Being Present   by KD Farris, Ph.D.	MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT

Celebration: If You Want to Learn Stillness—Watch a Rock

I have been moody this winter—a lot of change, mostly good, yet still the tendency to cling: to the past …to what is known …to what was thought to be known.

Heading into springtime, the season of renewal and vitality, I find myself in need of being coaxed by any and all to something higher, brighter, lighter than my interior. Finally, the invitation ignites as the very land to which I have relocated, and the wildlife that has lived here forever, beckons and brings me to a lighter disposition.

Fourteen months ago, I moved to the mountains after twenty years of beachside living. With the 2007 California drought, there was little celebration to be found. As the months progressed, oh, the coyotes howled and a distant peacock sought its mate night and day, but otherwise there was little sign of new life emerging. I lived in a desert, hot with sunshine and spare of greenery, which was perfectly fine with me. The beach had been foggy and damp through the summer months and I was happy to hang with the dry climate, get a suntan, and regularly feel the penetrating heat on my skin again.

This year, the area has had more than its typical rainfall and the desert canyon into which I thought I had moved, now brags a stunning vista blanketed in tall rich purple stems and banks of lanky yellow.

If you’ve been to southern California in the spring, you know what I am talking about. Highways and roadsides are lined as far as the eye can see at this time of year with yellow dancing clusters atop long, lean, waving stalks of green. The foliage looks like it would produce cauliflower in its early stages of growth, but then what was a bushy, low to the ground leafy mess rises as high as your waist before sending out the delicate, ubiquitous shoots with small yellow balls afloat. Pockets of yellow daisies pepper the landscape, their color measured not so much by hue as by density, showing deep and heavy among the airy mustard.

The animal population has been greatly affected by the rains and summer wildfires too. In my small canyon alone, a whole new coyote pack has joined the locals this winter, and now mating season is out of this world, with the howling, calling and yipping of last year multiplied by ten. Talk about celebration. They are so alive and so enthralled with their own living nature and its instinctive ritual; you can hear how the very sound of their voices excites and delights the caller and the called. My husband and I stand in the light of the full moon, holding and protecting our little dog (for smaller dogs are coyote meals around here—nature has its many sides and consequences) the three of us in awed wonder for all that is happening in this midnight hour at the dawn of Spring.

Spring has a funny way of activating us all. The change of season sends a buzz through the cities as well. Flower boxes sprouting, flocks of birds returning, winter coats shedding, cleavage bursting. DNA screams loud as nature from the building tops if you care to turn and listen.

During times of great introspection there are lessons lying all around for the taking. Reminders from nature of our true spirit: how what we are just is; and that we do not need to try to create expression, for we cannot help but be the fertile seeds of the intention that is written in our genes. We can stuff it, shame it, try to reduce its meaning—we can distort it, transgress from it, hide and mutate it, but if we sit in stillness like a rock, or go to the hillside in the Spring, we may be able to melt what we have done to ourselves so as to love not only what we have become, but also the process of alienation from ourselves by which we have become it. Love it as you love the wind and sea: for its inevitable existence. Because it is guaranteed that the mystery bringing it into our awareness will one day return to take it all away. Without knowing when the day will come, eternity lays before us, one of strife or joy depending on our making.

Nature appears to lack the editing factor by which we humans so readily respond to life. If we turn to the nature inside or around us—the quintessential father and mother of spirit and soul respectively—there is much grace to be found.  Everywhere I look in my back, front and side yards, something new is springing to life, celebrating its deepest programming by becoming what it is, as it is, sprung from and living in the hills and fields and canyons.

I have always said, “If you want to learn stillness, watch a rock.” Since moving to the mountains, I have a new saying, “If you want to learn celebration, go outside in Spring."

© Copyright 2008 KD Farris, Ph.D.. All Rights Reserved.

Read KD's Past Columns:

Winter-Spring 2008 - "Personal Power, Strength and Empowerment"

KD Farris, Ph.D. is a successful counselor, healer, and bodyworker. For more than twenty years she has taught extensive workshops based on MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT as well as many other self-discovery topics.

KD began developing her integrated bodywork and counseling techniques in 1983 under the tutelage of many prominent doctors and healers throughout the United States.

Her education into the spiritual and physical aspects of the human experience served as the foundation for her private practice and the development of a new philosophy. She combined her techniques into four guiding principles, which she shares in her book, MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT: What My Grandmother Taught Me About the Universe. She teaches a companion workshop series, where she creates an interactive environment demonstrating the material from her book with tangible, life altering effects. In these workshops, individuals discover a deepening of their relationship to self, others, and life itself.

Through individual counseling and group workshops, she has taught her results-oriented programs to many different types of people including those confined to mental institutions, substance and food abusers, and generally, people in life transitions, struggling with intimate relationships, or who lack direction in their lives. Visit www.kdfarris.com.

KD is currently touring a new body of work, Talking About People in Transition, Also Known As Liminal Space. She will be writing about liminality and its relevance to day-to-day living in upcoming issues of Soulful Living. For more information on this new and exciting topic, or to learn about more her private practice, workshops and lectures, visit www.kdfarris.com.

Contact KD at: info@MESHE.com

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