Campanula: On Belonging

September 21, 2023

“Align with your heart. Align with LOVE and let those vibrations ripple through your thoughts, words and actions out into the world. Let love be the frequency of your presence.”—Campanula, through the heart of Lisa Estabrook.

My garden and I are one. 

I’ve said many times, as I tend her, she tends me. 

We are so attuned to each other that I completely trust my inner knowing about where and what to tend next. I am guided. 

In my Garden I am as a child, totally engrossed in a magical world of my own design.

My heart’s guiding intention of creating sanctuary for all (including myself) emanates from every cell of my being, and so even though I engage in a continuous “out loud” conversation with my Garden 🤪 and all the beings who reside there, I know it is my frequency they understand, not my words. 

My Garden is abundant, colorful, dynamic, filled with life and a bazillion mini stories unfolding concurrently. 

Over the years of my mentorship within this sacred space, I am remembering and restoring my belonging to her and ultimately to myself. There is no separation. 

I am remembering how to let go of control and to trust completely the divine intelligence at play within me and surrounding me. To be present. 

We change and we grow as one, through all the seasons, through all the highs and lows—I know she has my back, and I hers! I trust her completely. I trust the Earth completely. 

And so I’ve been around the block a few times with Campanula (ALIGNMENT) as my plant spirit guide, and as I welcomed her in this lunar cycIe I had an experience in my Garden that challenged my trust in myself, where I allowed doubt to creep in, and since I share flower medicine through my stories I’m going to attempt to articulate my spiraling journey. 

Doubt is the opposite of trust and we all know how doubt feels in our bodies. (Take a moment to pause, close your eyes and feel it now.)

Alongside fear, doubt creates so much inner conflict it literally knocks you off center, out of alignment with your own heart’s truth. 

I am no stranger to doubt.

I am also no stranger to the wisdom of forgiveness, love and compassion, which when embodied, are the most powerful medicines of realignment especially when doubt digs in, when fear overcomes, or whenever we are faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles… which is a lot these days. 

Anyway, I was tending in my Garden one morning, doing some gentle weeding in my vegetable patch when I uncovered a good sized, obviously powerful worm… with attitude. I was completely startled as the worm thrashed around for a second like I have never seen a worm thrash, before slithering off, like a snake, back into the straw mulch. 

Coincidentally, a few days earlier, a neighbor had mentioned that she had been horrified to discover invasive, non-native Asian jumping worms (Amynthas agrestis) in her garden and I immediately knew this was my new resident. 

My first reaction was also to be horrified. (Reactions are emotions not necessarily rooted in wisdom.)

Over the next week I discovered more and more of these worms everywhere I tended and I began to recognize where they had been since the soil looked like coffee grounds in their wake. They also have a strength and presence far more noticeable than the common earthworms I am used to. (Which during the course of my research I discovered are also non-native as all Maine native worms died out as glaciers retreated some 11,000 years ago.)

To be honest, I was scared and spent hours researching (ie. looking outside of myself for answers/guidance) but was unable to find any information about these creatures that was not negative and encouraging me to destroy them and, well, this really did not sit right with me. So I decided that I wasn’t going to do anything at all. Instead I was going to simply witness, and trust, that Nature knows what she is doing. 

When I first moved to Maine in 1994 I remember how I met proud, multi-generational locals who told me that it didn’t matter how long I lived here, I would never be considered a native Mainer in their minds. 

I wasn’t looking to put down roots then, not consciously anyway, but the feeling of not belonging was memorable to say the least. 

This is not unique to this area or this state. On reflection we can observe this unconscious “practice” of othering as part of human culture all around the world. In fact it is so endemic we barely notice, but once you become aware of this narrative, this frequency, you can feel it everywhere. 

We are constantly judging and evaluating who belongs and who doesn’t on this polarity planet. Who is worthy or acceptable or successful, and who isn’t? And this applies not only to humans but also to animals, insects and plants—everyone and everything. Good or bad?

I feel this to be an energetic vestige of colonialism, religious dogma and scientific materialism deep in our DNA that continues to ripple through our world. There is no separation. Energy has no boundaries.

And so we use the language “non-native” and “invasive” to justify an ongoing war with Nature (and each other) in order to control or maintain the status quo or for whatever other rationalizations we deem justified. 

Nature reflects back to us that the only constant, the only inevitably in life, is change. 

In our ever changing world we would expect new species to arrive and species to leave. We would expect all aspects of the landscape (macro and micro) to change. And yet fear of change is perhaps the greatest unconscious frequency humanity perpetuates. In every aspect of our relationship to life, humanity worships and enacts domination and control. We have taken the concept of personal power to a hierarchical and unsustainable extreme. 

(I recognize this frequency in myself. None of us are immune. Take a moment to follow the palpable threads of this frequency that ripple through all aspects of life. Dandelion continues to be my ally in the ongoing process of illuminating and releasing this programming.) 

Back to Amynthas agrestis…

Who am I to say they do not belong? Who am I to judge the worthiness of their presence within the vastness of an intelligence so ineffable, humanity has barely even scratched the surface of “reality”. And who are any of us to say we understand the intelligence of Nature, the cosmos, or any beings experience or “raison d’etre?”

I never felt like I belonged here on this planet and I’ve felt “alien” since I was a young child. But the flowers—the unconditionally loving and generous flowers—have awakened within me a different truth. And I try to share and articulate this journey which is always challenging... trying to articulate something felt.

What I know is that I have finally allowed roots to grow here in Maine. I am finally at home in my body. I belong to my Garden. I belong to the Earth. I am indigenous to this Earth. We all are indigenous. We all belong. 

I value life. All life. I love life with all of my heart. 

In the grand scheme of things I am only here, in this incarnation, for a microscopically short period of time and I know I am here to create beauty and belonging and sanctuary and peace within and without. I am also wise enough to know that none of this will ever be achieved through fighting and destroying pieces of myself, my little Garden or our world that we human’s judge do not belong or are not worthy.

Unity is only achieved through unconditional love and compassion for ourselves and each other and THIS is what the garden is always teaching me. 

WE ALL BELONG! 

Even the worms, the ticks, the mosquitos, all expressions of life. And one by one we are remembering and embodying this TRUTH. 

One heart at a time we are aligning our thoughts, our words and our actions to the frequency of love. THIS IS WHO WE ALL TRULY ARE! 

And most importantly, how this truth manifests through each one of us is exquisitely unique. A beautiful tapestry with multi-colored threads. 

In our innate desire to belong, we often unconsciously react from old programming. It’s time to stop, take a breath, and truly witness what we have collectively created. It’s time to look in the mirror. 

As our hearts break open for all the pain and suffering we have collectively unconsciously created we can bless and surrender generations of suppression, centuries of fighting and eons of forgetting within and without through the power of forgiveness and compassion. We didn’t know. But now we do. Now I do. I remember my innate wholeness, my imperfect perfection and my belonging to the Earth and all life.

Back in my little corner of the planet, we’ve had a really soggy summer. Sooo much water. One of the things I read about the Asian jumping worms is that they potentially make the soil hydrophobic. Which means the water doesn’t stick around and drains quickly. Problematic in arid conditions but beneficial when we have experienced all the rain we have… a glimpse of the intelligence of nature and perhaps the reason for their presence? I may never know for sure. It is simply a facet of my unique perception of the world I experience. 

I’ve been told I am a dreamer, a hopeless idealist, a Pollyanna etc. and that my inner reality can never become an external reality. And to be honest, I know I have internalized this criticism, and have self censored my heart’s truth for most of my life in order to belong. 

However, if I am to create my life from the inside out I cannot self censor the parts and pieces that I know are different from mainstream beliefs. And so even though it is hard to share my perceptions, and it is painful to feel the external judgment, this is how love wants to be expressed through me. Anything less only creates misalignment within me, an inner battle, and this I have found to be even more agonizing. 

It’s taken me a long time to recognize how every cell vibrating with the love that flows through my heart feels in my body. 

It’s taken me a long time to remember what it means to love myself so that I can also remember that I belong even with unconventional perceptions.

I belong to myself. I belong to the Earth. I am the Earth. I am worthy of love and worthy of life. And if that is true for me it certainly is true for all beings.  

I would ask you to ponder how love wants to be expressed through you? 

How do you self censor in order to belong?

Restoring love on this planet requires restoring alignment of each soul with their own heart. 

Love and compassion creates alignment.

Forgiveness creates alignment.

And, funnily enough, with so many planets in retrograde right now we absolutely have the intelligent, supportive cosmic energy we all need to review, rewire and restore alignment with our own heart's truth should we choose to create a new story of alignment… together.

 

 

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