On the Autumn Equinox, this year’s Venus Garden Flower Essence combination was born. The Angels named it ‘Loving What Is’ Here’s my description of this Essence’s vibrational gifts. As ever, the definition is a work in progress, but not this Essence. It is ready to serve you with its sweet and bold healing purpose.

LOVING WHAT IS
This Flower Essence combination is amazingly straightforward in its purpose, but, as usual, this doesn’t mean I am able to explain it simply.

I share the journey of learning about this Essence with:
A Short Definition
The Culture
Other Reasons Not to Let Your Mind Run Your Life
The Mind as Servant to the Heart
How this Garden Grew
Water
Clutter and this Essence’s support to De-Clutter

A SHORT DEFINITION
‘Loving What Is’ helps us live in our hearts.

This Essence offers a roadmap to move from the mind’s territory of judgment about ourselves and our lives to the heart’s territory of embracing our lives and ourselves with peaceful equanimity and joy.

If we know the way to our hearts already, it supports us to live there more of the time.

The heart is the place we can relish our lives despite the fact that they have not gone according to the mind’s plans or expectations. This is why this Essence is called ‘Loving What Is.’

THE CULTURE
Our culture puts the mind ahead of the heart. This is because our culture is a construct of minds.

As a creation of minds, our culture believes in the mind’s authority and encourages us to keep our minds in charge of running our lives.

The culture encourages us to listen to whatever mind ideas are screaming loudest on any given day and judge our experiences as good, bad, or ugly in relationship to these mind ideas. No countenance is given to how mind ideas leave us suffering, because the mind really only cares about staying in control.

To keep us in check, the culture constantly changes its collective mind standards. If we are always running after the new mind ideas of the culture, we have less time to consider that maybe the mind, either our own or the collective mind of the culture, should not be in charge of driving our lives.

The collective mind of the culture and our individual minds have no interest in our happiness. What they want more than anything else, is to stay in charge.

It is grace that mind standards can never be met for more than short tension filled periods of time. This is because life is not a servant of the mind. In those times when our lives do not conform to the collective mind or our individual mind’s ideas of what life should be, the door opens for us to abandon the hold the mind has on us.

This doorway is a blessing, not so much because it alters the abyss between mind ideas and reality, but because it encourages us to shift the place where our consciousness is seated from the ever dissatisfied mind to the peaceful heart.

This Essence is to support us to shift our consciousness to the heart, the only place we can experience peace no matter what is happening in our lives.

We must make the decision to change our habit of living in our minds, a place of judgment and restless discontent, in favor of sinking into the heart’s place of unconditional loving acceptance of what life is.

“Loving What Is” will help us make the shift and help us to stay in the heart even as every construct of the culture calls us back to the mind’s territory of judgment.

OTHER REASONS TO NO LONGER LET YOUR MIND RUN YOUR LIFE.
SOME IDEAS YOUR MIND WON”T AGREE WITH

What is the problem with the mind?

When the mind is given the reins to rule our lives, it rules from a data base of contradiction and confusion.

This is because the mind is no more than a rag tag bundle of ideas collected from a myriad number of sources including childhood data collected from our family of origin.

The ideas we have collected are based on other people’s unique perceptions of reality as well as our own perceptions. These ideas are always going to be in conflict with each other because no two people can see things the same way.

From the moment we are born, our minds collect conflicting perceptions. Our fathers’ ideas conflict with our mothers’ world view and that is just the beginning of the dissenting opinions we collect and call our minds. No mind has any integrity. The mind is a body of information rife with conflicting ideas.

My mind would like me to belabor this point with lots of mind ideas. My mind would love it if I did this, because the mind has no capacity to be in charge, but wants to be in charge anyways.

It will use any idea in its data base to keep itself in charge. This means the mind has no hesitation to throw out new conflicting ideas if it feels us waver in our allegiance to it. If we momentarily sink into the happiness of the heart and the mind feels its hold on us lessening, the mind will not hesitate to throw a grocery list of worrying, fearful, guilt laden, contradictory and unhappy thoughts into our consciousness in order to stay in charge.

To let our minds drive our lives is self sabotage of the highest order.

No matter what rises up from our tangle of mind ideas as the right opinion of the day, it is always in conflict with other ideas we carry and therefore literally sets up a dynamic of constant inner conflict. The mind, when given the role of running our lives, literally divides us from ourselves.

So what is the solution?

As Einstein said, “the consciousness that created a problem can’t solve the problem.”

The solution to this dynamic lies outside of the minds that created the problem. The solution lies in the heart.

It is in the terrain of the heart that we can love what is, sink into a consciousness that is not in conflict with any other consciousness, and therefore find the peace and harmony we seek. All hearts are kind and loving because the heart is an integrated part of all creation. Few, if any, minds are kind and loving because the mind, by its very nature, is a hodgepodge of conflicting information warring with itself for dominion.

We will never find peace in our efforts to live according to our mind’s myriad ideas of the good life. We will only find peace when we live in our hearts and discover its immense capacity to accept what is.

The shift to the heart opens us to love what is. Being in the heart is not a process or a struggle. It is the experience of love. This is because the heart is the eternal and divine part of ourselves that knows its oneness with everything. A life lived in the heart is the experience of what we were seeking all along, an experience of infinite love and peace.

The dynamic of this Essence supports us to no longer allow our minds’ to drive the show, to leap into the heart, and to stay there long enough for the rewards of this choice to become self evident and we find the motivation to stay there of our own accord. If we have settled into our hearts to some degree, this Essence supports us to abide there as we navigate a world working overtime to call us out from our centered place of joy.

THE MIND AS SERVANT TO THE HEART
When the mind is given the task of implementing the choices of the heart, it becomes an excellent tool for manifesting these choices. This is the only role appropriate for the mind.

HOW THIS GARDEN GREW
In January, when I was planning this season’s gardens, the Angels told me that this year’s Venus Garden would be, among other things, about water. I spent time with the Angels figuring out which plants best represented the dynamic of water and was given a beautiful design that included juicy watery cucumbers, melons, parsley, nasturtiums, sweet peas, and a White Lotus. Seven glazed blue pots encircled the Lotus, each one representing one of the seven seas.

The garden was easy to plant and very elegant in its early weeks. When the Nasturtiums started their display, the garden became a veritable mass of Flowers. The Angels asked me to leave various “volunteer” annuals including a mass of gorgeous deep blue Chinese Forget Me Nots and a big swatch of White Nigella, How well these contrasted with the dizzying oranges, yellows, reds, creams, and mahoganys of the Nasturtiums.

Oh my mind was so pleased with myself. What a splashy garden! How clever was I!

Then the flowering ground to a halt. The Sweet Peas that had ringed the garden in abundant and fragrant blossom turned brown and died in the summer heat. The Angels asked me to leave every crisp brown vine in place. How my mind disliked this untidiness! Then the Nasturtiums did what they do when put in good soil. Their leaves got enormous and they stopped blooming. Soon there was not a Nasturtium Flower in sight. The garden looked as unimpressive as any I had ever planted. When I was in my heart, I felt the peace of knowing all was well and the garden was serving something is some way. But I allowed the appearance of the garden to sometimes pull me off balance and back into my critical mind.

Then one day, very late in the summer, as I passed the garden with all its weeds, overgrown Nasturtiums and unflowering plants I burst into laughter. Quite abruptly, I fell in love with the garden just the way it was. As I rubbed against this garden in passing, its vibration had helped me fall completely out of my mind and into my heart. I was so happy to have made such radical peace with the garden. I was completely in love with this big brown weedy mess. In that moment, I experienced the gift of this Essence to move us from mind to heart. I knew there would be a lovely Essence born from this garden and that it would be about loving what is.

WATER
Why a connection to Water?
The Overlighting Deva of Water speaks, “ Water represents the territory of navigating life from the heart more fully than any other element. This is because the flow of water has the least resistance to what is. It may experience the constraint of other elements defining it as a pool or river, but it never experiences separation or boundaries, being completely malleable in its own structure. Within this construct of formlessness, it never rests in its movement towards the manifestation of oneness, pouring itself into union in seas and sky. It is the perfect balance of loving what is while simultaneously moving towards a manifest oneness.”

CLUTTER AND THIS ESSENCE’S SUPPORT TO DE-CLUTTER
During the time when I was mulling over this Essence’s purposes, a Green Hope friend called to ask for a remedy that would help him with his clutter. He knew a new life was pouring into him and he wanted a clean canvas for what was being born. For some reason, I was sure that “Loving What Is” would help him to let go of clutter.

To answer his question, I had to look first to my own clutter. I noticed that it involves attachment to stuff that has no real connection to my actual life. It either hangs on from my past or reflects some notions I hold onto about what will be in my life. Someday I will use that gewgaw. Someday I will write the great American novel. Someday I will knit a coat of a thousand skeins of saved bulky yarn, even though I have never liked bulky yarn. After this friend’s call, I realized my clutter is the outward manifestation of my mind ideas about things that should have been, mind ideas about things that should be, and mind expectations of the perfect life. Supported by ‘Loving What Is’, I encouraged myself to assess my clutter while grounded in my heart. I accepted that some things I expected to have or do in my life are not meant to happen and with that acceptance I found myself able to move clutter on its way. It was not the painful process of agonizing over each scrap of paper that de-cluttering has sometimes been for me. I was at peace while letting go effortlessly of some external stuff that was connected to things that weren’t happening in my life.

For example, grounded in my heart, I experienced the truth that it would never be in my best interests to write about my earlier life. It would be too difficult to go over what happened without reigniting the bitterness of the mind. I felt at peace when I realized this. Afterwards, in that peaceful place in my heart, I could let go of certain papers, a manifest form of this project. My mind had been attached to this project. My mind had kept a pile of stuff related to this project. Yet I felt the truth that letting go of this project served my deepest self. This was a different direction than I expected in my life to take, but I could accept and love this twist. The unburdening was both literal and figurative.

On a recent morning Sophie & I harvested potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, apples, and winter squash.

As all things change in the autumn gardens, there is one constant…..

MayMay.

MayMay to the right.

MayMay to the left.

MayMay joined to Sophie’s hip.

MayMay inspecting every potato. She is everywhere we want to be!
Today, Sophie and I are off to mulch the main vegetable garden with mulch hay. At the door, ever ready is….

who else but MayMay.

Saturday saw us happily exploring Emily’s new world in Lewiston, Maine. This meant we were not home when a couple of men from Taylor Farm came up to deliver the 100 bales of mulch hay I asked to have delivered.

If you have read this blog for long, you already know how passionate I feel about mulch. This 100 bales of hay was already earmarked for the garden where Sophie and I had harvested the Red Shiso.

Anyways, Saturday was about the only day since the beginning of June that I wasn’t here to direct a delivery of mulch to the usual spot. The particular Taylors that came to deliver the bales hadn’t left mulch hay here before. It’s usually been Bill Taylor or one of his brothers that delivers. This time, the hay got stacked four bales high in a neat square on top of my new asparagus bed. Asparagus needs mulch. Doesn’t everything? But not that much! Reluctantly, I called Bill on Sunday morning to tell him that the hay wasn’t in the normal place.

He was astoundingly nice about it and came right up with his front loader to move the bales. Jim, aka project man, got down from the roof where he was cleaning our chimney and helped Bill move the pile. The transfer went quickly, thanks to ever cheerful, easy going Bill’s skill with his front loader. Soon half the hay bales were on the main vegetable garden for Sophie and me to spread this week and the other half were stacked nearby.

Then Bill did something that made me weep with gratitude. He turned my compost piles with his front loader.

I have known Bill and Liz, his darling wife, for thirty years. This means I met them when Bill was a tow-headed ten year old and Liz was the nine year old girl growing up across the street from Taylor Farm. Folks in town were always saying they couldn’t tell Bill and his brother Jim apart, but they didn’t have the same face at all and I never got why people said that. Perhaps it was just that the Taylor boys were ever on the go and all people saw of them was the flash of their blonde heads as they did the millions of jobs sons on a dairy farm traditionally do; haying, haying, and more haying.

We didn’t see much of Bill and Liz during their teenage years though we did have the occasional flash of a blonde head as Bill hayed our seven acre hay field. Then we heard that Bill was out of college and planning to keep Taylor Farm going with his dad and his brother Jim. Next, we were delighted to learn that Liz and Bill were getting married. We were so happy to be invited to the wedding.

It was one of my favorite weddings ever. The minister, our good neighbor Malcolm Grobe, had been Liz and Bill’s fifth grade teacher. He had wonderful funny anecdotes about Liz and Bill to share, but beyond this humor, his words had a quality of resonance and heart reflecting all his years knowing and loving Liz and Bill and their families. At the wedding, most everyone knew both the groom’s and the bride’s sides of the family because so many of us were from Meriden. This added to the timeless, deeply grounded feeling of the ceremony. The day was a sleepy hot summer day and Liz looked so beautiful. Everyone, including the bride and groom, walked from the church service to the reception down Main Street. It was everything I liked about living in a small town.

Liz and Bill’s first child was born the same year as our Will and the two boys have been friends for all these years. Liz and Bill built a house on our road and part of Taylor Farm moved to their backyard. Will and Jeffrey have a trail between our houses that runs by the Taylor’s lovely swimming pond. The trail gets more and more traffic as the boys get older.

When Jeffrey and Will were babies, I was lucky enough to have Liz work part time at Green Hope Farm. Reminders of her sparkling presence still fill our office. From here Liz went to work for her dad in the family smokehouse. Just this year Liz and Bill have bought the smokehouse ( www.Garfieldsmokehouse.com) from Liz’s family. They now sell their smoked cheese, smoked bacon, smoked hams, and Taylor Brother’s Maple Syrup at local stores, farmstands, farmer’s markets, from their shop in Meriden village, and on the internet. Nowadays, when Liz and I watch our boys play soccer, we often talk about things like snafus with UPS and the grace of a good staff.

So yesterday when Bill graciously moved the hay, he was already a much appreciated fixture in our lives. But after he organized my messy piles of compost into two extraordinarily well turned piles, I revered him as an immortal. How deft he was with that front loader. I do not exaggerate when I say it brought tears to my eye when I thought of how much time he had saved me and my silly little pitchfork. These may not be the most exciting photos ever on this blog, but in all seriousness, even thinking about these piles brings more tears of joy and gratitude! Thank you so much Bill! And I’ll see you later today Liz at the boys’ soccer game!

This pile is compost from this last year, turned vigorously by Bill, inspected equally vigorously by Riley and MayMay.

The is the cheesecake shot of MayMay my more composted compost, soil worth its weight in gold and ready for me to put on the gardens now and next spring. Be still my heart!

First the children move out, and then when they return to visit, they bring their own kitchen equipment, because the stuff I bought at tag sales in 1902 is not good enough for them.

Thus it was that Ben returned home to cook us dinner about a week ago, bringing his own well sharpened Wusthof knife and some remarks about the dismal state of my foley food mill, the very mill that had pureed a thousand cups of applesauce for him when he was a small child.

About my knives, there were no cutting remarks, though my knives deserve these kinds of comment. My knives are so dull that people have been known to come to meals at my house with their own knife sharpeners. I kid you not. Back in the day, my father in law would bring his own wet stone to Thanksgiving dinner at our house.

No, in the instance of my dull knives, Ben was decidedly mute. He just whipped out his fancy new knife and set to work chopping an onion for his soupe du jour.

What can I say? Ben has decided to cook his way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, from volume one, page one to volume two, page five hundred fifty five. As a consequence, we are the lucky recipients of things like warm brioche and soupe catalan aux poivrons.

It’s a rough gig, but someone has to eat all this great food.

As I watched Ben speedily dice his onion, I got a dangerous glimmer in my eye. I wanted my own Wusthof. As we went through the brutal experience of taste testing that night’s Potage aux Champignons, I thought how nice it would be to have a sharp knife like Ben’s. I mentioned my hankering. Everyone determinedly changed the topic of conversation, “How about those Red Sox?”

Like a headstrong mare, (perhaps this should read AS a headstrong mare), I could not be turned from my course. Within a day or so, I had gotten a knife JUST LIKE BEN’S.

Day one and I tried to avoid Jim’s eye as I set to work furiously chopping JUST LIKE BEN. I seemed to be doing so well. Things were flying beneath the blade of this knife. I was so impressed with myself. Day two, after a slight nick while cavorting with a bushel of apples, I decided it was best to only use the knife when someone else was home. For several days, these supervised chopping sessions went swimmingly. But like all good horror stories, eventually the suspense was broken with a moment of drama.

You see there is a good reason that my knives are dull. When it comes to knives, I am NOT JUST LIKE BEN. I am NOT talented with knives. Jim knows it. I know it. Ben knows it. We all know it. Everyone was just waiting for me to get real about the insanity of me having a sharp knife.

It happened this weekend. I was chopping seaweed. There was a crowd in the kitchen. I was, no doubt, talking a mile a minute. And oops, there went the top of my thumb!

Enough said about that! As always, I was very grateful for Emergency Care and so was everyone else in the room. I was also so happy to gift Ben IMMEDIATELY with an early birthday present, one slightly worn Wusthof with history.

Lesson learned. Keeping up with Ben is no different than keeping up with the Jones.

And on that note, I think I will go and cut some bread for lunch It’s nice to put in five minutes of aerobic activity to get a slice of bread. When you can cut something fast you don’t burn nearly as many calories. Why, I think l will cut myself two slices of bread. It’s hard work sawing bread with a butter knife.

And Ben, in the future, you’ll need to bring one of your two Wusthofs when you cook here. That is, unless the aerobic activity of sawing onions for several hours appeals to you the way it appeals to me.