In this liminal time, what do we let go and what do we keep?
 
What needs to go?
Where does this grief come from?
Should I let grief go?
No
Grief is a measure of how much you care.
Carry grief, not to wallow in
But for memory.
 
Should I let my dreams go?
Ah, letting go of dreams and expectations is a wise path.
Keep your vision.
Keep your ear to the ground and your eyes on nature.
Follow her lead.
Notice what she is doing.
We are followers in this time.
Trust nature – she is only interested in expanding life.
She has 65 million years (or more) in making life happen.
She knows.
 
Should I let my fear go? How?
Yes, oh yes, there is no room for fear.
Fear prevents new options.
Fear makes us small.
Fear closes us down into tiny visions of the past.
The means a mix of claiming our agency in service to life.
We are learning the strength of service.
Service means to listen, to explore, to inquire into how LIFE happens.
Notice when your actions create the conditions that support life.
This is deep work.
Requiring authenticity and therefore courage.
Curiosity is the path forward.
Be so curious that there is no room for any other emotion except AWE.
 
Anger, should I let my anger go?
Anger, why are you angry?
Anger is a defense, a pretended strength against change.
Resistance is futile and even self-destructive.
Anger makes enemies, when we need to make friends.
So, letting go of resistance to these many shifts and changes, losses, will release the anger.
Loss is huge, and very difficult.
Treasuring memories, savoring the love the gifts you recognize as precious have stirred in you.
Every loss opens a space for something new.
Be curious to see what is also appearing in the new space that is available.
Be in gratitude for the experience that is bringing you such pain.
Appreciate your ability to recognize the beauty that serves life.
Trust LIFE to reemerge.
Have patience.
 
Love, I want to let go of love. It is SO painful!
Ah, yes, and no.
It is attachment that is painful.
Attachment carries expectations.
Expectations are painful and they make us believe in betrayal.
So let go of attached love, that comes with expectations about how it ‘should’ be, about how it ‘ought’ to be.
Keep that love that is full of gratitude and appreciation.
Keep the love that recognizes the divinity in the other.
Keep the love that opens you up to the delicious expression of LIFE
In all the magnificent forms it chooses to take.
Stay curious to discover the new forms that love will take.
Love is life in motion – enjoy.

Design is a very human thing to do. It's one-way we humans express ourselves and make our mark in the world. Because of this, design is often not only human centric, it’s egocentric. The hubris and ego that is often involved in design of any kind, particularly architecture, makes it very hard to even understand what it means to design with nature.
 
Biomimicry has been a fabulous invention. The very act of getting businesses to think about nature as a resource has moved our relationship with nature light years into the future. We have become very clever now by watching and seeing what nature does we then try to do it in our own way, bending nature's wisdom to our needs and desires. One of the real benefits of this approach has been the ability to at least think about minimizing our resource use, nature is very thrifty. However, designing with nature is a whole different approach.
 
In designing with nature, it becomes apparent that nature needs space, so we need to allow nature to exist, to coexist, to be in proximity, to interpenetrate the spaces we use. In actual practice, this means making sure the green expands instead of our habit of reducing or controlling anything green. We must begin paying attention to nature's health, as well as our own health.
 
Nature needs time, it's not rushed. It's sometimes slow, it may even meander. It needs to be supported in this by having the space, the opportunity, to take the time that it needs to flower, to come into fruition, to blossom. We need to be conscious of the cycles it needs to function in and allow for the changes, over time, that nature brings forth. Our addiction to standards, stagnant appearances, simplified expressions, and easily repeated designs don't fit in with natures exuberance.
 
There's an exuberance about nature, a joyous expression of creativity that doesn't tolerate standards or constraints or stability or repetition. The recognition, expectation, openness to spontaneity, to emergence requires trusting the process, and loosening our attachment to outcomes. We need to design with emergence in mind and allow for the evolution of the design as real life contributes.
 
Working with nature is not an event, it's a journey. It's an exploration. It's a collaboration. It may be a cycle, but it's rarely an event. We get caught in events, but with nature, it's always part of a process.
 
Understanding the processes and patterns of nature and recognizing the need for that kind of expression is a way of being in tune and creating harmony with what's existing and with what wants to appear. In any dance, there's a leader and a follower. Allowing nature to lead can give us the confidence, the trust, and the feeling of safety that we crave, if we understand nature and how she works. Trust is not about blind faith, but in being confident enough to ask questions, and seek examples to put our concerns to rest. It’s about learning to see situations through Earth’s eyes.
 
Listening to nature requires the patience and depth to be in silence, enough grounding in science to understand the processes and cycles, and a depth in working with systems to see the patterns nature enjoys. The biggest shift, however, is putting nature first. By keeping the serpentine bend in rivers, water can serve the entire ecosystem. By allowing for flood plains, water can nurture vast areas on a continual basis. Our ability to ‘straighten’ rivers, put them in concrete beds, bury them underground and divert them hundreds of miles, subverts their nature and purpose. When we claim land to serve our own desires, we put ourselves in a situation of continually fighting with nature, which becomes costly, both financially and emotionally.
 
Nature LOVES life! By trusting that we can develop a harmony with nature, one that is especially needed as the Earth rebalances to adjust to the changes we have mindlessly made, we create resilience and robust health. Working together, we can co-create a new normal, one that serves us both.
 

I need solace. Today I need to feel the arms of the planet around me, I need to know I’m OK, everything is OK.  Everything is not OK, we now know that, but I need to reconnect to nature to tell me, “We can do this!”
 
Where I live, there is no untended nature. Yes, I can get in my car and drive, but that seems to defeat the purpose. This is the first place I’ve lived where I can’t just walk out and find solace. It pains me. It pains me a great deal.
 
We love that phrase – undeveloped land. It gives us permission to….develop. It also denies the value of life living life. I need to walk thought, to sit in, places where life is just living life. I need to feel the joy those plants, insects, nematodes, feel in just being alive – that invigorates me.
 
I think that is what is missing in my life – the enjoyment of others loving being alive. My friends are overwhelmed with the changes they are dealing with. Many of us have just lost a friend to add to the load. As other lives are expiring, even if you aren’t consciously aware, I believe we feel that loss. Everything that dies needlessly, because of a lack of care, or a denial of or refusal to recognize the importance of that life, hurts.
 
When life loves life there is a joy that radiates out into the world, a juice we all drink from, that seems to be waning. I am thirsty, I need to drink from the cup of life! The ennui I feel, the lack of interest, is really about that. I can tackle anything. I can get fired up – IF I feel connected to life.
 
I miss fireflies, big black and gold spiders, butterflies. I miss the blue spruce my neighbor cut down because he feared her roots would interfere with his pipes. I miss the huge elm that was cut down because…? The spirits in those trees didn’t understand either. Surely there is another way?
 
It seems to me that the strange and violent weather we are experiencing is Mother Nature’s anger at the disrespect we have been expressing for life. Her intent is to keep a rich, vibrant and robust complexity of life on this planet – to glory in the abundance and creativity of life’s expression. And here we are cheerfully eliminating any life that is ‘inconvenient’ to us, or that we think interferes with the few plants and animals we favor. I think she’s had enough.
 
Like any good parent, however, I think she will forgive us and maybe even settle down, if we mend our ways. I want to live near untamed life. Life I can have a relationship with. Life I can talk to and engage with. I am thrilled when I see other kin living their lives. It is SO neat to watch birds caring for their young. To see alligators putting their young into their mouths to take them to the river after they have hatched – who knew? There is love everywhere! I miss it.

In discussions with Terri Mollner I was struck by his emphasis on power. He was very firm in that one of the biggest challenges in maturing to be a full human consisted in holding onto, as I understand it, the power for discernment.

Now what first raised questions was his insistence that people need to hang on to power. In my experience with the spiritual life power is the least of my concerns. I see power as a characteristic, an illusion even, of differentiation from source and if there is an attachment, then that desire can lead to an actual fragmentation from the whole.

My experience of higher levels of consciousness is that the concept of power fades away. That word no longer applies. If anything the aspects of the other end of the continuum – influence and appreciation – become more real, more true. Truth, for me is more about coherence than being ‘right.’ The concept of having to maintain and express power when in high states of consciousness speaks to a kind of dissonance that doesn’t feel correct.

If Terri means that as humans mature while maintaining their differentiation from source they need to be sure to ensure their ability to discern what is ‘true/resonant’ from that which is not, then that makes sense to me, and one area of discernment that is key is to be clear that the goal of a mature, differentiated human is to become as coherent as possible while still remaining differentiated. Doing this is possible, as he said, because we all know what oneness is and as long as we are ‘resting’ in that awareness then we can play at differentiation with integrity.

I hope I’m understanding him correctly. If I’m correct, then his book, The Love Skill, is a recipe for living into the fullness of humanity – while consciously maintaining differentiation. I see that as the desire to bring spirit down into creation, and that’s a wonderful thing to do. My minds eye sees stories from the Mahabharata about Arjuna, and these stories speak to the dawning realization that we are infinite souls. These stories speak to the shifting of the Kali Yuga and maybe even the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Love is that which recognizes coherence.