Tag Archives: psychosynthesis

Your Significance Reaches Beyond Your Imagination

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Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

How often do you despair at your apparent insignificance? Between ISIS, Ebola, and the devastation of the world’s climate, what possible difference can we make? Such problems can feel overwhelming and our own meager lives seem so small. Even when we do rise above such feelings of inadequacy, we then might struggle to choose the most appropriate response. What actions can we possibly take at a personal level to affect what is emerging globally?

First of all, you and your actions do matter. My experience is that our significance reaches far beyond our imagination. Even the smallest acts of kindness directed towards rectifying the world’s injustices make a difference. But perhaps most surprisingly and wonderfully, even obscure acts that we may not consider meaningful can make a difference.

Let me offer you an example from my life. Sometimes I write poetry and often I wonder why. What purpose do these poems serve? I scribble them down in a notebook, sometimes share them, most of the time not. But then one day, I received a mysterious letter. The only address on the envelope was:

Catherine Ann Lombard
Giove, Italy

At the time I was living in The Netherlands. This letter, without any street address or zip code, had been forwarded to my new Dutch address from the Italian post office 1300 km (800 miles) away.

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Celebrating and Redeeming Flesh

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baby with muscles

I am writing on a warm morning in early autumn. The oak branches are full and alive, corn fields lean with their ripeness, and rabbits graze in the filtered light. As the days grow shorter, I am trying to embrace autumn (and then the long winter) that will soon descend on Northern Europe. To do this, I have been collecting the yellow birch leaves that strew my path, acorns fallen from the night winds, and chestnuts that are still encased in their prickly green shells.

To fully participate in the beauty we find in nature, perhaps we need to start with appreciating our own living nature, beginning with our bodies. Autumn is autumn with all the decline and loss it might evoke, and all its shimmering colors, low filtered sunlight, and the fervent calling of wild geese overhead. This is true of who we are as well. We are who we are … wondrous and onerous, fragile and strong, light and dark.

This time of year also seems to be mirroring my own aging process. Lately, I have experienced a number of what I call OPTs (Old Person Things). I leave the kitchen, walk down the steps into the cellar, and stand bemused as I try to remember what I came down for. I take my wallet out of my purse and put it back without removing the bills that I need. I search for glasses, shoes, jackets and even credit cards that are sitting right in front of me. I watch (horrified at times) as my cognitive skills slow to a near standstill, yet at the same time I can feel myself grow more open, grounded, and at peace.

Take a moment now to wonder about your own body — to find your body wonderful! Your body contains a hundred times more cells than there are stars in the galaxy. Everyday, your heart, on average, does the daily work of lifting 1000 kilos from the ground up to the top of a five-story building. We have 656 muscles throughout the body. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, breathing, thinking, and speech bring us powerful revelations and gifts.

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Soul Harvest – Part 2

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Signora Giuseppa and the author during the grape harvest in 2010.

Signora Giuseppa and the author during the grape harvest in 2010.

What makes gardening such a precise mirror for the soul? There are many biblical parables that invoke the imagery of the garden – the pruning of vines, sowing of seeds, and harvesting of grapes. Taoists believe that miniature gardens are the Earthly copy of Paradise. In Islam the four gardens of Paradise – Soul, Heart, Spirit, and Essence – symbolize the mystical journey of the soul. And then there’s my retired neighbor Angelo who once told me that gardening was the most humble of tasks. “Your head is always bowed and sometimes you have to go down on your knees.”

And as the gardener creates, so does the garden transform the inner life of its creator. The word ‘create’ actually derives from the Latin creare which means to produce, to make life. The garden’s cycle mirrors our own growth, complete with floods, heat, drought, infestation, dying, resurrecting, blossoming, blooming, maturing, rotting, bounty, beauty, and miracles. In our deeper psyche we tend to our life’s garden of sorrows and joys. We pull out, cut back, dig up, bury, sow, support, and nourish hoping one day to harvest our life’s experiences into wisdom. Without all this soul/gardening work, our spirits are swamped under the weeds, our creative gifts choked, our true selves unable to flourish.

As we relate to the Earth with hoe, shovel and watering can, the Earth begins to teach us about ourselves. Working the Earth is like dreaming, it can act as a medium between self and soul. When we take time to garden, we are allowing our souls to speak to our conscious selves, to display outwardly where in the soul process we really are.  And as we gain in awareness, we can equally influence the soul to move to its next necessary task by outwardly performing the chore in the garden.

Signora Giuseppa's village in Italy

Signora Giuseppa’s village.

There were days when I found myself tearing at weeds, only moments later to feel the fierce roots of long-buried anger and resentment clinging to my heart. Other days I was filled with joy, longing to spill seeds upon every patch of bare Earth. By gardening we unearth a place where our inner and outer worlds can merge. And in this space, with time and nourishment, we encourage the self closer to universal truths.

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