A Walk to the Park

On my second day in Redondo Beach, I decided to go for a walk to a nearby park and the botanical gardens therein.
I LOVE botanical gardens. They make me happy. And now that I'm in the city, I'm realizing how deeply I'd connected to the complex and very wild nature back in the Blue Ridge mountains. I kind of miss it - but I'm learning so much about how to be Awake in the city that I don't really mind. Besides, I have experiences like this one to keep me nice and grounded.

Early in the morning, after my workout and before my smoothie, I was meditating. My meditation starts with a balancing of all my chakras, followed by a clearing and smoothing of my energy field and a few moments dedicated to whatever I'm trying to bring forth in my life. After that, I talk to all my buddies in the different realms. To be specific, first I go check in with a large overarching group where lots of my guides come to speak to me at once - that said, they're mostly ETs at that point. Then I chat with my main ET guide (who I call my Rhythm Teacher - it's a long story,) and then with the Angelic realm representatives who hang out with me. After that I talk to some devic spirits (a.k.a. fairies) and finally, with Gaia overall - lately, by the way, she's been saying that she's nearly all good - that we just have to come where she is in our resonant state to see it.

But anyway, the devas had been large and in charge in the mountains, which was what made me aware of them in the first place. I hadn't believed in fairies since I was a little girl, and even then I didn't claim to consciously believe in them (rather choosing to draw pictures of them all the time and even build little things for them outdoors, thinking I was "just playing"...) but when something is floating in front of your face, literally and figuratively, it's really hard to not believe it. That, in fact, is insanity. I'm not typing on a computer right now. No way. Imaginary.

See?

Moving on.

So on that morning, the fairies told me that they'd be with me as I went out and about that day. Then they told me to "look for the flowers."

Ok, that seemed like an easy task.

I left my sister's apartment and began to walk up a nearby street. Driving down it many times, I'd never noticed how many flowers there were! Every other tiny yard was beautifully manicured, with flowers spilling over fences and peeking up from tiny, intricate, lacy layers of ground cover.

Before I was a block in, I noticed some beautiful blue flowers hanging over the sidewalk. One bunch of them had been somehow severed from its partners and was there delicately sitting on the sidewalk.

Yes!
One of the main (and very random) things that I couldn't help from doing this past year was wearing fresh foliage in my hair. Since much of my time spent back East was during the cold season, I pretty much constantly wore dark green Juniper leaves either braided into my hair or tucked into a ponytail. Somehow this grounded me and made me feel more connected. I think adding that harmonic life force to the part of us most often disconnected - our heads - does more than just add cosmetic value.  And wearing artificial stuff obviously just isn't the same...

I'd thought about doing the same out here, but I don't like cutting flowers. It's not like there's a tree with a zillion leaves who drops fresh ones every morning and I can go outside when the grass is still wet with dew and gather a handful to choose from, or like my nonexistent yard is filled with wild flowers, some of which volunteer to be picked and worn as I bend over each bunch, asking with my Heart who wants to come and hang out with me.

In the city, it's different.

Except when a beautiful cut flower (that matches your outfit, no less) just shows up where you're walking.

So I did what anyone would do, I put a sprig in my hair and carried the rest of the bunch until I found a pretty place to leave it, coating the flowery branch with my intentions that it brighten someone else's day the way it had brightened mine.

The walk continued, and about a block later, there was an empty and clean plastic grocery bag on the sidewalk in front of me.

Whew, that was close...

I've often read advice by other interdimensional ambassador types that say to always bring a plastic bag with you when you take a walk in order to gather litter as you go. It always sounds like a good idea, and I always forget. So this day, I was gifted with one. With only a moment's hesitation due to my self consciousness about how odd I must look bending down to pick up trash off the sidewalk, I gathered up that bag and went on.

Of course there were lots of little things to pick up along the way. Because I was still in morning traffic hours, there were a good amount of cars cruising by and every time I bent to pick up a wrapper or random piece of something man made and trashy, I felt a little weird. It's funny how social norms often curb us from doing what is right. And the likelihood is that no one would have even noticed me at all, much less looked at me askance for collecting litter.

The main part of this walk, however, was the beautiful city. I was in the suburbs, and there's lots of really adorable and creative architecture around here. More than anything though, I noticed how many plants and trees and flowers there are. I was as guilty of the next of thinking of suburbia, and especially SoCal suburbia, of being a concrete and asphalt wasteland where nothing grew and certainly where no fairies could survive.
Not so, as it turns out!

Fabulous.

And besides, I got to pass some really interesting things, like a couple of Dr. Seussy trees. Here's the first one which reminds me of the Lorax...

And a beautiful magnolia pruned to where it's not the normal thick, green, glossy magnolia of the South that I'm used to, but beautiful all the same.

A palm tree against the sky just clearing itself of the June gloom marine layer for the first time that day...

Eventually, I made it over to the park (taking a massive detour and getting a bit lost, but not minding a bit) and hung out with the trees.

A beautiful pine,

And then I meditated under this second Dr. Seussy tree.

There were some very zenned out (and slightly overweight) seagulls hanging out on the shores of the park's man made lake. I snapped a pic of this one. He wasn't sure whether or not he would fly off, so I crooned to him as I took shot after shot, finally ending up with this one of him looking at my camera. Seagulls are so unique and funny among birds - they have an interesting type of intelligence that we normally miss because we don't hang out with them much, I think.

All in all, it was a fabulous day. And now I have some lovely blue flowers to press in my journal to prove it.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Enchanted Evening

The time is currently 3:38am and I'm up and about on the third night of my sleep experiment.

I've been voraciously reading the book Seth Speaks, along with a couple of others, and it is blowing my mind in entirely new ways. One is by answering questions I never knew I had until I see someone else ask them in print before me as I read. The other is by giving suggestions that are completely new, but super intriguing, like the one I'm trying out now.

This one has me never sleeping more than 6 hours a pop (and, in order to go the whole hog, which I tend to do with odd things like this, I haven't topped 4 hours, just to be sure.) It isn't that you actually sleep any less once all is said and done in any 24 hour period, but the sleep times are moved around, allowing for a couple hours of waking time to break in to any large chunk of sleep. In my case, this is pretty easy since Friday was the last day of school and now Terrence and I are house sitting at a gorgeous place even farther back in the woods than we were before.

Anyway, for the past three nights I've been going to bed at the regular time but setting my alarm for the wee hours of the morning to pop up for a couple of hours, hang out, do some reading, have a cup of tea, maybe a few minutes of yoga, and generally benefit from the nighttime negative ions and energies that I ordinarily sleep through.

The idea behind this is that in the current cultural paradigm I, and probably you too, find ourselves in, we sleep in these massive chunks of sedentary unconsciousness every night. This splits the subjective, creative, emotional dreaming world from the objective, linear, intellectual waking world in a way that is unnatural, apparently - our nature-friendly ancestors would be up at various points in the night, checking to make sure all was well, perhaps doing some nighttime foraging or hunting, etc. Animals still do this, even house dogs and cats, I realized when thinking about it, remembering how my in-laws' little dog goes back and forth from room to room at night, checking on everyone.

Apparently, this huge split, along with the idea that being so still for so long is actually detrimental to the purely physical processes such as blood flow and metabolism (which I get, theoretically,) means that not only waking up a bit at night, but sleeping a bit during the day would even this out. For 9-5 workers, the author of the book recommends the first "nap" to be just after dinner, with the longer sleep periods a few hours later.

I will say that I adore napping and always have. Now I have an excuse to do it :) Although, to be fair, it isn't easy schedule-wise to do this, even for me. But in trying to be pure with my little experiment, I've realized that one should capitalize on that sleepy afternoon hour or so whenever possible and escape to dreamland.

Back to the objective/subjective thing. Apparently the difference between dreaming reality and waking reality is not nearly as huge as we think it is (which I believe, considering some of the caaraaazy nighttime journeys I've had over the years,) and flipping back and forth between the two modes of consciousness gives us a more authentic, "true" sense of the world we inhabit. I get that, and I've noticed a difference there.

Which leads me to...

How is it going?

Interestingly.

I really like being up at night. I'm ordinarily one of those annoying morning people, and I've found that now, I'm more mellow in early hours - not tired, I always awaken refreshed, but not so chipper and bouncy either, which I'm sure anyone I interact with before 10am would tell you is a relief. :)

The first night of my experiment, I woke up at 4am or so. I realized halfway through my 10 minutes of yoga that unless something unexpected was going on, every single person I knew in the world was asleep just then. My team was all vacant! And I shared this wakeful existence with others on the other side of the globe. That was pretty cool.

A drawback has been that I haven't smoothed my schedule so that I have predictable sleep times yet, which makes 6pm sometimes feel like 10:30 or 11 and past my bedtime. I'm trying to stay fluid with it, and there is something very delicious about occasionally waiting to go to bed until you're childishly sleepy. Feels sweet, almost like a piece of candy. I know that sounds odd, but it's my experience.

Tonight, on the first evening in a strange, albeit beautiful, place, I turned in at 10:30pm and set my clock for 2:30am. I awoke at 2:21, noticing the nearly-full moonshine on the bed below me and angling my head to get an eyeful of that magical view. I love how moonlight penetrates you when you gaze at a swollen moon, it has such a cleansing effect. I realized with a quiet chuckle that my body had anticipated my alarm clock and I got up, slowly going through an abbreviated morning routine to be comfortable for my up-at-night time.

Other claims on this new schedule is that creativity and energy will be enhanced and dreams will be more intense and easy to remember. I do feel more creative, especially at night. I've started work on a new book that's been percolating for a couple of weeks, only working at night so far. As for my energy level, I don't think I've given it enough time yet - I haven't noticed a shift in either direction so far.

I will say though, that waking life has taken on an interesting and yummy dreamlike feel. I'm not tired, but my mind and body are working differently. I don't get as caught up in the rush and mental chatter as I ordinarily do. I tend to use mindfulness to help with this, but I've stayed pretty mindful naturally. That alone is worth the shift.

Ok, I'm off to begin to wind down. I'm going back to sleep at 4am (so in 20 minutes or so) and then will arise at 8am, leaving an hour and a half later to go pick my sister up from the train station. Today's her birthday (happy birthday, Michal!) It will be the first time in years that we've gotten to be together on the actual day. Good times.

Happy dreams!