Lesson One
Theme: Getting Started
Standard sections:
Intro
Exercise
Nature Spirits
Plants
Thriving Garden
Energy in the Garden
Around the Garden
People in the Garden
What’s next?
Intro
Please pause for a moment. Look slowly around your room. Notice carefully each contribution made by a plant. Think about the value of those contributions. They were given willingly, lovingly.
My friends, these contributions pale in comparison with the gifts plants have in store for us. Plants are truly here to heal us. It is in healing them that we initiate the cycle of love between us.
Welcome to your introductory Learning Lesson! It is my intent to help you connect deeply – and in practical ways – with your plants, your garden, and with Nature.
I pack Gardening With Nature Learning Lessons with knowledge you would have to dig for in multiple, well-hidden resources. I focus on powerful information you can apply now to make an immediate difference in the wellness of your beloved plants.
At the same time, we’re building a foundation to empower you to heal those treasured plants. You save time and money, and connect with your plants on a much deeper level.
It’s been an interesting challenge to bring together this exciting knowledge in a way that can be learned and practiced easily and effectively. It’s our hope these Learning Lessons will provide fun and value as you put them to use, and bring healing to you and your plants.
Exercise
A system is either well or it is not. If it is not well, symptoms and problems pop up anywhere, and they keep popping up until the entire system is healed. A landscape is a system—so is an individual plant.
So, here’s your first assignment. Your task is to observe and make a split-second judgment about the landscapes and plants you come across this week: is it well or is it not well?
Don’t bother noticing symptoms or problems, or making a lot of detailed observations. Allow your noticing to take in the entire system at once. What is your first impression of it? Well? Or not well?
That’s all. Well, not quite. You’re human after all, so you’ll soon begin noticing patterns in the well/not well observations. This is the beginning.
Nature Spirits
Everything is energy, including thoughts. Because there is no time, no space, every thing that ever happened, every thought that ever was thought, is here now. That means everything we need to know—can know—is available to us in the form of energy.
The question is: how do we tap into this energy for information we seek?
Basically, we ask.
Imagine talking on your phone. You’re sending information. Information is delivered to you. It’s in the form of energy. You don’t know how it works. You just know you’re talking with your friend.
Now, is it possible you could exchange information with your friend without using a phone? Probably, but hold that thought for now. At any rate, the phone is pretty helpful in making the information accessible. It turns a bunch of something-we-can’t-see into the voice of your friend. That’s the kind of help we need in accessing the information-in-energy we’re seeking.
I use a simple pendulum. I’ve also worked with a German dowsing tool and kinesiology. Through the ages, seekers have developed very interesting, very creative, and very effective methods for knowing the truth.
The idea of this section is to delve deeper into your connection with Nature. This may include the use of dowsing and other tools to enhance your connection and support your gardening experiments. We’ll also explore the lost art of asking right questions.
Plants
So far, I’ve identified 19 kinds of actions we take toward our plants. It’s a useful list for identifying the day’s priorities, especially when you’re in an analytical mood!
[ ] 1 Water
[ ] 2 Fertilize
[ ] 3 Till
[ ] 4 Weed
[ ] 5 Move
[ ] 6 Plant
[ ] 7 Transplant
[ ] 8 Love
[ ] 9 Notice
[ ] 10 Cover
[ ] 11 Heal
[ ] 12 Prune
[ ] 13 Clean
[ ] 14 Propagate
[ ] 15 Throw away
[ ] 16 Give away
[ ] 17 Sell
[ ] 18 Deadhead
[ ] 19 Collect seed
For today, please check “notice” for each of your plants. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Nature loves to be noticed.” It’s a beautiful thought. And, it’s true.
To notice your plants, you have to get up out of your chair and actually go look at them. Just look carefully at each one and see whatever is to be seen.
What’s new to notice? What are you learning from that? How does that make you feel?
Besides bestowing an excellent gift of healing upon your plants, you’ll find yourself reaping some interesting benefits too! When it comes to plants, the more we give, the more we receive. Such a deal!
Thriving Garden
Here are the co-creative gardening Rules of Engagement between Nature Spirits and Human Spirits:
Complete honesty
Love – all work flows from a loving attitude
Trust
Work hard to fulfill agreements
Joy—keep a joyful heart
Observe—look carefully—see into
Adding unto—for mutual benefit
Life—honor all life
Obey Gaia—the final word
Harvest—for sustainability
In gardening from the spirit in these rules, we set the table for an experience with nature that can only be called a miracle.
Energy in the Garden
Let’s begin with a few basics. The universe appears to be composed of matter and energy. Matter is energy trapped in form. So, energy is really all there is. Energy is conscious and responds to our intention. The basic unit of energy is vibrational frequency.
There are three ways we can manipulate frequencies of the energy trapped in the matter (bodies) of our plants: secondary technology, command, and symbology.
Secondary technology includes matter (things) which impart frequencies. Examples would be herbal remedies and medicines, lasers and Rife machines, food and drink, fertilizers, and an endless array of strange-looking inventions designed to heal by getting frequencies into our bodies.
We can also modify frequencies in our plants by command. Some call it prayer. Some call it intention. Words carry frequencies. If we can direct words, we can direct frequencies.
Symbols are frequencies. Throughout history, symbols have been used to stand for ideas. Symbols invoke thoughts and feelings in a powerful way. Specific symbols can move complex sets of frequencies quickly into the body. Words are powerful symbols.
I’ve packed these five paragraphs very densely. I encourage you to explore the meaning and implications of each sentence, and I look forward to unpacking them together in future Learning Lessons. We close here by acknowledging the many minds that have brought us this knowledge from across space and time. We owe them our deepest gratitude!
Around the Garden
What is a plant? Food on the table? Flowers in the garden? Clothes in the closet? Medicine in the pharmacy? Ethanol in the gas tank? Furniture in the study? Books on the shelf? How long would this list be if we could remember all the gifts of plants?
Are plants sentient beings? Do they have a soul? Can they speak? Move? Respond to humans or their environment?
I just remembered one more gift for the list: oxygen in our lungs. Oh yes, there’s this too. Plants are the givers of life on this planet. Without plants, humans are not possible.
Would it then be to our advantage to heal plants? To look upon our service to plants as more than “maintenance?” To think of our actions toward plants as seeking “thrive” rather than “survive?”
To heal plants means looking deeper, not to count how many more useful things humans can convert plants into, but to the spiritual gifts plants are waiting to give.
Healing plants is an adventure into a new kind of relationship—one in which humans must grow in new directions in order to keep up. And in this growth lies enormous healing potential for humans.
It is in healing that we are healed. This is never more true than healing our plants.
People in the Garden
When I was a professional landscaper, I figured out it’s a lot easier to work with Nature than against Her. That seems pretty obvious, but it’s highly counter-intuitive in a field like landscaping, where the apparent goal is to shape Nature into exactly what the customer wants it to be.
Your relationship with plants is sacred—so is mine. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have connected on this page. Somehow, pruning and fertilizing, weeding and mowing, don’t seem to exactly fulfill the nature of the sacred relationship with plants we desire.
The thing is, plants want to be healed. Nature wants to cooperate. The knowledge and information is “out there.” It’s up to us to listen and follow!
So, how can we Be with plants in a way that manifests the deep connection we feel between us? That’s what this section is about.
While I was landscaping professionally, I read Paul Hawken’s book about the Findhorn community. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing gardening. By this time I was already defining landscaping as “three-dimensional living art.” At Findhorn, community leaders tapped into Source to guide their art.
After reading Machaelle Small Wright’s book about Perelandra, I realized there’s just too much writing and evidence about Nature Spirits to ignore or write off their existence.
When I moved to Gilbert, Arizona, I left behind my personal ½-acre botanical garden, which I had been working in and on for more than twenty years, and started over with a clean slate in a tract subdivision. I decided to ask the Nature Spirits for help.
In less than four years, I find myself once again living in a botanical garden – one of peace and joy. This time, I’m amazed at how little time, energy, and money went into it—remember, I used to do this work professionally, so I’ve done more than a few designs and more than a few estimates.
This time, I simply follow the guidance of the Nature Spirits. And that includes healing.
What’s next
Gardening With Nature Learning Lessons is a progressive learning tool we provide online. Most of us learn most effectively when we’re learning actively – Learning Lessons support real gardening. Besides, what’s the point of healing if we’re not going to heal?
We begin with this introductory lesson, which includes foundational information about Gardening With Nature. As you can see, it’s loaded.
If you’d like to move on from here, I provide additional Learning Lessons each month. Like the introductory lesson, each lesson contains sections on Nature Spirits, Plants, Thriving Garden, Energy in the Garden, Around the Garden, and People in the Garden—plus at least one practical exercise to build your relationship with Nature through gardening.
The topics in each lesson are coordinated, and lessons build on each other. The idea behind progressive learning is to provide a bit of theory and then a practical exercise to put it into play. The topical headings in each lesson will remain the same as the headings you have just read through, so you’ll always be “located” in each lesson and readily able to see how one lesson relates to another.
It’s been our great pleasure to share our healing knowledge with you and your plants!
Yours in wellness,
Rog
