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Dear Yogis,

A thought.  You wouldn’t take a paper plane to impress astronauts at NASA would you?  Are you working on your “paper plane”.  Will at some point it be ready for lift-off?  Hoping for lift-off won’t work, wishing won’t work, taking a paper plane into space won’t work.  You have to understand the forces you are working with, and design a structure that WILL work having studied and tried and failed and kept on going.

But, before we even get to the point of lift off we have to know where we are going, how we are going to get there AND THEN COMMIT TO THE PROCESS.  The process is meditation and prayer.

There are lots of difficulties and lots of opportunities put in our paths today.  You may have meditated or prayed DANGEROUS PRAYERS...ie prayers that will take us onto paths that will really challenge every fibre of our being.  Those are usually prayers that are open ended.  Prayers that rely on God for the path and the result.. Prayers of gratitude, BEFORE the spaceship or the lift-off is visible.

The other day a client was asking me about the confusion she had tried years to get out of.  When she was married she allowed her husband to lead but inwardly rebelled.  Resented everything.   She had forgotten why she married him.  By the time the inevitable divorce happened, she didn’t know what she wanted for herself, or if what she felt was the habit of rebelling even when there was nothing to rebel against, she was still rebelling, still digging her heels in.  There was no possibility of friendship.  The Vedic wedding ceremony ends with the words “…and no matter what happens, may we always be friends”. 

More than the “till death do us part”, it gives us something to work with that takes into account the fact we are humans with all the frailties this implies.

Living alone, when she thought about the road ahead she wanted to know every detail, and know what God had in store.  She asked me “How can I know what God wants?” and told herself that this question would take her into a righteous path.  You can’t get beautiful by dishonour even if you tell yourself the other person deserves this.  You don’t know the path.    It’s the little acts of dishonour that bring strife.  If you treat a person with dishonour they will never grow, neither will you.  If you don’t show honour your prayers may never come to pass.

How can you know what God has in store for you  –  YOU CAN’T or rather, you have only one compass, your heart, and that is how God talks to you. You have to FEEL what to do next, and trust that.  That in itself is difficult because we have to get out of our head and into our heart.  We have to know the difference, and we have to listen to THE STILL, SMALL VOICE.  Then we MUST be honest.  To honour the “voice” and leave the result  up to God.  Relax into the vortex of trust... It is exhausting to work out of a place of distrust, or blaming, of trying to be,  do,  or have something you THINK you deserve..  

Growing love where the ground is barren gives honour.

Show honour and all will be well with you.  Be grateful for something up ahead,  trusting it is wonderful even if you can’t see it. Are you going to take the easy way out? Grumbling to your friends about how you are put-upon, how terrible conditions are, how you deserve more.  Yogis, if you did deserve more you would have more. The more honour you show, the more you will be honoured.

In the “hot-house” of the covid experience, honouring God, knowing there IS A PLAN, is important.  Nothing is wasted…. everything is valuable.Our spiritual bank accounts are empty.  Start building.  Trust that you are loved, cared for.  In my garden the plants don’t know anything has changed.  There is still sunlight, there is still rain, and they still give fruit.

LIVE WELL, BE HAPPY AND BE FRUITFUL. PROSPER.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

Dear Yogis,

A practical, money saving newsletter this morning, whilst you are trying out the revelations in yesterday’s about meditation.

OK.  I got it.  So you are not going into the bush to forage no matter how great the results – and few of you have the room or the inclination to prepare, plant and wait for vegetables to grow, even in pots…. this may be tempered if Coles runs out of veggies, but may not apply to you today. mind you, Coles was running out of greens when I was in there over the weekend, and the “SPECIAL” price tag on an organic cabbage was (wait for it) $10!  I understand organic anything are more expensive because they are more labour intensive, but not $10 for a cabbage harder.  What will happen as this covid isolation and non-travel bites deeper?

There is an answer….Have you thought about SPROUTS and MICROGREENS?  These can be grown in glass jars in your kitchen, or in trays somewhere protected.  They give results quickly, are packed with nutrients, and you don’t have to go out in the cold!

Because they are an easy way to get vitamins, minerals and fibre easily and right away – clip and eat – I always have something growing in jars in the kitchen for clipping and sprinkling on soups, veggies and open sandwiches.    Recently I have been processing acorns for muesli and ointment, now have radishes and flax seed,  and over the coming weekend I have everything I need to start a few trays of seeds I have been storing,  Daikon being a favourite and top of the list.   I am trying my beautiful organic flax two ways 1. in a sprouting jar, and 2. as a micro green in a tray.  Chia, Alfalfa, Sunflower will all get a tray for themselves… it is easy.

When you start, some seeds will not go along with what you have planned for them at all.

Start (if you are a newbie) with Mung beans.. in about four days you will have a bundle of great greens to toss into your evening stir fry.  Lentils, peas, beans even buckwheat will try to please with lovely elegant little sprouts just waiting for a salad (or a pancake), to enhance.

If you are impatient, these are perfect.  They are quick, they are prolific, they are power packed…  the absolute easiest superfood, and great to start children in gardening.  When you buy seeds to use in this way, you can buy them on line, at grocery stores and nurseries.  You have to make sure they are within their sell-by date and all things being equal,  you should get about a 90%  germination result.   Choose young seeds over older ones because  germination rate diminishes with time.  Store in a cool dark drawer.  There is no difference between an organic seed and an ordinary one as far as reproduction and germination go.

They can be grown year round.  Doesn’t matter what is happening in the garden, they don’t care as long as the room temperature agrees with them.  Sprouts don’t care about light, although shoots need some.  A porch or a window sill will do just fine.

They are budget friendly, use almost no resources, and are champion producers turning 3oz of seed into 3 cups of food (Alfalfa even more).  You can plant them in your empty milk cartons halved lengthways and with a layer of soil, sand or cotton wool… just like in primary school experiments.  you can also use your throw-away plastic food containers.  You can use these plastic containers quite a few times before consigning them to the rubbish bin.

Soaking and sprouting is a smart way to go making valuable nutrients available – and in covid, nutrition is the number one consideration….. I will let you know how I go, and when I can I will share my seeds with you.  Flax I can share right away.

By the way Cumquats and other citrus are available right now.  You either have none, or you have so many you are letting them rot.  Don’t.  Use them or give them to someone who will use them.  I am making spiced oil with dried cumquat peel, preserved cumquats, cumquats in port, and I am thinking of chocolate dipped cumquat peel (when it is dried the peel is sweet).  What are you making….?

GROW, GROW, GROW..

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

 

Dear Yogis,

What happens for me in meditation you ask? It is not easy to write about… or even to analyse.

In the first  minutes a curious thing happens. First concentrating on the breath, back and forth sharpening the focus.  In the beginning it is a “grind” but it is a grind I know,  a strange place that depending where I am and the intention,  can last quite a long time.  I am the person sitting in meditation standing back from myself looking at the person sitting in meditation.  After a while all that remains is the energy of the person sitting in meditation, being inside the flow of meditation.  The breath breathes itself. A special place of unhindered oxygenation is what you are seeking.  Imperfect breath patterns cause stress even if you are oblivious to this.

Let everything drift into soft awareness.

Then comes clarity, you get deeper and deeper into the soul of meditation.  The concept of “I” is gone and all that exists is blissful engagement with the process, absolute flow.  You know what is happening but you experience it from inside what is happening.

As I have said many times, by systematically training yourself you can drop into this meditative state at will and avoid distractions.  Even from children.  If you are tense, trying not to listen, straining to be calm… this is a contradiction, and you will snap.  The harder you try to blanket it out, the louder if becomes.

Most of us are TRAPPED in a “mind bubble”.  The alternative is to be quietly focussed, relaxed, your face in the Buddhist half smile, integrating what comes into the experience, and detaching. Be at peace with the distraction.  If music is in the background integrate it, not denying the sound, or your emotion. If your knees ache, if your back is sore… Integrate it, channel it into higher focus, sorting your way through the chaos.  The mind is just like any other muscle, it needs to be trained and Vipassana meditation is the best training.  Concentrating on the breath, always coming back to the breath expecting NOTHING.

Read and understand the TaoTeChing.  Laotses’s focus is inward,  understanding the essence of things rather than the physical outward manifestations.  Some of his verses comprise the last modules in our course, but few understand beyond the physical.  The Tao’s wisdom centres on overcoming obstructions to our natural insight, seeing false obstructions for what they are and releasing them.

As in TaiChi and YOGA, the aim is not winning – the aim is BEING.

Like Chancy the Gardener, Have a great “*BEING THERE” day… (*A Peter Sellers movie from a book written by Jerzy Kosinski).

NAMASTE – JAHNE

(Watch this space for new take on small, small space,  high nutrition gardening, coming soon…)