A Beautiful Potting Shed

Judith has a beautiful potting shed. When i visited her recently, the other people we were with shivered immediately into her house, but Judith and i slid over the frozen snow in her backyard so i could tour her lovely potting shed.

We gardeners need some place to make a mess. We have our own personal gardening space and maybe even our own potting shed. It's important to have our own meditation space too--a place where we can allow the mind to clean itself up. Purification, as it is called, happens naturally and is one of the forerunners of a calm mind. A mind content with the solitude of the garden, content with the mess inside the potting shed, or content with the purification happening on the cushion.

Smudging on Solstice

After a potluck at 6:00, the winter solstice celebration moves outdoors to the solstice bonfire. The first thing i do is smudge people--i offer a purifying sage smoke bath to cleanse the old year in preparation for the new (solar) year.

Smoke doesn't sound like a purifying bath, so you might think of it like incense.

Paradoxically, smoke from the sacred herb sage cleans our energy field.

What are you leaving behind in the old year?

I Hoed a Toad

This morning, while planting potatoes, i hoed a little
toad right out of the ground. She was surprised, and i was surprised.

Maybe you've felt sort of stunned yourself. For instance, when you're on retreat and something unexpectedly bubbles up from the sub-conscious or the unconscious. Maybe it's sort of ugly, which is a good reason to have repressed it all this time.

I just reviewed the last 12 hours of my father's life (18 years ago), and i suddenly saw it in an entirely different light.

Bringing things to light is part of what is called the purification process. We purify our minds, just like water is purified.

Surprising, yes! And unexpected. And lighter. I feel lighter without that dark thing hiding underground.

Cleaning Up

As i mentioned yesterday, i have too much lead, one of the earth's elements, in my body. Really, due to our industrial society, we probably all have some sort of body burden--an excess of some element or other in our bodies.

Chelation is the method of removing heavy metals from the body. I'm using green clay, another earth element, to chelate the lead, to draw it out of the body.

Green clay looks like powdered wasabi; just add water and smear it onto the body. In this way, eventually, the body can be purified of the toxic elements.

Our minds, too, can be purified of toxins by practicing qualities of kindness, compassion, joy, generosity, and the cure-all, patience.

Choose your poison. I'm sure you already know your very familiar poisoner of the mind--a grudge, impatience, anger, wishy-washiness, greed.
Then choose the antidote. (Message me if you need some help with this.)

Let's clean up our act. Clean up our body, but even more importantly, clean up our mind.