Horizons Magazine
Andrea de Michaelis, Publisher
Soul Centered Astrology Report
s
by
Andrea
de Michaelis
.
.
July 2007
Hermit mode, isolation, releasing resistance, accepting change.
Hello and welcome to the July 2007 edition of Horizons Magazine. This month we’ve got two excerpts from Wayne Dyer’s new book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. He writes about Living in the Flow, and we’ve all been there, haven’t we? It’s a place we’d like to spend more time in. It’s a place we recognize once we’re there. Everything begins falling into place. Circumstances and events line up, barriers vanish, obstacles are cleared, people are calling you while you’re looking up their number. You’re in the flow and riding the wave and good things are happening at lightning speed. Of course, there’s the other flow also *hehe* the flow that is more like a spiral and not always upward! Dyer gives a contemporary look at an age old system, the Tao Te Ching.
Lately people have been telling me they are falling into a hermit mode more frequently the past several years. That place where they just want to hole up alone and away from everything and everyone they know. You know the feeling. When you don’t want to get out of bed, or tend to your obligations and commitments. You don’t even let your loved ones know it’s ok and it’s just a mood and it will pass shortly. It’s not that you don’t care if they worry, you just don’t want to engage in dialogue about it right then.
For me, I’m not always aware I am sinking in to that place. Sometimes I get so many calls and emails that every few weeks, I just want to get away, alone, in the dark and the quiet, to recoup/recupe for half a day. Depending on the work schedule, that half a day may turn into a week, during which time I probably have a train of thought going that I don’t want to break by talking to anyone else. Emailing doesn’t break the train of thought. Voice talking does. I’m probably doing some prepaving and visualization on a particular project or series of projects – since that is part of my job, after all.
I have particular routines I use to release physical and mental resistance during these times. If I’m brave, I’ll go to the gym and walk the treadmill and workout, but sometimes the gym is a little more social than I want to be while I’m in the hermit mode. Most often, I change into my gardening gear and take my clippers and walk through my property. There are always trails to be trimmed, potato vine and wedelia to pull, grapevine and honeysuckle vines to be re-routed, gardens to be watered, sprinklers to be moved, bird feeders to be filled, birdbaths to be cleaned, squirrels to be fed, firewood to be gathered, dead limbs to be pruned, deadfall to be raked, mulch to be spread. There’s always oak and bamboo leaves to rake into mounds around the trees, there’s always new areas of the yard I’ve overlooked that I can create a little visual vignette in – using cuttings of arbicola and turks cap and star jasmine in a new area, clearing away the wedelia, loosening the ground – ok, the armadillos and raccoons help me with that job! Placing stone steps around a new winding trail, gathering several spider plants to hang from the old shepherd’s hook and moving lirope from the side yard to the new garden. See how your mind just took you on a 20 second journey as you read that paragraph? I play in the garden to let myself be taken on a journey just like that, a journey that brings me totally into the Here and Now, with all senses fully engaged.
I’ve learned to walk out the door, dressed to work, and have all my tools nearby. To me that usually means overalls and hiking boots, with gloves and clippers stuffed in my pockets, even before what I intend to be the briefest of walks in the yard. When I am prepared, I find I have more expectation of opportunity to use my tools. Life is like that, too, isn’t it? To make the most of opportunities, it pays to be dressed and ready when you walk out the door, equipped with whatever tools you think you will need for what you expect to do. Now, what you end up doing may change course completely, but if you’re out the door and prepared for something, anything, WhoEver is Up There or Out There will see you ready and at the door, and The Way will open all around you.
Just the same, I’ve learned that when I first wake up, if I put on my workout gear, then I am more likely to find time during the day to run out to the gym. After all... I’m dressed for it, my gym shoes are on, my hair is up, all I need to do is drive over and run in for a few minutes. Being dressed for what I want to do inspires me to move in that direction. Half the job gets done just by preparing for it.
So when I go into my yard and start watering and trimming and bird feeding, that lets me lose time, that fully engages my attention so that I am hard pressed to have any other thoughts come in. It’s a nice, relaxing, inspiring, free flow place to be in. I have found I rely on that time in order to release resistance and let my good flow into me more easily. And sometimes while in this place, I start to fall into that other place - the place of isolation and excommunicating friends - and I don’t always notice when I am going into that downswing. But when I fall into that place, I am likely to not want to break my concentrated thought – no matter what it is on – to talk to a friend. If they email me, that is likely to be read and even responded to. A phone call will have to wait, even hearing the voice mail – until I feel like listening to the phone or voices again.
My point is, there is a fine line between taking some well deserved down time to yourself, and isolating yourself while avoiding calls and missing appointments. Friends can feel easily alienated, I have learned that the hard way. Until I learned to manage my own schedule in a realistic fashion, I was promising everyone I’d be here and there and do this and that. And often I’d cancel at the last minute because I hadn’t counted on it all catching up with me, and me having to actually take a break to catch my breath and recuperate before going back out again. I’ve done my share of breaking commitments and disappointing others, and my remedy the past few years is to no longer commit to anything. That has saved several friendships. If I can do it, I will. If I can be there, I will. But don’t count on me. Don’t make it my job to pick up so and so, and don’t ask me to bring the potato salad. So when you get in the hermit mode, allow yourself to be there long enough to regenerate, but not so long that you begin to stagnate. Know when you’re incubating and basking and when you’re escaping in an unhealthy way,
As I finished final layout for this July issue, it had rained for several days before and the ground was nice and wet. I was looking at that little used space in my front yard, just west of the driveway and noticed the red Ti plant I had put there in 2005 had all but dried out and died. When I initially placed it in the new mound, I positioned it for maximum watering, but the sun hits it for a little while each day and the sprinklers aren’t often there. I decided to spruce up that whole area, since it also leads into my entryway – kinda. The ficus trees block from the actual entryway, where the driveway segues into the front walkway.
I began by moving the plant to a ground location, with a small moat around it to catch water. Then I pruned it, then I watered it. I began pulling a lot of the wedelia out, then raked the last several years’ oak and ficus mulch away from where it had accumulated along the perimeter. I put 9 white steppingstones in a line toward the berm where the plant had been removed, and a large stone on the berm at the end. I dug a small sinkhole in the top of the mound and placed some ivy and several star jasmine cuttings there and watered them well. I kept walking to the driveway and peering through the ficus to see what the view would be to someone in the driveway. I wanted to give them something pleasant and inviting to see.
I gathered rocks and placed them along the new stone path, and placed the plaster ducks along the path. I piled mulch at the base of the palm tree and planted ivy and philodendron cuttings along inside it and watered them well. I placed 3 spider plants on top of the mulch facing the driveway. I found a small stone birdbath and placed it on a stone pedestal at the base of the mound, where the old Ti plant had been relocated to. I gave them a nice pile of mulch. I moved two oak stumps from the firepit area and placed them under the pine tree as seats and circled them with rocks. I trimmed the ficus so it would not touch me as I walked along the path. Now when I look at it, it is a pleasant space inviting me in. It feels as though the energy is moving in that area anew, like a new beginning. I get tickled as I drive up and see it now!
As I was working, I was meditating upon how the current gardening project (cleaning up a neglected area to free up the chi) was a perfect metaphor for my life right now. I thought of how people move in and out of our lives... staying awhile, we never know for how long... and how long doesn’t really matter, does it? Sometimes you just stop being in sync with each other. Sometimes there are misunderstandings and you feel slighted and need time to get over it. Sometimes you feel taken advantage of and you decide to stop rowing the boat and see if you continue to move. Do you continue to move forward because some else is also rowing? or do you begin to go in circles because you were the only one rowing all along? Do you find yourself doing that with friends through the years? Some may begin to act like deadwood, signaling the relationship may be drying out. However, sometimes a little sprucing up is all that is needed. A little break from the routine, a break from the same old shitake. A little more attention to this area, or that, find some new friends and new hobbies, begin to relate to people in a new and different way. Change is good. Explore a new path with an old friend, and make new discoveries together. Explore your childhood with a new friend, and see it through their eyes, reframe your whole life through the lens of their eyes. That keeps the energy moving, and the chi flowing. I felt very refreshed after creating my new garden area, and my hours’ long garden meditation had helped me reframe a past event in better light, in a light where I felt new peace, where I felt resolution had taken place. I love when that happens! It’s like time traveling to change the past. Wait, it is exactly time traveling to change the past...
It was about 7:30pm when I finished working, so I hurried to gather kindling to make a sundown fire. I like the process of gathering kindling and building and tending a fire, it gathers my focus and engrosses me completely. I would much rather watch a fire than watch a movie or tv show. I often forget to begin gathering kindling until it’s dusk and then it’s not easy to spot the twigs on the ground. I have lots of twigs for kindling and wood to burn, and I only do it when the ground is wet. This was a good clean fire, I used some of the older logs and can just about figure how much wood a one hour fire needs. Tonight’s fire burned cleanly, barely any smoke. It was interesting watching the logs and how they burn and interact with each other at the various stages of disintegration. Just like us humans as we cook the ego and become more ash, more of the essence we are, without the bark and dense fibre of our materialistic overlay.
I watched the logs burn more brightly when they were together, just as we do. I watched them all eventually mesh into one mass of ash, just as we will ultimately do. I watched a log off by itself, still burning though not as brightly. I put the marshmallow in on the stick and tried various cooking distances from the flame. I found it cooked even when just barely within the space of the pit, though of course cooked faster as it approached the flame itself. A great metaphor for my own social interaction. I am cooked faster by some people and events than by others, depending on how close to the situation I want to get, and how open I am to receive what it being offered. As Rumi says, “Give me burning!”
As I watched the fire and the sun fading on the horizons I thought again how lucky and blessed I am to live here, where I can be out in nature in my own little woods anytime I want. It feels good to sit outside and watch the big sky and the birds and the squirrels. The cats came and sit nearby with me. Watching the big sky, it occurs to me that I seldom look “up”, that I look mostly straight ahead, at or below eye level. But when I’m outside in my yard, I look up at the sky. When I sit at the firepit, I watch the sky. I couldn’t watch the sky before the fire of June 2003 took my west oak and pine woods down. Or before Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004 took the giant oak in the back yard down. Now I see that big beautiful wonderful sky every day...
So this month I’ve learned or been reminded of:
I’m not the only one that falls into “hermit mode” and I need to not taken it personally when friends around me do.
I need to create routines for myself to release physical and mental resistance and tension.
Gardening and a sundown fire in the pit are favorite routines to relax and divert focus to release resistance.
I ’d rather watch a fire than a tv or movie.
A fire is a great metaphor.
I am cooked faster by some people than by others.
I can time travel to change a past event by reframing it in light of new understanding.
I can learn to enjoy an alternative view, even if it’s scary and unfamiliar until I get used to it.
Change can be a good thing.
Enjoy our offering this month.
Life is good!
Hari Om.
Hello and welcome to the July 2007 edition of Horizons Magazine. This month we’ve got two excerpts from Wayne Dyer’s new book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. He writes about Living in the Flow, and we’ve all been there, haven’t we? It’s a place we’d like to spend more time in. It’s a place we recognize once we’re there. Everything begins falling into place. Circumstances and events line up, barriers vanish, obstacles are cleared, people are calling you while you’re looking up their number. You’re in the flow and riding the wave and good things are happening at lightning speed. Of course, there’s the other flow also *hehe* the flow that is more like a spiral and not always upward! Dyer gives a contemporary look at an age old system, the Tao Te Ching.
Lately people have been telling me they are falling into a hermit mode more frequently the past several years. That place where they just want to hole up alone and away from everything and everyone they know. You know the feeling. When you don’t want to get out of bed, or tend to your obligations and commitments. You don’t even let your loved ones know it’s ok and it’s just a mood and it will pass shortly. It’s not that you don’t care if they worry, you just don’t want to engage in dialogue about it right then.
For me, I’m not always aware I am sinking in to that place. Sometimes I get so many calls and emails that every few weeks, I just want to get away, alone, in the dark and the quiet, to recoup/recupe for half a day. Depending on the work schedule, that half a day may turn into a week, during which time I probably have a train of thought going that I don’t want to break by talking to anyone else. Emailing doesn’t break the train of thought. Voice talking does. I’m probably doing some prepaving and visualization on a particular project or series of projects – since that is part of my job, after all.
I have particular routines I use to release physical and mental resistance during these times. If I’m brave, I’ll go to the gym and walk the treadmill and workout, but sometimes the gym is a little more social than I want to be while I’m in the hermit mode. Most often, I change into my gardening gear and take my clippers and walk through my property. There are always trails to be trimmed, potato vine and wedelia to pull, grapevine and honeysuckle vines to be re-routed, gardens to be watered, sprinklers to be moved, bird feeders to be filled, birdbaths to be cleaned, squirrels to be fed, firewood to be gathered, dead limbs to be pruned, deadfall to be raked, mulch to be spread. There’s always oak and bamboo leaves to rake into mounds around the trees, there’s always new areas of the yard I’ve overlooked that I can create a little visual vignette in – using cuttings of arbicola and turks cap and star jasmine in a new area, clearing away the wedelia, loosening the ground – ok, the armadillos and raccoons help me with that job! Placing stone steps around a new winding trail, gathering several spider plants to hang from the old shepherd’s hook and moving lirope from the side yard to the new garden. See how your mind just took you on a 20 second journey as you read that paragraph? I play in the garden to let myself be taken on a journey just like that, a journey that brings me totally into the Here and Now, with all senses fully engaged.
I’ve learned to walk out the door, dressed to work, and have all my tools nearby. To me that usually means overalls and hiking boots, with gloves and clippers stuffed in my pockets, even before what I intend to be the briefest of walks in the yard. When I am prepared, I find I have more expectation of opportunity to use my tools. Life is like that, too, isn’t it? To make the most of opportunities, it pays to be dressed and ready when you walk out the door, equipped with whatever tools you think you will need for what you expect to do. Now, what you end up doing may change course completely, but if you’re out the door and prepared for something, anything, WhoEver is Up There or Out There will see you ready and at the door, and The Way will open all around you.
Just the same, I’ve learned that when I first wake up, if I put on my workout gear, then I am more likely to find time during the day to run out to the gym. After all... I’m dressed for it, my gym shoes are on, my hair is up, all I need to do is drive over and run in for a few minutes. Being dressed for what I want to do inspires me to move in that direction. Half the job gets done just by preparing for it.
So when I go into my yard and start watering and trimming and bird feeding, that lets me lose time, that fully engages my attention so that I am hard pressed to have any other thoughts come in. It’s a nice, relaxing, inspiring, free flow place to be in. I have found I rely on that time in order to release resistance and let my good flow into me more easily. And sometimes while in this place, I start to fall into that other place - the place of isolation and excommunicating friends - and I don’t always notice when I am going into that downswing. But when I fall into that place, I am likely to not want to break my concentrated thought – no matter what it is on – to talk to a friend. If they email me, that is likely to be read and even responded to. A phone call will have to wait, even hearing the voice mail – until I feel like listening to the phone or voices again.
My point is, there is a fine line between taking some well deserved down time to yourself, and isolating yourself while avoiding calls and missing appointments. Friends can feel easily alienated, I have learned that the hard way. Until I learned to manage my own schedule in a realistic fashion, I was promising everyone I’d be here and there and do this and that. And often I’d cancel at the last minute because I hadn’t counted on it all catching up with me, and me having to actually take a break to catch my breath and recuperate before going back out again. I’ve done my share of breaking commitments and disappointing others, and my remedy the past few years is to no longer commit to anything. That has saved several friendships. If I can do it, I will. If I can be there, I will. But don’t count on me. Don’t make it my job to pick up so and so, and don’t ask me to bring the potato salad. So when you get in the hermit mode, allow yourself to be there long enough to regenerate, but not so long that you begin to stagnate. Know when you’re incubating and basking and when you’re escaping in an unhealthy way,
As I finished final layout for this July issue, it had rained for several days before and the ground was nice and wet. I was looking at that little used space in my front yard, just west of the driveway and noticed the red Ti plant I had put there in 2005 had all but dried out and died. When I initially placed it in the new mound, I positioned it for maximum watering, but the sun hits it for a little while each day and the sprinklers aren’t often there. I decided to spruce up that whole area, since it also leads into my entryway – kinda. The ficus trees block from the actual entryway, where the driveway segues into the front walkway.
I began by moving the plant to a ground location, with a small moat around it to catch water. Then I pruned it, then I watered it. I began pulling a lot of the wedelia out, then raked the last several years’ oak and ficus mulch away from where it had accumulated along the perimeter. I put 9 white steppingstones in a line toward the berm where the plant had been removed, and a large stone on the berm at the end. I dug a small sinkhole in the top of the mound and placed some ivy and several star jasmine cuttings there and watered them well. I kept walking to the driveway and peering through the ficus to see what the view would be to someone in the driveway. I wanted to give them something pleasant and inviting to see.
I gathered rocks and placed them along the new stone path, and placed the plaster ducks along the path. I piled mulch at the base of the palm tree and planted ivy and philodendron cuttings along inside it and watered them well. I placed 3 spider plants on top of the mulch facing the driveway. I found a small stone birdbath and placed it on a stone pedestal at the base of the mound, where the old Ti plant had been relocated to. I gave them a nice pile of mulch. I moved two oak stumps from the firepit area and placed them under the pine tree as seats and circled them with rocks. I trimmed the ficus so it would not touch me as I walked along the path. Now when I look at it, it is a pleasant space inviting me in. It feels as though the energy is moving in that area anew, like a new beginning. I get tickled as I drive up and see it now!
As I was working, I was meditating upon how the current gardening project (cleaning up a neglected area to free up the chi) was a perfect metaphor for my life right now. I thought of how people move in and out of our lives... staying awhile, we never know for how long... and how long doesn’t really matter, does it? Sometimes you just stop being in sync with each other. Sometimes there are misunderstandings and you feel slighted and need time to get over it. Sometimes you feel taken advantage of and you decide to stop rowing the boat and see if you continue to move. Do you continue to move forward because some else is also rowing? or do you begin to go in circles because you were the only one rowing all along? Do you find yourself doing that with friends through the years? Some may begin to act like deadwood, signaling the relationship may be drying out. However, sometimes a little sprucing up is all that is needed. A little break from the routine, a break from the same old shitake. A little more attention to this area, or that, find some new friends and new hobbies, begin to relate to people in a new and different way. Change is good. Explore a new path with an old friend, and make new discoveries together. Explore your childhood with a new friend, and see it through their eyes, reframe your whole life through the lens of their eyes. That keeps the energy moving, and the chi flowing. I felt very refreshed after creating my new garden area, and my hours’ long garden meditation had helped me reframe a past event in better light, in a light where I felt new peace, where I felt resolution had taken place. I love when that happens! It’s like time traveling to change the past. Wait, it is exactly time traveling to change the past...
It was about 7:30pm when I finished working, so I hurried to gather kindling to make a sundown fire. I like the process of gathering kindling and building and tending a fire, it gathers my focus and engrosses me completely. I would much rather watch a fire than watch a movie or tv show. I often forget to begin gathering kindling until it’s dusk and then it’s not easy to spot the twigs on the ground. I have lots of twigs for kindling and wood to burn, and I only do it when the ground is wet. This was a good clean fire, I used some of the older logs and can just about figure how much wood a one hour fire needs. Tonight’s fire burned cleanly, barely any smoke. It was interesting watching the logs and how they burn and interact with each other at the various stages of disintegration. Just like us humans as we cook the ego and become more ash, more of the essence we are, without the bark and dense fibre of our materialistic overlay.
I watched the logs burn more brightly when they were together, just as we do. I watched them all eventually mesh into one mass of ash, just as we will ultimately do. I watched a log off by itself, still burning though not as brightly. I put the marshmallow in on the stick and tried various cooking distances from the flame. I found it cooked even when just barely within the space of the pit, though of course cooked faster as it approached the flame itself. A great metaphor for my own social interaction. I am cooked faster by some people and events than by others, depending on how close to the situation I want to get, and how open I am to receive what it being offered. As Rumi says, “Give me burning!”
As I watched the fire and the sun fading on the horizons I thought again how lucky and blessed I am to live here, where I can be out in nature in my own little woods anytime I want. It feels good to sit outside and watch the big sky and the birds and the squirrels. The cats came and sit nearby with me. Watching the big sky, it occurs to me that I seldom look “up”, that I look mostly straight ahead, at or below eye level. But when I’m outside in my yard, I look up at the sky. When I sit at the firepit, I watch the sky. I couldn’t watch the sky before the fire of June 2003 took my west oak and pine woods down. Or before Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004 took the giant oak in the back yard down. Now I see that big beautiful wonderful sky every day...
So this month I’ve learned or been reminded of:
I’m not the only one that falls into “hermit mode” and I need to not taken it personally when friends around me do.
I need to create routines for myself to release physical and mental resistance and tension.
Gardening and a sundown fire in the pit are favorite routines to relax and divert focus to release resistance.
I ’d rather watch a fire than a tv or movie.
A fire is a great metaphor.
I am cooked faster by some people than by others.
I can time travel to change a past event by reframing it in light of new understanding.
I can learn to enjoy an alternative view, even if it’s scary and unfamiliar until I get used to it.
Change can be a good thing.
Enjoy our offering this month.
Life is good!
Hari Om.
Comments? Write to the author, Andrea de Michaelis.</FON
