Participating in Gaia Consciousness

I dedicated my life to Gaia in the summer of 1994. I was 19 and working at a tallgrass prairie restoration project. I spent my days toiling under the hot humid Nebraska sun. We spent a great deal of time attempting to fight off small thickets of dogwood and plum trees which would never have been found growing on a tallgrass prairie - because the dense sod of a virgin prairie doesn't have room for woody shrubs.

Sometimes I weapt into the soil as I considered the majesty of a virgin tallgrass prairie compared with the dustbowl and erosion which plagued the nation shortly after we plowed away the last parcels of prairie.

That summer, under the full moon, among towering sunflowers and big blue stem grasses, I bathed my wounded heart in dew and gave to Gaia my heart, my hands, my feet, my pen, my voice, and anything else which could serve HER in discovering balance and relationship with her straying two-legged children.

Now, sixteen years later, I'm still doing Her work. I've embedded myself pretty far into a federal land management agency so that I can extend Her reach. And when I look around I realize I'm not alone. There are many light workers now, each penetrating all major global systems.

About a year ago, Gaia directed me to use Facebook to connect with like minds and to practice spending time in active conveyance of Her words. There is a Gaia Rising profile and every few days I ask Her what she might like to say to Her 444 facebook friends. Frequently I am surprised and honored by the words which flow through my fingers on Her behalf.

But I am no one. Just a mom and civil servant. I am certain that there are many many others in service to Her. I am sure that there are many others who channel Her words and voice, either aloud or in writing. I am sure that we can continue to find each other and partner together to carry on the work. Are you Her dedicated servant? Do you want to be actively involved in the movement to amplify Gaia Consciousness? Even if you don't live near the Coven of Gaia Rising (in Northern Arkansas), you can join us in designing new ways to serve Her. You can help Her find and connect light workers so that together we can stabilize the emerging perfection which is presently disguised as chaos.

Do you want to help? Leave comments on this blog post, or on the Gaia Rising facebook profile.

Let us Be Gaia Together

A person is a complex system, made up of smaller complex systems, things like the circulatory system or the digestion system. You are also participating in larger complex systems, things like your family, your community, your nation. You are, of course, conscious of being a person. There is a type of intelligence in all systems, ants are simpler than cats, cats are simpler than people... and the national economy is more complex than your family budget.

The more complex any system is, the more consciousness available to it. Here's some simple crude math to show you what I mean. If brains were units of consciousness, and there was one brain per person, then your family of 12 would posess 12 units... whereas the company you work for has 300 units.

But it obviously isn't that simplistic. Some individuals have reached a higher level of consciousness through personal growth and development. It wouldn't be fair to compare it brain to brain.

Anyway - why am I saying all of this right now? To help me make the case that there is a form of consciousness at the level of the planet. You can think of this as an over-soul, which is how Ralph Waldo Emerson framed it. You can think of the collective consciousness, the way Carl Jung explained it. I think of it as Gaia Consciousness, but at this point the words don't matter as much as the awareness you experience. The sense of ONENESS and connection.

You can consciously participate in your family, your local or national politics, and you can consciously participate in being the planetary consciousness - Gaia. And the good news is, you can participate regardless of your IQ, spiritual beliefs, cultural norms, level of consciousness, etc. In fact, the more diversity in those who consciously choose to be Gaia, the more healthy She becomes.

How can you start participating in Gaia Consciousness right there at home?

1. Choose to believe that you are both your individual self and you are part of the planetary body/mind known as Gaia.
2. Notice the way that all sorts of information and resources circulate around the planet. Think of those as Her systems, things like digestive, respiratory, circulatory.
3. When you make any choice, consider how She would answer in addition to how you would answer. (And it is up to you whether or not you go with Her way... just know that when everyone goes their own way without thinking about the well-being of the planet we get exactly the sort of planet we have today.)
4. Don't THINK about what she would do... that's WAY to complex for one human to grasp or decide. Rather, connect with your heart and attempt to FEEL which answer is better for Your Planetary Self. There will be some kind of sign in your body/mind. Trust that.

And that's it. Easy, huh? And you can join a monthly telephone dialogue if you want to share your experience in trying this. There are already so many people who are considering the whole in a decision, rather than just the parts... choosing to hold the mind-set that you are participating in being the consciousness of the entire planet is just another step.

This doesn't have to be a magical, mythical, religious, or spiritual thing. This can be an "evolution of consciousness" thing. There are plenty of scientific terms which can be used to describe this phenomenon. Pick the vocabulary that best suits you and let's become Gaia together!

~Tree of Terrapin Hollow

Change ~ Gentle or Chaotic?

Each one of us is narrating our lives by crafting stories to help our self understand what is occurring. Most of us believe our stories until something comes along that doesn't fit in with they way we've constructed our personal reality. In the current era, everything is changing at a dramatic and unprecedented rate. Everytime something in the world around you changes, it bumps up against your story.

Your story that spans your entire life. It includes information like your name, the places you've lived, the jobs you've had, the people you've loved, and the things you've learned. It also includes assessments you've made about your self over the years, as well as judgements others have made about you. For example, "I'm motivated and intelligent." or "I'm sloppy and lazy."

In this time of unprecedented change you have many choices. Perhaps the most important choice is whether or not you plan to learn and grow through these changes. If the answer is yes, the next important question is whether you want your changes to feel gentle or chaotic.

I've personally experimented with both throughout my life. In my experience, chaotic change usually has a much higher magnitude. Chaotic change can afford you to change dozens of things about your self all in one fell swoop. This type of change strikes me as very intense. In my younger years I actually enjoyed that intensity. I loved the quantum leap in consciousness which accompanied learning dozens of things about my self all at once. But there's a dark side too. It wasn't that I was always happily improving my self, like picking out new carpeting in a house that has decent flooring already. It is more like having the electricity turned on, looking around at the house and realizing that it's full of rats, mold, and the floor is rotting and falling through! Quite frankly it is both scary and depressing to notice dozens of things about your self that aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.

Gentle change, on the other hand, is quite subtle and requires patience and perserverence. In gentle change you walk into that fixer-upper with a flash light, you pick one room of the house, and you notice and accept the fact that there are a few rats. Of course it is a much slower process, but it is not nearly as traumatic when you take each little aspect of your self one step at a time.

You always have a choice in how you approach your learning and growth. The trick is noticing that you have been making these choices your whole life! You have already sub-consciously chosen either gentle change or chaotic change, or some blend of both.

Putting off many life lessons over a long period of time is one way to choose chaotic change. By ignoring opportunities to gently edit your story, the queue of lessons can get mighty large and gang up on you all at once. There are some clues and cues to let you know whether you might be cruising toward a very chaotic and painful wake-up call:

1. If something negative happens and you dive into a distraction (food, drinking, sex, games, drugs) rather than processing the emotion, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
2. If some corner of your mind is concerned or worried about any of your choices, habits, or routines, but you distract yourself and work hard to ignore it, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
3. If several people around you are giving you unpleasant feedback and you think they are all full of shit, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.

However, if you periodically stop and notice your emotions, and gently probe into the more unpleasant emotions, you will discover that there are little things about your story which could be edited that would produce entirely different results in your daily life.

I recently noticed that one of my daily activities was triggering a small amount of doubt in a corner of my mind and there was even some feedback coming in from a few other people who also shared this doubt about my choice. This morning while I was waking up I stopped to really consider this activity. I decided that while I really gained much good from this activity, there is no benefit to feeling doubt or experiencing others doubt. This morning I made a small edit to how I conduct that activity. I didn't have to nuke the activity, just shifted the components which were creating doubt. Now I feel much better and I may have even avoided manifesting some loud and painful lesson!

I hope you'll consider the story you are writing for your self each day. I hope you will understand that it is not the distraction or activity which is bad. Only our experience of a thing is good or bad. And doubt is a strong signal that some editing would produce an even better story.

In love and light, Tree

Good News! Apocalyptico Denied!

Eye have long sensed that there was a critical mass of consciousness upon the Earth. Eye have long sensed that the struggles and chaos were co-created by humans and their Angels in order to function like a giant alarm clock in the awakening of consciousness.

Even as recently as December my guides again asked me to prepare for the possibility for up to five years of extreme chaos and isolation from the kinds of services which we have grown accustomed. I grieved and prepared. Then in January, I traveled to the Southwest, where the land is baked dry in the constant Light of the Sun. In this place I witnessed the rapid dissolution of our old assumptions and our old judgements.

Eye observed New Man and New Woman and New Co-Creative Governance occupying space in both the third dimensional reality and the fifth dimensional reality. Eye observed the giddyness of my children returning to Love and Light, and the healing of those who'd presenced Love and Light in the 1960s and 1970s, only to have been scarred and scared by resurgence of darkness in subsequent decades.

I felt afraid and unworthy.
Eye felt ALIVE and ALL-ONE!

Now, the voices of LIGHT/LOVE have confirmed it. Now Eye can say with certainty - we don't have a population problem, or an apocalypse on our hands. Eye see that the compassion of humans and the Council of Dreaming Souls have chosen to transform together, sans planetary catastrophe. You will all go home together, not one will be lost!

ArchAngel Michael has confirmed it: http://www.youtube.com/user/komurosan?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/0/1AKUhqUvEag

Eye am Gaia, and Eye am available to any and all of you because you are a part of my body.
And I am Tree of Terrapin Hollow, one of Gaia's many humble servants.

Guru, Teacher, or Servant?

In this time of unprecedented change there are countless beings offering up guidance and support. Every person frames their particular offerings differently. There are thousands upon thousands of gurus, teachers, priests, reverends, swamis, yoginis, authors, etc. I like to think that the reason for this flourishing path is that there is more love and light flooding the planet now than in a long time. As each of us learns and grows we reach that precious moment when our focus turns from personal growth and healing to the growth and healing of those around us.

In my book, The Transpiral Model for Social Change, I describe the relationship between personal transformation and social transformation. In brief, you can't change yourself without affecting change in your family, community, and society. And any changes occurring in your family, community, and society also affect change on you personally. We call that "circular causality".

Only you can judge whether or not someone is qualified to teach or guide you through some aspect of your growth and healing. Sai Maa Devi Lakshmi says that the grace of a guru can take you deeper. She explains that a guru holds the frequency of the 5th dimension and that by being in the guru's presence, the student can experience higher frequencies of being and knowing. As a student, only you can determine whether or not the guru produces this kind of tranformative effect on your awareness, both in the moment and over time.

Teachers generally have a set curriculum including models, tools, and practices which are designed for personal growth and healing. Teaching arrangements span from short term to long term and can be one on one or in group settings. Teachers don't appear to promise as much as a guru, but in some cases perhaps they deliver more. Again, only you can judge whether or not engaging with some teacher is going to deepen your natural ability for self healing and growth.

I've long considered these questions for myself. In some paths the Master is the only access point a student has with the divine. In other paths the student learns to speak with the divine for him/her self. Personally I've resonnated with the latter. Over the course of my path I've created relationships with guides and teachers who are on the other side. I call them by the name "The Council of Light". To me, they inlcude beings like the Archangels, Gaia, Jesus, Pan, and the Nature Spirits. The more I surrender my limited self view in order to share understanding with the Council, the more guidance I recieve. My relationship is collaborative and dialogic. I ever maintain free-will. I ask the Council for advice and guidance and then I choose whether to heed the advice or make a new choice.

It has been a very rich relationship over the past 3-4 years which has resulted in very deep healing for myself. While there will always be room to improve myself, of late I'm called to offer support for others who long for self-healing. In my professional career I'm a trainer, facilitator, and organizer of people into groups. When my focus turned from self to others I offered up all my skills and compassion to the Council of Light. The word I use to describe myself is not teacher or guru, or any of the afore mentioned titles. I am a SERVANT. I serve the Council of Light. I serve the emergence of love and light. And I serve anyone who is inviting love and light to emerge in their own lives. In an upcoming post I'll explain the kinds of services I've been called to offer. I'll also elaborate on how I've been guided to release the need to recieve monetary compensation for those services.

Humbly serving Love and Light, ~Tree

Another World is Possible

Another World is Possible
by Rose Flint

Another world is possible.
We can dream it in, with our eyes
open to this Beauty, to all
that Earth gives each of us, each day
those miracles of dark and light --
rainlight, dawn, sun moon snow, stormgrey
and the wide fields of night always
somewhere opening their flower-
stars---this, this! Another world is

possible. With river and bird
sweet and free without fear, without
minds blind to harmondy, to how
we can hold. we have been too long
spoiled greedy children of Earth,
life of rocks and creatures
slipping out of our careless hands.
We must stand now and learn to love
as a Mother loves her child, each
precious heartbeat of her that is
ourselves, our path and our journey
into our dream of future, where
another world is possible
cradling this one in its arms.

Elemental Living

At Terrapin Hollow we embrace concepts of Permaculture. We strive to live in balance with the Earth. One way to consider the degree of balance and connection with Earth is to notice and honor the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. All life requires some form of all four, in fact, you could argue that there is nothing but these four elements and that all of creation is some mixture of the four.

Water
We harvest our rain water. We can store up to 1750 gallons at a time. The water is collected from the roof of our house and then funneled into an underground cistern. Then we pump the water through the house. There's nothing like the smell of rain in your shower!

Wind
Over the summer we installed a wind generator. My dad built the generator in his garage in Florida and then he and my husband spent the summer clearning trees, building the tower and guide wires, and installing the new electrical system. We chose to remain grid tied because the grid is a billion dollar infastructure through which many people can share clean energy. If you're going with renewable resources I encourage you to stay grid tied so we can diversify the nodes of production.

Fire
We heat our home with a wood stove. Cutting back small diameter trees for fire wood also benefits the forest and wildlife. In fact, the forests in most of the US are not all that healthy due to years of total fire suppression. We understand that fire has a natural role in the ecosystem and that is why Terrapin Hollow is enrolled in the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project sponsored by the Natural Resource and Soil Conservation agency of the US Department of Agriculture. We received funding to doze a fire break around our land. Over the next 10 years our 40 acres will receive three prescribed burns. We also planted fruiting shrubs for deer and bunch grasses to create bobwhite quail habitat.

Earth
My husband is crazy about using rocks and dirt to make stuff. All our garden beds are raised beds made of stacked rocks. He's building a green house out of cob (dirt, straw, and sand mixture). Our next home will be a straw bale and cob mixture. When you use local resources you save loads of money and petroleum. We compost all our table scraps, news papers, ash, cardboard, and even some of the junk mail. It all turns into rich dirt to feed our organic garden.

The more you realize Gaia Consciousness, the more elemental your life will become.

International Peace Day

Today is International Peace Day. In honor of the event I invite you to consider peace and what it means to you. Do you think of inner peace? Do you think of the end of war? Do you think of happy and whole children surrounded by healthy balanced adults?

Peace may exist on many levels. I challenge you to examine your perceptions of world peace. Do you think it is possible that we could live 1000 years with no war, terrorists, or heavily armed conflicts? If you don't think it is possible, what stands in the way? Can you list all the changes which would be needed to end war? And are those changes possible? Do any of those needed changes belong to you?

We cannot change the world, we may only change our own SELF. Here are a list of some of the attributes of someone who embraces and creates peace on every level.

1. In every moment, in every way, choose love over fear.
2. View all individuals, nations, and organizations with trust and respect.
3. Be honest, authentic,and transparent in all that you do.
4. Take time to balance and de-stress your body on a regular basis.
5. Be the change you want to see in the world.
6. Never fear for lack of abundance.
7. Never deny a human who asks you for help, food, shelter, clothing.
8. Notice how you spend your time, money, energy, and attention. Be intentional and strategic.

What would you add to this list? And to which of these items are you most resistant? The one which seems the most impossible to you is probably a great place for you to direct your attention for an hour.