The Happening

A few months ago, my friend Diana suggested I watch The Biggest Little Farm. “You will love it.” she said. And boy-oh-boy was she right. I LOVED it.

It changed the way I SEE. Specifically the way I see nature, but what isn’t nature? Aren’t we nature? Recently, my friends Jon and Sharon posited that the Earth doesn’t actually top out at the ground but at the ionosphere about 48km above us. That would mean we’re not on the Earth, but in it. From that perspective, we’re like fish! This led to a long conversation about how extra-terrestrials are like fishermen, but I digress. . .

Yesterday, Vince showed me this five minute clip about Sep Holzer who was not only permacultureing before it was cool, he was permaculturing before it was even a word. Ok, technically “permaculturing” still isn’t a word, but “permaculture” is, and it’s a good one.   If you don’t know much about it (I didn’t) I recommend the links above to get a feel. But the essence, as I understand it, is to trust nature, and to support the elements of nature to thrive in accordance with their nature. In other words: observe and nurture rather than demand and control.

About an hour later, I had a session with one of my coaches, Sarah Maya, who has been been working with me for years to investigate my stressful thoughts using The Work of Byron Katie.  During our session yesterday, I discovered (again) how much I’ve been trying to control myself, mind, life, and others, in the name of freedom. Counterproductive much?

I have been trying to structure, manage, control, and force my inner landscape to fit some ideal of empty perfection rather than…drum roll please…trust my nature and support the all the elements that make up my nature to thrive through loving observation and nurturance.

Without knowing exactly what I meant, but knowing exactly how it made me feel, I wrote down in big letters:

PERMACULTURE MY INTERIORITY!

Then I went out on the porch, closed my eyes, and imagined what it would be like to have a permacultured interior. Everything would belong and have its place. Everything would fit together in a generative life-giving system. All of me would be diverse, rich, integrated, and WILD. My existence would be a kind of

COHESIVE CHAOS

I opened my eyes and I wrote that down too. I closed my eyes again and focused on the feeling. I felt like the jungle. Wild and rich expansive and free. Inside me saw wide open sky and lush green grasses. I saw food and flowers, bees and butterflies. As Eileen Day McKusick says, this is not only an abundant universe, it’s an exponential one. What happens when you plant one cob of corn? As I meditated on the feeling of a permacultured interior, I felt EXPONENTIAL.

When I opened my eyes again, a hawk soared above me in the bright blue sky as if to say, “YESSSSSSS.!”

Then I picked up a pen, and began to write…