Dear Friends,
This past weekend I was enjoying a bit of hiatus from gardening and just enjoying my creations. I love this time of year as the plants are established, most of the planting has been completed and now it’s maintenance time. I was sitting on my deck watching a hungry hummingbird drinking the nectar of several plants quite voraciously. I am so often busy working/playing in the gardens I miss other opportunities to observe some of the hummingbird activity around me.
I then observed another hummingbird over by a maple tree attempting to get nectar from the leaves, at least that is what I thought. However, I did learn afterwards that hummingbirds eat bugs from leaves and that bugs are as essential to their diet as nectar from plants.
I pondered on how these two birds reflected human’s meanderings towards the abundance of life. Sometimes we need something of substance, like the bugs for the hummingbird and sometimes we need something sweet like the nectar from the plants.
I thought about how often in life, we pursue a path, a person, a job, that doesn’t bring us the sweetness we are craving. Yet we stay because we keep hoping that someday things will change, or because we don’t believe that things could change for the better.
We stay in a relationship because we think the person might become what we hoped, even though we know on a deeper level this most likely won’t happen. Perhaps this person is a good provider, but we are not having any fun with this person. Or we stay at a job because the job provides us security and we forgo happiness to stay safe and pay the bills.
We also might be dealing with a health crisis. We might be experiencing a disconnect from the treatment we are getting, as it just doesn’t feel like it is in alignment with our deeper needs. Or we might not have a good connection with our health care provider as he/she might be only addressing our physical needs but not recognizing us on an emotional and soulful level. We might be drawn to moving in a different direction, trying a new treatment or provider but change is scary. So we stick with the same people, doing the same things and still not finding the sustenance we are hoping for and healing that we desire on a more profound level. Some of our needs are being met, but there are others that are just as important, if not more so to our sense of well being that we cannot grasp.
Nature is speaking to us all the time. I was drawn to slowing down last Sunday and sitting and watching the birds and the bees. Often, some inspiration will come to me when I take a moment to just be. In this case, the hummingbirds inspired my pondering regarding our needs in life, and how often we are nourished by only part of what we require to live a full and happy life.
We can become so focused on what is in front of us, that we fail to see the abundance of life all around us. We have blinders on to the unlimited universe and we go about our days feeling hungry, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled. We lose our natural rhythm our natural instincts for knowing what is good for us. These blinders are often passed down through the generations and we find ourselves in the pattern of our ancestors. Repeating the same patterns over and over again because it feels like the path of least resistance and yet we are starving for more!
We are starving for more sweetness, more creativity, more connection, more love. Yet we settle for less because that is what our ancestors did or what the collective currently does. We each have our own size containers in terms of how many good things we can allow in our lives. For some of us the container is a thimble. For others, it’s a gallon jug. For others, it’s a pool size holder. It is important to ask yourself, what size is your container? Is it a limited size or is it so vast that you can allow anything good into your life, anything that brings you nourishment and allows you to thrive and feel joy?
The maple leaf seemed so dull compared to the abundance of flowers around my yard. And yet, both hold sustenance for the hummingbirds. However, if they chose only nectar they would miss out on the protein and vitamin source of the bugs. It made me ponder on my own life, and where I might be choosing the meat of life over sweetness or vice versa. The meat of life might not seem fun, but we need it as much as the sweetness and at times more so. And at other times, we have too much heaviness or substance we are dealing with and we just need to kick up our heels and go for the nectar of life.
How do we change this pattern and allow in more of the abundance of life’s offerings. In observing the hummingbirds, I realized, it’s a matter of shifting focus and changing direction. Turning the attention away from what is not quite fulfilling and opening up our awareness to the fullness around us. Life holds unlimited treasures. But in order to see them, feel them, capture them we have to be open to moving our attention away from something that is in front of us that is holding our attention captive.
We have to be willing to admit that the health care provider or treatment we are partaking in, is not helping us but perhaps there is someone, or something else that can. We have to be willing to step back from a relationship that is stagnant and unhealthy in order to allow someone in who can provide us with the nourishment and fun that we are craving. We have to be willing to leave a dead end job that makes us want to cry every day, in order to obtain another job/career path that life is holding for us that will inspire us to leap out of bed in the morning.
The point is to take a chance, take a risk, realize that the leaf you are chewing on is not giving you all of what you are needing but only a few feet away are many many beautiful plants of opportunities that can give to you what will further nourish your body, mind and spirit.
Stepping back into your natural rhythm with life is essential. Anything that can help you become more in tune with your own intuition and flow with life much like the hummingbirds, is crucial to your happiness. For me, slowing down and taking moments to observe nature, allows me to stay centered in this flow of life. Doing what you love, creates more flow to bring in even more of what you love. I love to garden and in gardening I love to watch the birds, bees, and even little bugs. In observing nature, I get inspired to write, and to share my observations. And in sharing my observations, I get to interact with all of you.
My desire in writing this today is to encourage all of you to explore what your limits are in allowing in more of the abundance of life. And to also encourage you to find ways to be in your own natural rhythms, in your own intuition for what is right for you. I wish for all of you the courage to know if you need the bugs from a leaf or the beautiful sweet flowers that are surrounding you. There is no need to keep chewing on a source that is only giving you a portion of the sustenance you have been craving. If you are not fulfilled, turn away from what you are always doing, and try something new. You might just find that you will end up feeling as happy as a hummingbird in a garden of flowers and trees. You never know what is right around the corner until you look.
Much Love,
Rosemary