Richmond, VA

Merry meet Friends!

Michelle here, bringing lots of love

 

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.  Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.  Let reality be reality.  Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”…..Lao Tzu

 

This week I’ve been focused and meditating on the word, natural.  It’s been in my thoughts as just the word itself or in song.  Natural as a noun means, existing in nature and not made or caused by people; a person regarded as having an innate gift or talent for a particular task or activity.    Some synonyms for natural are authentic, earthy, intuitive, spontaneous and uninhibited.  These words resonate with me.  Perhaps because some of them were used to describe me in the Sam Christensen’s workshop I took in October, 2009.

On the first day of Sam’s workshop we were split into groups.  Each person in the group was given a sheet with an extensive list of words.  Each person in the group took a turn sitting in a chair facing the rest of the group.  The persons not facing the group had to, in silence; check off each word that they felt represented the person facing them.  Some of us had never met before so this was entirely done on the energy exuded from the person.  It was a little unnerving to say the least!  We had to listen to our intuition or inner selves.  All of the sheets were done anonymously, unless we chose to give our names.  They were collected and given to each person.  There were a series of questions we had to answer pertaining to the words.  It was an extensive four day weekend and a lot was accomplished in order to find our “myths”. 

The words, authentic and earthy, were checked off on most of my sheets.  At another time I will share some of the others.  We had to find synonyms for these words and based on that and other exercises, our myths were given by Sam on the last day.  It is a very insightful workshop and I would recommend it to anyone who likes doing inner work.  It is a workshop for actors but he has expanded it to allow others to participate.  Sometimes the myth resonated with people and sometimes it wasn’t received immediately, but when we did get it, tears usually flowed.   

Authentic and earthy both have as synonyms, the word natural.  As the word natural permeated my thoughts, I also thought about women.  Of course, that made Aretha Franklin’s song, “You Make Me Feel like a Natural Woman”, pop into my thoughts.  The song is talking about the way her lover makes her feel but as I looked at the lyrics, I realized that some of the verses could actually be about Spirit.  That’s ok because we can definitely have a love relationship with Spirit and of course it would feel natural.

I don’t find it strange that I thought about women in relation to natural.  From ancient times women have been natural healers, teachers and nurturers.  This then led to the word wise.  Wise as an adjective means: having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgment.  As a verb: become alert to or aware of something.  It’s funny how things can relate back to each other.  All of this made me think about “flowing”.  I don’t know why, it just did.  Maybe because flowing is natural; we “go with the flow” or we “flow through life”.  Sometimes flowing through life can appear to be a negative, as if the person has no direction.  Synonyms for flowing are:  loose, free, unconfined, fluent, free-flowing, effortless, easy, fluid, smooth, and natural.   Wow, I think I like the idea of flowing.  It’s natural to flow and flowing is natural.  Right on Lao Tzu!

Of course if one thinks of flowing, one thinks of water.  This takes me back to one of Sam’s essences for me: “the intelligence of water”, which I shared before in an earlier post.  My daughter is consistently telling me to “be like water” Mom.  Flow, flow, flow.  Water takes the shape of whatever contains it.  That means adapting to circumstances that happen along the journey.  As Lao Tzu said, resistance creates sorrow.  When I pray for myself or others, I usually say at the end of the prayer that the “thing”, whatever the thing is, be done easily and effortlessly.  I see now that I’m asking for natural flow, the way things are meant to be. 

When we were children, my Grandfather, as did many people, would leave the water running a little at night in winter, to keep the pipes from freezing.  I guess someone must have cut the water off one night because he placed a sign on the kitchen sink.  The sign said to “Leave everything has you find it.”  No, that’s not a typo.  Has is the word he used.  He didn’t have much of an education but what he did have was wisdom.  He was asking us to let things be as they were, as (or has) we found them; to let the water flow so that we could have some in the morning.  The flow would stop if the pipes froze and then they would burst.  Water just like us, needs to flow freely, easily and effortlessly.  It’s the authentic, earthy, natural thing to do and be.

Until next Sunday,

Merry part and merry meet again!

Blessed be,

Gypsi Mama Michelle