Planting Seeds
“Bubbles of Change” in progress
Drawing by Megan J Wheless
July’s theme is “Manifestation".
Lately, I have been acting solely on intuition. Everything my gut has been prompting me to do, I do it. And everything I’ve been doing are small things that seem very unrelated. These actions look like: quitting my ESL job (Ok, that’s a big thing, but I’ve been out of work since March and don’t know if the program will exist come September, it doesn’t feel like that big of an action to me); selling the spare bed in the back bedroom; beginning a yoga book club online; writing a weekly blog; contacting my friend and Tai chi teacher; reaching out to a friend for coffee outdoors; writing the first chapter of a new novel.
Each time I took the first step in all that I listed, I began to feel lighter in my body. As if these acts of writing in my journal or on my computer, making a phone call, sending a text or an email, began to mix up my daily life. Things have started to flow and the stagnation I was physically feeling seems to have lifted. I have no idea how any of these promptings are affecting my deeper desires (to one day turn Dear Heart Art into a community-based healing arts center and publish more of my writing), but things are moving and I feel that’s the whole point of listening to one’s inner promptings.
The small steps I take in directing my life from an inner cue and authentic place have brought small miracles already. The bed frame, box springs, and headboard are going to a single mother. The mattress and bed linens are going to a participant in the ESL program. I now will have more space to repaint that back bedroom and begin to transform it into the hobby area my husband and I have been dreaming about for awhile. We are going to use it as not only a sitting area, but a space to grow our seedlings in the early spring so we can add more native and pollinator plants to help transform our yard into a wildlife sanctuary. Releasing my position as an ESL instructor has allowed me to focus more of my energy on my writing. I have submitted a short story and a nonfiction essay to literary journals. I have a solid first chapter on my second novel and I am really caught up in this story. I reconnected with my Tai chi teacher, who is also an accomplished artist and wood worker. The thought of being outdoors weekly practicing martial arts in the presence of another creative soul is exhilarating (I am also learning the short bow staff and feel like a princess warrior). And, I am having coffee outdoors with a friend tomorrow morning - a miracle considering that physical distancing is way easier than social distancing.
Interestingly enough, all of these small actions I’ve taken are beginning to manifest the very things at the heart of Dear Heart Art: community.
When I think of interrelationships, I think of my gardens here at home. I go out every day and check in on my plants and flowers and enjoy all of the pollinators and other insects and spiders I see. I also desire to see what has bloomed in my garden each day. There is one plant that has silvery green leaves and tiny yellow buds on it. I check on it regularly but it remains the same. There is a part of me that wonders if I should do anything to help it along because I want to know what the flowering plant is (it was in a pack of wildflower seeds I bought at a local hardware store). As if my presence and my wishes will make this particular plant bloom on cue.
I could easily call the hardware store to ask what is in the native mix, or I could upload a photo of the plant to my iNaturalist app and get a quick answer. Yet, I don’t do either of those things because my intuition tells me to simply be patient. To appreciate the stage it is in now and to accept that I may never know what it is when it does come into full bloom, but that doesn’t detract from it’s beauty or cause it to open on my timing.
I’m trying to release the belief that I have to constantly be doing something every single day of every single waking hour in order to achieve or meet a goal. I think about my wildflower garden. How I got down on my hands and knees and hand-tilled and weeded the flower bed along our fence line. How I bought the packet of seeds, planted them at the right time and in the right manner. How the rain, the sun, the moon, and the soil themselves have contributed their parts. Now, it’s time to trust in the plant’s process to fully manifest its truest nature as well. So much interrelationships to help this one plant bloom. I’m humbled to know I had a small part in all of it and I’m willing to continue to release control over that which I have no control over and instead do my special part in turning the wheel of action in the natural cycle of things.