crown of violets

One of the obstacles I faced last year, especially after getting arrested, was financial scarcity. Money wasn’t really an issue when I was working as an escort (not much of a surprise there ) but I’ve had a lot of trouble finding a job since. I’ve been working odd jobs since July and it’s been a huge stress to try and meet all my expenses. A lot of energy has gone into worrying about money that I could be putting into things that are way more fun.

Finding a more conscious, loving way of generating financial stability has been an interest of mine for years. I’m familiar with plenty of theories on how to create abundance, but I’ve never committed to creating abundance in my life the way I committed to learning courage last year. In fact, when I reflect on it, long-term conscious creation of abundance was often put on the backseat for more immediate financial needs. (Hmm… Maybe 2010 should also be the year I focus on patience? )

From what I’ve learned, the first step in creating abundance is building a vision of what you want to experience and making my inner self a match for that reality. We create the world around us, so something within me has been attracting scarcity and needs to be retrained to attract abundance. To help me get started, I visited some of my favourite resources to develop a plan of action.

Back in November, Steve Pavlina had posted a video blog about creating abundance. I’d been meaning to watch it for months but never quite got to it. I took the opportunity to watch it and sure enough, the first step he suggested was teaching yourself to sent out an abundance vibe to the universe. You do this by imagining a new reality of abundance around you and opening yourself to feel what that experience would be like. By creating that feeling repeatedly, you’re teaching yourself how to hold that state of being throughout your daily life.

Since watching the video, I’ve been practicing holding that state in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to bed. The process has made me more aware of how limiting my casual thoughts during the day really are. It’s been helpful to take a moment when I notice these thoughts to replace them with a groovy abundance vibe. Way more fun than stressing about scarcity. I’ve been practicing reiki since last year and it’s helped me to become more aware of shifts in energy in my body and consciously altering my state of being. When I get to the right emotional state of abundance, I can feel a huge difference in my body. I feel lighter, often feel a little shiver go down my spine, and smile.

The shift isn’t always easy. Certain thoughts seem more like habits more than products of my thinking. I’ve probably thought them so many times before that they just kind of fill the space in my head when I’m not conscious of it. Fortunately, that’s just a matter of re-teaching my brain and reinforcing the new thoughts as often as possible. Depending on where I am and what I’m doing, it might take longer. But no matter how long it takes, it is so important to stop giving that energy to an experience I don’t want and redirect it into creating what I do want.

Sleep schedule and eating habits are big factors in my emotional state. I’ve noticed that if I’m tired or eaten a lot of sugar, it’s harder to change my thoughts. The gardening season has started so I’ve been getting up much earlier and leaving the house very soon after I’m out of bed. If I want to have a productive day, I need to make time to go through a morning ritual before rushing off to get things done. If I wake up slowly, spend time focusing on my vision and getting myself to an abundant emotional state, eat something alive and fresh, plan out my day, and then get started on what I need to do, my emotional state during the day is much more stable, focused, and positive. I experienced a lot of disconnect last year and after brushing up on Steve’s work the last few days I’ve come to accept that as part of learning to live consciously. I experienced first hand how acting out of fear can drop us right back into the old habits we were trying to grow past. Taking time for those steps every morning is a great environmental support to holding the new, abundant experience I want. If I skip them, I feel off-balance and less present/in control of my reality.

The second step offered in the video was the need to exercise courage to completely move into the new reality. You have to let go of what’s going to keep you in the old mindset and go for the new opportunities that will show up. You have to follow your heart and trust it to lead you. Luckily, I built some courage muscles last year to help me with that.

Another useful resource is daily “Notes From The Universe” sent from Tut.com. The notes also have a very similar two step process for creating the life you want. They encourage creating a vision and taking baby steps in the right direction and trusting the universe will support you. It’s a treat to open my email and get these notes once a day. They’re helping me to rewire my brain with the right, empowering messages.

An important component to creating abundance is figuring out what my contribution to the world is and how I want to give value to others. Companionship is extremely important to me, but I feel like need more training to do the job the way I think it should be done. I currently volunteer a lot of my time to food politics and community gardening and I’ve been getting messages about how crucial those things are. I’ve been feeling pulls towards the arts and event planning, as well as develop my skills as a healer using energy and herbalism. I know I need to write and I love being involved in activism, attending workshops, and cheerleading. I feel like I’ve been doing good work but I wasn’t being compensated for it, focusing on sex work as my only source of income. That was limiting and I need to expand my thinking to include being compensated for the various types of work that I love.

I was planting wild strawberries this afternoon, digging in the ground with my bare hands, and I was struck with gratitude that I was a gardener. It teaches me so much about generosity and service. It’s supportive to my health, my happiness, my home, and helps me give to those around me. Gardening has been my teacher of abundance over the last few years and as the weather warms, I’m excited to see what this year’s goals and garden will bring.

Magic Moldy Cabbage

{Food is meant to be shared and I hope that if you find this post useful you will pass it on to anyone who could use it.}

I haven’t had to go grocery shopping in seven months. My roommate and I occasionally pick up treats, but our cupboards and freezers have been full all autumn and winter. When they begin to deplete, we also know how to fill them back up again, without going to the grocery store. I’ve spent less than five hundred dollars at the grocery store since August.

What has made the most difference has been learning traditional methods of gardening. Traditional gardening yields more produce per area than conventional gardening, as well as many plants giving multiple harvests in one season. The difference can literally mean having one squash per plant for the season versus having twenty. There’s no real right or wrong way, no dogma. The strength of traditional gardening is how people approach their relationship with the earth. Through learning the cycles of the earth and plants, you learn what part of the plant to use, how to harvest at the height of health, how often to harvest, and what plants help each other flourish.

Scatter seeds instead of planting in rows. Use weeds (plants you don’t want in your garden) as mulch by tossing them back on the ground from where you pulled them up. I like to separate the root of particularly invasive plants and toss the root out of harms way. Plant a variety of companion plants in the same space. Peppers and tomatoes grow well together because they’ve been doing it for many, many years in South America. Squash, beans, and sun root all help each other grow. Chamomile is a great companion plant for tea plants, herbs, and many types of vegetables.

Gardening using plants native to the area where you’re planting makes things much easier. Look around and see what naturally grows in nature around you. Since I was a child, I’d considered dandelions a weed. Lovely golden colour, but more a nuisance than anything. The dandelion flourishes here and many lawn owners curse the day the tooth of the lion decided to settle in our fair soil. This summer I learned quite a lesson when I was taught the many uses of dandelions. Every part of the dandelion is edible. At a wild foods workshop, a lady had even brought a dandelion cake with a light mint frosting that was absolutely delicious! She had substituted ground dandelion root for cocoa in a chocolate cake recipe. The root can also be used to make a drink similar to coffee, which I have never tried. Dandelion roots should be harvested from plants that are three to four years old. Dandelion leaves make a great bitter tea to drink before your meal to stimulate digestion. Our wild foods workshop presenter mentioned he loved the tender young leaves for a salad. A bitter green salad is also great before a meal to stimulate digestion. Dandelion jellies and wine are also popular.

I like to grow native plants outdoors, letting them follow their natural cycles, while growing other varieties indoors where they get more of a Mediterranean climate. Whenever I’m looking for something new to grow, I also look into the availability of heritage seeds, mostly because these seeds don’t have the genetic splicing that has been done to many other commercial seeds. Somehow fish genes in my tomatoes doesn’t sit too well with me. I’m not too worried about this either though, as within a few generations a plant will normally revert to its original state, regardless of anything we’ve spliced them with so far.

Perhaps the most basic skill I’ve learned in the past year about gathering food is to observe my environment. I live in an urban environment but I still know where berry bushes are, where to get acorns, tiger lily bulbs, and sun roots, all of which are edible. I know where to find teas outside my own garden for stimulating digestion, for soothing digestion, to help you sleep, to getting rid of icky stomach bugs, to promote menstrual health. All this involved was taking the time to walk my neighbourhood and learn what plants were growing. With time and study, I’ll learn to harvest from plants from many different environments. I also know how to tell which plants are healthy to harvest, which are suffering from soil deficiencies, and which need more time.

Use this skill for observation in the community around you as well.
The next biggest resource for us this year for food has been neighbourhood programs. I volunteered weekly this summer with our community’s food security organization. The goal of the program is to make nutritious and affordable food available to residents. It does this by working with members to offer community cafes, potlucks, and fresh food boxes in the winter months. My favourite part of the program were the trips to a local farm and the community market where they sold the organic vegetables gathered from the farm.

I’ve also traded for teas, herbs, eggs and other resources that our neighbours had that I didn’t. A lady from Burma asked my roommate for squash flowers and leaves from her plants for a soup. Not only did she gift food in return, she offered to share the soup when it was made. Another friend of my roommate’s who works at a community center called her a couple of months ago. The center is a pick-up point for the food bank and on a regular basis, half of the people who had signed up wouldn’t show up. The ones that did wouldn’t touch the boxes full of farm fresh vegetables because they had dirt on them. They had become so disconnected from where their food was coming from that they saw the dirt as unclean. As a result literally crates of food were being thrown out about three times a week. My roommate started making regular trips to see if there are leftovers and when there is, we distribute it to our apartment building, our friends, and other individuals who distribute their own communities. As a result, she’s building a network that is getting food to people who need it. I’ve watched her do this and begun doing it in my own circle.

All the resources we need are there if we look for them. Learn how to cultivate and share the abundance we’re surrounded with. Start up some seedlings in a container. Make it an easy, delicious salad mix that won’t take long to sprout. Connect and network with your friends and family. We already have more than enough, we just need some practice getting it around.

{ by Hieronymus Bosch }

“If woman lost us Eden, such as she alone can restore it.” ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

While I don’t know too much about Mr. Whittier’s work, I thought this quote was particularly interesting and very fitting with the work of art I’m contemplating today.

The Eden depicted in this image is another manifestation of a common human theme of paradise, places of beauty, pleasure and delight where every creature lives in harmony. Paradise is woven into the fabric of our deepest dreams and desires, prevalent in most types of mythic literature. These places are compelling to us, places where our desires and wishes are fulfilled. We are searching for happiness and fulfillment. Paradise promises that we can have that the moment we walk through its pearly, ivy-twined gates. It can seem a far cry from the world we’re surrounded with, but perhaps paradise is closer than we’ve ever dreamed.

It comes as no surprise that many of images of Paradise are depicted as gardens. Gardening has only been a part of my life for the past six months and I never could have imagined how much it would change me. The effects have been gentle, but universal. It’s through working in traditional gardens (gardens planted according to the ways of indigenous peoples) that I’ve truly begun to understand the beautiful simplicity and masterful complexity of Nature. Gardening has kept me fed through the winter, as I try to remove my dependence on industries that worship money and follow a spirit of dominance instead of love. It has provided both sustenance and a sense of security as food prices soar. It has awakened a deep sense of connection to the earth that a childhood spent with electronic devices and indoors didn’t foster. It has nurtured and given expression to the healer in me and allowed me to take my health and happiness into my own hands. The garden has empowered me. It has centered me. It has allowed me a space to open myself to love and beauty. Nothing is as sensual as working in Nature. The garden is full of colour and sound, wonderful tastes and intoxicating smells like the sweet smell of wild strawberries as the earth is turned, the cool taste of dew that collects in squash flowers, lemon balm and basil covering my hands and filling my head as I gather their leaves for tea.

Working in the garden has also given me a sense of responsibility through my growing connection to the earth. As I walk through my city, plants and trees become less generic. I naturally pick out the plants I’ve been blessed to learn about and begin to see at the natural abundance that surrounds us. These are familiar friends and energies I see in my own space, that I tend and work with. I feel a connection that can only grow as I learn more and more. I see the plants I don’t know and think about how very much I have to learn and where that will take me. Plants travel the earth and we follow them. We are travelers and adventurers and the land calls for us to explore it. We have nothing to fear, because plants are always around us.

Wherever you go, Nature is there. We have certain gifts that other animals don’t, but that doesn’t mean that we’re outside of Nature’s domain. I can easily name dozens of plants and animals that can do things I’ve yet to learn how to do. We as people like to think we are observers, but we and all we create are just as much a part of Nature as the plants, the animals, the stars, the very sky itself. Nature extends from the core beneath us to the natural world to the physical universe. The universe has been making different types of life for a long time and we are simply another piece of the puzzle. Nature’s got the big stuff covered. When I think of that and see how surrounded by abundance I am in the garden, I feel at peace. There’s always something to share and learn. I know all of my needs will be met, that I live in a beautiful world, full of harmony and delight. Sounds a little bit like Paradise.

Perhaps instead of a place, Paradise is a way of living. Maybe Paradise can be found in something as simple as living in harmony with our environment. As we grow in our understanding of how our past decisions and current actions affect the whole of our planet, those that choose love consider how their actions ripple outward to shape the world they live in. We make decisions that will bring health and happiness to their lives and spread it to everything we encounter. This feeds the spirit of love, generosity, and harmony in our world that understands that all we need to live in harmony with Nature and to find Paradise is to be our true selves, the powerful, creative and loving creatures we were meant to be.