Flow of life

When you’re not in flow with life you are in resistance, being in the flow is following your heart, forcing yourself down a path means resisting the natural life flow that carries us forward. Giving your energy to something you have inner resistance to but feel you ‘should’ be doing because of some conditioned belief is like putting your energy into a black hole, a life sucking empty void that once it has you in it’s grip can be very difficult to pull yourself out of.  I let the systems push me and accepted other people’s goals but each time I achieved them there was always the next one to aim for, eventually I realised the illusory nature of this, it was empty and completely unfulfilling to me.

Life is not meant to be a never ending struggle, the struggle comes when you resist the events and circumstances of your life, once you reach a place of acceptance of all that has gone before and is happening now you find freedom and a sense of peace in your heart that trust in life can grow from. When we live in fear of life our natural inquisitiveness and desire to discover new experiences diminishes, we create a safe place that we feel in control where we think nothing painful can disturb us but this is an illusion because we can’t escape pain forever. Closing our heart because of past hurt means we just have the pain of loneliness and longing to cope with instead. By creating a comfort zone that we control the borders of we may succeed in keeping pain out temporarily but we also block opportunities for life to bring the unexpected good things that would enrich our life and bring joy in our efforts to avoid the ‘bad’.

Sunshine and shadows

It’s like wanting the sunshine without the shadow, that transient form that as long as the sun is shining is always with us. We cannot live wholly without overcoming fear of our shadow self and accepting the need to sit in it’s shade sometimes instead of always trying to be in the light of positive feelings in our safe comfort zone. Trusting in life means opening your heart to all experiences that flow through it, just accepting whatever comes without attaching any specific meaning allows you to expand your consciousness and to accept events that in the past you would continually interpret to reinforce self-limiting beliefs.

A natural consequence of letting go of the fear is that your heart opens so you are able to send love into the field of consciousness where it’s received by others and returned to you. It may come from a different place than where you sent it or in a different form than what you gave but you’re heart will always feel it when it comes from the heart of another.  

Somerset Sky

I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been in the Gaunts house community more of which later but wanted to tell you about Vallis Veg in Somerset where I was 2 weeks ago. Chris and Cordelia own 18 acres of land with a market garden in the middle used to provide vegetables for their box scheme. This was my first experience of a commercial permaculture project and like all noble paths it’s a challenging one. Needless to say they’re not in it for the money but because they believe small holding farming is the best way to support sustainable communities. Chris has done a lot of research into energy inputs and yields of industrial farming and organic farming to show the value of permaculture and organic growing and if you’re interested you can find out more at www.vallisveg.co.uk. They have applied for temporary planning permission so they can live on the site as they feel this will help to their business grow and make it more resilient. Educational school visits where children learn about organic growing and running more Permaculture design courses are other aspects of their business they want to develop. They also have some small allotment plots that people living locally can use to grow their own.

Vallis Veg Market Garden

Phacelia as green manure

Market Garden
What they have achieved so far is very impressive given that neither of them had much experience before they started their business apart from some wwoofing in Canada and Vallis Veg is now a designated permaculture demonstration centre. Chris showed me around the many design features including shelterbelts, compost toilet, chicken coop, perennial plot, pig made pond, irrigation system, poly tunnels and many other familiar features. He’s been experimenting a lot with green manures that help soil retain moisture, protect it from erosion and add fertility when they are cut and mulched. I did a variety of jobs every day from tying tomatoes in the poly tunnel, making compost squares to plant seeds in, replanting wind damaged squashes to preparing beds with compost mulch and planting calabrese in them. On Thursdays they prepare the veg boxes for delivery and I picked 18.3 Kg of spinach to put in them, it took quite a while. Having seen the realities of running a market garden it’s not something I would want to do myself at this moment in time even though it is great they’re providing affordable organic vegetables to their local community. It’s a lot of hard work that isn’t made any easier by the current economic climate and the competition from supermarkets even though where taste and health is concerned there is no comparison with their lovely freshly picked organic produce.

Strawberries fresh from the patch

For me the sky is the most beautiful part of Somerset, it seems so big I felt I could reach up and touch the clouds. My other favourite thing was my host’s strawberry patch in their garden at home where I picked delicious strawberries from every morning, it reminded me of childhood strawberry picking outings where we ate as much as we collected whilst picking and my mums delicious strawberry jam spread on brown bread with butter…yum!  

Feniton

Last week I was volunteering with the Phil Foggitt in Feniton, a small village about an hour away from Totnes. I really appreciated the warm welcome I received as it can be a little daunting to stay in the home of people you don’t know but the way I’m choosing to approach this aspect of my journey is with well known quotation ‘strangers are friends you have yet to meet’ in mind.

Travelling around and staying with lots of different people is definitely a good way of stepping out of your comfort zone and practicing living with an open-mind and heart as this is an important part of what I wanted to gain from this experience.  Phil is what I would describe as a conscious eco-soul who has many years of organic gardening experience and setting up sustainable living projects such as Otter Rotters, a community recycling project that makes a number of recycled products including compost and mulch. We had some good chats about the challenges of trying to engage large organisations with new ideas and I admire the way he has carried on putting energy into trying to get projects started even though he's had many frustrations along the way. It’s not often I’ve met people who actually ‘walk the talk’ but Phil is one of them.  

I’m starting to appreciate the multitude of different approaches to Permaculture practice as opposed to learning the theory. Phil see’s it as a useful tool he employs when it suits him as opposed to taking it on board as a life philosophy. He does a lot of re-using and recycling local resources for mulching including cardboard from a photographic finishers, carpet tiles from an industrial estate and spent hops from the brewery he works for. He’s devised a clever way of using upturned palettes to make portable raised beds and created microclimates by building walls and painting them white to absorb light so lots of examples of design principles in action.  

'Eco Soul' Phil Foggitt

During the week I got to try out some new gardening skills including riddling compost, potting on seedlings, planting leeks, making a mulched bed, making bamboo cane supports for peas and beans and making bunches of herbs for drying. Phil has recently made some raised beds at the front of the house where he is creating a mini forest garden inspired by the work of Martin Crawford who runs the Agroforestry Research Trust mentioned in my last post. He’s planted lots of shade tolerant shrubs including Oregon grape, Goji berry and Ground Cover Raspberry to see how they get on. The front garden was also home to Womble the guinea pig who I never actually got to see but I like her name so she gets a mention :). I’m guessing she is thus named in homage to the famous recyclers of Wimbledon Common that were so ahead of their time. I feel a bit of nostalgic googling coming on...what a great song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVMrJ1EVAQ

Planting Leeks

Riddling Compost

Garden Therapy

As well as helping out in Phil’s beautiful garden I also worked on a couple of other projects he’s involved with at Otter Brewery and Barnfield Farm. The latter is a care home for people with learning disabilities based in the picturesque village of Luppitt. I enjoyed this project the most because I’m very interested in the idea of therapeutic gardening although I think garden therapy could help everyone, not just people with learning difficulties. I feel like my time working in gardens and allotments has been very therapeutic for me, a combination of being outside in the fresh air, physical exercise, the mental satisfaction of completing whatever tasks need doing and the reward of eating fresh vegetables. I find there is something very rewarding in the simplicity of this, especially after years trying to tackle the confusing complexity of corporate structure and operations.

Phil & Jamie protect the cabbages

Cloud meditation

After a day in the garden sometimes I would lie on my bed and look at the clouds through the skylight window. As I watched the clouds float past like thoughts in my mind shapes would form, a face, animal or an object but they disappeared as quickly as they appeared, a reminder of the transient nature of thought and how much freer one is by not getting attached to them especially unhelpful ones. Recently I’ve been reading about sun gazing, an ancient method of healing that originated in India about 2600 years ago with the teaching of Lord Mahavir of Jain. It works because our eyes act as light receptors as we gaze at the sun, allowing our brain the light it needs to reset it self and integrate various hormones by energising the pineal gland. Of course looking directly at the sun can be dangerous but apparently gazing at white clouds has the same effect.

I feel a lot more energetic because I’m spending more time outside rather than stuck in an office under strip lights, perhaps this is partly to do with the positive effects of cloud gazing. Cloud meditation gives me a deep sense of well-being that radiates outwards from my soul as I connect with the eternal life force of the universe. It’s an ancient feeling that I believe is part of the collective unconscious of human experience beyond this lifetime..

Meditating on clouds

If you fancy trying a spot of cloud meditation here’s some music for you to listen to as you gaze at the clouds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL9HXNQmBIg&feature=BF&list=QL&index=5. Also check out The Cloud Appreciation Society they also have some relaxing cloud music http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Knowing beyond the mind

Whilst meditating on the clouds I found myself processing something that happened to me in evening of the retreat silent day. I had what I would describe as a conscious experience of knowing beyond the mind. I was sat on a bench in the retreat garden and felt my consciousness expand out from the confines of my body to connect with all life around me, the sounds of the tree’s rustling in the breeze, the birds, the insects buzzing, the plants growing, there was a sudden movement to my left outside of my field of vision but it wasn’t just my eyes that registered this, it was beyond the five senses somehow I knew it was a bird before my mind named it. Finding the words to describe this is not easy as words are just symbols we use to communicate feelings and experiences to others, it didn’t feel separate from me but part of my consciousness. I recognise this is a knowing of the soul and I trust it above all else...