardens she would sit with us and identify all the Flowers we had found, often leafing through her book to share more information about a specimen. Her twenty five acre garden was one of my most magic and wonderful places I have ever visited. I was stunned by the wise and ancient presence of the spiritual beings we encountered in all these gardens, but I especially hold dear the experiences I had with the Nature Spirits in this particular garden.
Another classic we leaned on for identification
This was another more modern book we dipped into frequently
When I developed photos from my trips, the Nature Spirits were often visible as big bold spots of light obscuring the scene. Not all Nature Spirits could fit in a photo. Some of the guardian spirits towered over us and their garden sanctuaries, rising several stories high. Bermuda is a special place for Flowers AND Nature Spirits with deep links to the very best of Atlantean Flower research and development.
We always ended our Flower filled days with tea at one of
the old fashioned and wonderfully comfortable resorts on the island. Lynn of course would know everyone, so we
were always welcomed everywhere. During
one tea time at a resort run by a friend, we noticed a particularly dramatic Flower
and set to work lowering its long dangling blossoms into our ready jar. Looking up from our task, we noticed we had
gathered a shocked crowd of Brits wondering exactly what unseemly thing we were
doing with tweezers. We hardly got to Lynn’s
car before bursting into wild laughter.
Lynn invited me along on trips several times each year until her mom died. This meant we could make different Flower Essences during different seasons as even on Bermuda, Flowers didn’t bloom year round. We also read up on Flowers in between trips and created a master list of Flower Essences we wanted to make on any given trip.
As we learned about the strengths of various tropical Flowers we began to seek out specific Flowers for specific things. The scene at the resort had been part of our project to finds Flowers that would help Lynn’s husband with his prostate, kidney and bladder issues. We called this our search for “P” plants. We found that plants with long fuzzy blossoms like Monkey Tail and Screw Pine or Flowers like bottle brushes including Bottlebrush and Calliandra helped open up passageways in the urinary tract. Later we would learn these Flower Essences got things flowing everywhere, and they would be key ingredients in our powerhouse Flow Free Flower Essence mix. These “P” Flowers were much more prevalent on Bermuda than in our more temperate climate.
Lynn as a proper Bermudian would never have been more
graphic about things than discreetly saying “P” plant. In fact, once I had a very mysterious and
magical encounter at night with some Bermudian Angels and Lynn, though asleep,
was with me in this out of body tour of the island. She only believed the story when I told her
that her main preoccupation during the evening was whether her nightgown was
sliding up while the Angels were flying us around the island. “That sounds like me.” She laughed.
Lynn and me during the Bermuda years
Laughter was the main ingredient of our trips. For so many reasons these adventures on Bermuda
filled us with joy and laughter. We climbed
on top of buildings and stood on the roof of Lynn’s car to look at blossoms. We went out in tropical storms to look at
blossoms. We leaned way, way over rocky
cliff edges to look at blossoms. And all
the time we were laughing.
After a long illness Lynn died last week. I am so glad for her release from a very
difficult situation. I am also so very grateful
that she listened to that little voice within pressing her to find out more
about gardening with Angels and Elementals and pressing her to take a chance on
an unknown houseguest at her Bermuda home.
We had so much fun, and we made an amazing collection of Flower Essences
together. Not a bad legacy for a friendship. Thank you Lynn.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent email I received and some thoughts about the questions this GHF friend, Trevor, raises.
“As we know, the new
energy has been flooding into the planet recently and yet I and my community
have been feeling impatient for the last few weeks. (I should explain that I’m
an empath coach and energy healer).
The image I am getting is
of the desire to paddle a canoe downstream to get going in the right direction
yet the effort would be futile because the upstream dam is getting ready to
burst. When it does, we will all be carried downstream way faster than we could
ever paddle under our own efforts.
We know The Shift into 5D
is getting very close. I wanted to ask if this image of paddling downstream
resonated for you (although I am sure the metaphor of the dam
bursting sounds more catastrophic than is intended).”
MY THOUGHTS
I found this a fascinating and timely metaphor. Thank you Trevor for sharing.
The first thing I want to discuss in regards to Trevor’s email is the balance of Effort and Grace required of us right now.
There is a tremendous amount of Grace in the higher vibrational energy pouring into the planet. We have much to be thankful for, as this energy floods our world through no volition of our own. What we are being given is precious beyond measure.
So where does Effort come into the picture? I feel it is vital to make the effort to consider where we need this light to flow in our lives and to ask Divinity to help it flow there. Trevor describes this as pointing the canoe in the right direction. I do not feel this effort is futile in the face of big waves coming but extremely important BECAUSE big waves are coming.
Events in our lives, our
dreams, even our daydreams illuminate our logjams. If we look for patterns in
what we are experiencing, what we have experienced and even what is happening
in our dreams, we can grow clearer about tangles and road blocks we personally
face. When we are cognizant of our
logjams, we can ask the incoming light now and later to illuminate these places
within us that particularly need the incoming light. This does not have to be a complex request
process. We can simply ask that Divinity’s
light and love be directed towards issues X, Y, and Z.
The light flooding the planet is going to help us all and carry us all downstream, but it can be used more effectively if we are aware of where we need it most. I would call this one of the ways we can balance the Grace of this light with our Effort.
To riff off Trevor’s canoe analogy, as we flow with the current energy wave and prepare for other blockbuster waves, our canoe paddles of awareness, intention and requests for help all assist us to get the most out of the current flow and help prepare us to be poised to ride future waves in the most productive way possible. This relieves any sense of impatience or futility as we wait for unfolding events. It also gives us plenty to do while we wait for the bigger waves.
MORE FROM THE SUMMER OF 1993
GUIDANCE
As with so many recent
blogs, I include again a channeled message from Divinity given during the GHF community
building summer of 1993. During that
summer a collective of very diverse women created a baker’s dozen healing
gardens here at the farm then shared them with a large and diverse group of visitors. Throughout this venture, we received very specific
guidance from the God within us all.
These messages encouraged us
to see all visitors as immediate and equal members of the community we were
building. There was no common religious
ideology among the four founding members or in the thousands that visited, yet
the messages referred to all groups at the farm as God community because of our
joint efforts to grow our relationship with the Light while also being present
to support other people to do the same.
All this to say, when the
guidance below describes us as God community it is not referring to us as a
conventional religious organization.
WHY THIS SELECTION
This is the entire message received on July 23, 1993. While this excerpt of the guidance only gets to a paddling up and downstream metaphor at the end, I still felt the whole day’s message was relevant to Trevor’s email. All of us are finding our way as individuals in a unified energy field. This is a complex dynamic requiring patience with ourselves as we individually and collectively seek to ground the full consciousness of 5D energy on earth.
Let me explain one other thing about the messages that may help this excerpt make more sense. Throughout the guidance, God describes the filters, illusions and misunderstandings we have as EGO BLANKETS that blind us so we stumble into each other and also fail to see the light in our situation, in ourselves or in each other. The guidance repeatedly suggested our many ego blankets were our personal responsibility to identify and remove with community interaction described as an excellent way to accelerate the removal. As you will see, this is not so much because other community members should point out our blankets or try and remove them, but because community illuminates our blankets and gives us examples how to remove them.
July 23, 1993
Today we will talk about the nature of community since it is
something which everything (that) you are doing involves. One day this
week you wrote down the sentence “Community is not about getting it from
each other.” I would like to elaborate on what that statement means.
There are many misconceptions, ego blankets tucked one on top of
the other, when it comes to community. You have dealt with some of the
most obvious blankets, but now you are dealing with some of the most
insidious. These are some of the blankets that are applied with crazy
glue and peel off extremely slowly.
First, most egos want to find a community where they get to hide
out in peace and quiet. The goal is to find a group that agrees with you
so you can avoid the fires of change. This kind of community, if it
exists, is a stagnant backwater of paralysis and putrefaction. It is not
something that you should be glad to have found, for it freezes you where you
are and lets no life force enter.
I AM by nature the energy of change. My light by its
essential nature constantly changes and expands and is the illumination of all
things. A community where the members agree on a set values system and
the correct way to process everything is a community running from the light,
using their combined muscle power to create a structure which shuts out the
light and keeps everyone in the dark.
When people are called into community in my name the point is
never stagnation or complaisance. The point is an acceleration of the
growth process through joint efforts to come into the light. One way this
happens is through the friction of old ego patterns rubbing up against old ego
patterns. In what way would something any different serve you in your
journey home? Would it help to be in a self congratulatory group that
told each other there was no need or room for change? It would feel like
death or at the very least stagnation.
When you gather into community in my name and let go and let ME
take charge, I see exactly how to tumble you one against the other for the
maximum blanket removal. The intention isn’t just to bruise you one
against the other. The intention is to help you remove all that is left
which interferes from a direct and complete relationship with me. I
tumble you over and over again in the same way when there is a place in which
the blanket is particularly stuck to you. This is why you experience the
same set of dynamics over and over again until you “get it”.
Because God community is more clearly oriented towards
“Letting Go and Letting God,” I can much more efficiently remove
blankets, because everyone can be a force of light in various situations.
The blankets are revealed not so much because someone is pointing them out to
you, but because you are in a place where I have been able to bring more light
through many more people so all of you can see better.
It is not always comfortable to see your blankets so clearly
unless you remember that I AM there to help you remove them. I AM not
going to reveal the blanket for the sake of humiliating you and then walk
away. The light is there to help you see yourself better, and the tools
are there to remove them faster, because not only do groups bounce and jostle
their blankets off of each other, but (groups) can learn from each other
exactly how to remove a blanket. In the bright light which results in God
community, you get to see your own blankets very well, but you also see how
other people pry off the ones they wear. It is a little bit like how a
child learns to take off a pullover sweater. He watches some adults, and
then he tries it.
This will be a good metaphor for some of the other things which
happen in community. The bright light of many God beings gathered in my
name illuminates everyone. Just as it is easier to see one’s own
blankets, it is easier to see everyone else’s. Consider however how you
best learned to take off a sweater. You might have witnessed someone
taking off a sweater and for a while your parents might have done it for you,
but you only learned how to do it for yourself when you did it for
yourself.
Let this be a reminder to all of you to stay in your center
removing your own blankets and help to remove other people’s blankets only when
they have expressly asked for such assistance. When the blankets which
other people are wearing push your buttons, see only the God in them which
wears the blankets and know the person will remove the blanket when he or she
is ready.
Your goal in community is not to fix each other but to learn
faster from each other, because you bring together so many more ideas about
blanket removal. The way you can best communicate your ideas is to just
do them and know that I AM illuminating everything so that the good ideas about
blanket removal are seen as well as the blankets.
It is a waste of the momentum of the group to arbitrarily stop
your process to tug at somebody else’s blanket. Even if (a blanket)
covers their eyes and they can’t even see that they have stumbled into a place
of light, know that unless they specifically ask for blanket removal help, you
are best to go about the business of increasing your light and removing your
own blankets.
Remember that there will come a point in your own blanket removal
that you will have removed so many layers that you will be such a bright light
that no one else’s blankets will totally shut out your light. Have
confidence in the powerfulness of your own healing process and keep focused on
that. When the time is right, each of you will be a great force of
illumination just by being present, not because you are telling people about
their blankets or trying to pull them off.
It would be a disservice to all of you to have the structure of
God community created to make you dependent on that community for love or
praise or guidance. All God community should be constantly focused on
returning you to a direct relationship with me where you can get all the love,
praise and guidance you need. When a community is clear that everything
comes from within, then a certain amount of harmony can exist. However so
many of your blankets are about thinking you have to get it from outside
yourself that most God community still exists in a place of quite a lot of
friction right now.
The collective vision of the (GHF) community is to Let Go and Let
God come forward from within. As people stray into deeply ingrained
patterns to do otherwise, they are bumped around rather unpleasantly until they
return to that focus. It is a little like going downstream with me and
having old ego conditioning about needing to paddling upstream. Whenever
you head into the old habits of paddling against the current you go until you
are tired and realize it is not helping. Then you let go and let Me take
over again. Eventually you get the drift that this old approach doesn’t
work. You don’t get downstream by paddling upstream away from me.
When you are paddling with a group you tend to learn to go with
the downstream flow faster because when you try and paddle upstream in your ego,
it is much more difficult. The flow of Me is stronger in community so
that there is more resistance when you try the old upstream tack. The
flow of God community also carries you faster towards reunion with me when you
“Let Go and Let God” because there is more downstream momentum.
Whenever you are feeling stuck or confused about what is going on
in you, ask to be shown what you are doing in the flow. See where your
boat is and what you are pushing it to do.
When you head upstream in the midst of community, it is more
difficult than when you head upstream on your own. Consequently, it is
easy to rage and say that the group is the problem. The energy of the
group is simply illuminating the problem with going upstream for you that much
faster. You realize faster that it is not a productive direction and that
you are stuck and not getting what you need. This is a great gift, to be
disillusioned faster. Celebrate this and let yourself turn the boat around.
Sometimes the process may feel like a very public time in a
pressure cooker, but I tell you it is a great gift to have found yourself a
faster way to pull off the blankets. Be grateful that you do not get the
opportunity to go upstream away from me for more than a few minutes without
realizing that you have headed out against my flow. Be glad that when you
turn around you get the momentum of all the brothers and sisters in this
community who are working to come home. You turn your boat around and you
don’t have to wait an instant to be moved forward in your return to me.
You blast off with the speed of all those around you. Everyone has their
moments going upstream, but on each person’s return, they all get the gift of
the combined forward momentum.
Community is not what your ego wants. It is not an easy, restful experience for any of you right now, but it is extremely productive one. It returns you home to me all the faster, and that is what matters most of all. I love you very much dear ones and send you my love in the waters that swirl around your boat as it journeys home to me.
As a community of Flowers, Angels, Nature Spirits, Dogs, Cats and even some People, Green Hope Farm can be a funny place……and I love telling you all about it!
