Wide Awake Living Newsletter

by Alice Gardner

Spring,

Rebirth,

Easter

and the

Natural Self

I hear they are having a good sugaring season in Vermont this year! The sap rises up through the maple trees after being underground all winter with the first warm sunny days of spring. It splashes generously into buckets and pipelines, and then onto breakfast, feeding us sweet-loving humans with the nonchalant grace of nature's plenty.

The bird-song celebrates each spring morning with unabated joy made into sound. We have mockingbirds in my neighborhood. They stun me each morning with the purity of their joy.

Nature loved winter too. Winter is a season a lot like we've been having in our human affairs because of our long-time enslavement to mind's creations and its seeking after comfort. But nature loves winter too. We need the winter part of the cycle. In nature a lot dies back in the face of the cold. In our human development a lot dies back in our times of discomfort. Our perspectives change. Old models fall. We go back to essentials. We are no longer fooled by trinkets and baubles. We get motivated to find what is real and substantial... what doesn't change when everything is taken away.

And then spring comes! From our journeys into darkness, at some point the thaw begins. That which was solid becomes liquid. That which was stuck becomes free. Rivers flow again towards the ocean.

In the Christian tradition Easter has a wonderful symbolism that seems to refer directly to what we are talking about here. Jesus is a wonderful example of how even the worst possible thing can happen to you, yet Life/God/Christ is at work in the midst of it, rising again from whatever grave there has been. Jesus' death, the interval in between and the way Christ rose on Easter all point to a rebirth process that nature is displaying every springtime. Jesus, the human being, had to say "thy will be done" for his true identity, the Living Christ, the awakened One to take over.

The problem I see in the Christian tradition's use of this story, is that being "The Christ" (or being one with the "Father")is understood to be something lofty and unattainable for regular people. Same with Buddhism. No monk or minister would dare to utter such words of blasphemy as to say that they were also That! But they are! They are--with no diminution of Jesus' attainment or Buddha's, and no illusions as to anyone's human vehicle being infallible first. In spite of all warts they/we are already that, always have been, and so, dear reader, are you.

Its just that over the past few thousand years we've maintained and passed on a load of cultural and familial conditioning that causes us to identify with the imperfect little human story that we've been told is what/who we are. And all the time it wasn't true.

I invite you to open to your inner springtime. Nature is encouraging and encouraging us towards this. Rather than relating to "Christ or to "enlightenment", lets just call this our "natural self". This has the same feel as watching how a tree moves in a gentle breeze, a brook running downhill or when listening to a bird on a spring morning. But this is felt when looking at yourself, at who we truly are, behind/before all the thinking. Our entire surroundings everywhere, even and especially in a nasty place that isn't what we wanted, life is calling to us to notice what we are. It is time.

Poem to Spring Love

Buds breaking, in motion
Towards the lushness of summer leaves
Through the quick celebration of flowering,
Life paints itself
With a delicate paintbrush
On the hills
In a thousand shades of green,
As I drive between them
In awe and gratitude.
Yesterday my wonder was full and complete
In Love with the world;
Overflowing...
Today is new again; remade through your touch.
There is the ecstatic arch of my spine
Alive in the bedrock
Deep under the swell of the hills
Rising and falling, riding the greater breath.
Your touch is in the penetration of air
into unfurling leaf.
Your eyes awaken remembered green
Touching the hills with springtime.
Your voice celebrates in birdsong,
The joy of being alive.
Thus do you enrich the ground of this day.
I split like a seed.
The roots stretch
Into the mysterious dark for nourishment,
Feeding the unfurling bud
In it's journey toward the sun.

© 2008 Alice Gardner

If you wish to explore these subjects further you are most welcome to visit the Wide Awake Living website and blog, and/or to consider purchasing my book at Amazon.

How is the book doing?

People have been asking me "how's the book doing?"
The book is selling slowly and steadily, and I continue to get appreciative emails from people for whom it has struck a cord. This week the following came into my inbox:

Dear Alice;
Thank you so much for your book. I just completed it a week ago. I have read close to 2000 books of spirituality in my life and can easily say that your book is in the top 5 of all the ones I've ever read. Somehow the teaching of "living from awareness rather than from my mind" has finally sunk in as a result of reading your book. I feel that I have experienced another significant shift that will help me "remain home" more of the time than I have before. Thanks again for your help through your wonderful book.
DG, Boulder CO

Such missives are wonderfully encouraging of course, encouraging me to let more people know about it. Readers are telling me that it is an important addition to the available literature because it brings intimately together the awakened state with being ordinaray and human by respecting and appreciating the human parts of us as a helpful support to our awakening. The amazon reviews for it are wonderful! Hopefully I won't be getting a swelled head any time soon. :-)

Because of all this, I am seeing what I can do to make it so that more people know about it. For one thing, by next week I will have it listed in Ingram's (the big online wholesaler that all the bookstores use) listed at the discount that the stores want. So any bookstore can buy it and return it again if needed. I have also published it recently in Adobe Glass-Book (ebook) format and am working on getting it formatted right for Kindle. Its hard but it will be coming soon if any of you are Kindle users.

LIVE WEBCAST with time for call-in questions from YOU:
April 12th at 12:00 Pacific time, 3:00 Eastern time

Richard Miller, whose name some of you might remember from NeverNotHere videos, has also asked me to do a webcast with him online on Easter afternoon. By going to www.nevernothere.com you will be able to hang out with Richard and I online live for an hour on Easter afternoon at 2:00 Chicago time, 12:00 noon CA time, 4:00 east coast time (that's 8:00 pm London and 9:00 on the continent.) You can call in with questions or just to say hello. I would love to hear from you, so check your phone rates to Chicago (the # will be posted on the day) and put it on your calendar.

So, I don't know. The book is doing well in that it is getting much appreciation from its readers. Each time one of you tells me that it was important for you, I marvel about how the book happened and how now it just goes out and has a life of its own, way beyond my little me. Its so amazing how life works.
Blessings,
Alice

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