A BIG THANK YOU...

Thank you to all who have been reading these posts.  I am grateful for you.  It is often said that we teach what we need to learn and I think that is very much my case.  I have learned a lot and I truly hope you have received something from this.  I found out how to delete old images so I can continue use my nature photos on these posts.   One more time... thank you, thank you, thank you...

This is a Personal Story...

This is a personal story of the search for the God of Love but It is being written in third person as though it was about someone else.  I am writing it this way because I want it to be less about me than the process and hopefully not ego driven.  
There was really only one choice and that was get an education that would be involved in nature.   Wildlife and forestry was chosen but somewhere in the middle something changed and it became philosophy.   The philosophy would allow the entry into Lutheran Seminary to become a Lutheran minister.   And that was what happened.  The first and only year of seminary was difficult.  It turned out that, at least in this case, theology professors did not like anyone asking them questions.  They were not questions designed to make the professors look bad they were just the questions of an inquiring mind.   One of the professors even said that the person asking these questions like was hard to love.  This from the place that was supposed to teach the God of Love.   The questioner stopped asking questions because he left seminary, disappointed, angry, but even more determined to find the God of Love.  Now without a profession when a job in social services was offered it was gratefully accepted.   That was the beginning of a lifelong service in social work.   Transcendental meditation, psychics, mysticism, book after book became part of the search sandwiched between emotionally taxing work and dealing with the rest of life’s problems.   Shamanism seemed a nice fit but an invitation to study under a Lakota holy man was turned down.  A Lakota Pipe Carrier seemed as narrow as Lutheran Minister. (Did you know that both the Lakota and the Buddhists fly prayer flags?)
More books....  Jane Roberts and Seth, A COURSE IN MIRACLES, and Neale Donald Walsh and CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD.  Neale’s CONVERSATIONS struck a chord.  Here was the God of Love that the search was all about.  The searcher had always clung to the words from the Christian Bible.  “Ask and you shall find.”  and “You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free”.  Could it be that the questioning seminarian and the pipe carrier dropout was finally finding a truth?  

The First Official Days of Autumn, 2012...

The first official days of autumn, 2012, and mornings are crisp with the feel of change in the air.  Leaves are dying and some are already falling.  The ones still on the trees are taking on the beautiful reds, oranges, and yellows.  That in itself is a beautiful lesson.  The colored leaves... beautiful in death, a death which is a transition, a change.   A fog moved in yesterday and today.  The fog, the colored leaves, the trees outside my window.  An all encompassing feeling of joy washed over me.  The fog didn’t stop the chickadees and the finches from coming to the feeder.  If you need a lift, a clue that things really are alright in the world, take a look at nature.   Immerse yourself in it, even if for only a few minutes.   It will do wonders for you... It does for me.      

Raising Your Energy Vibration...

I’m going to write today about more information from Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, THE POWER OF INTENTION.   He has a list of things one can do to raise your vibration and he in fact calls it “A Mini-Program for Raising Your Energy Vibrations.”  This is all good information and you can read more about it in his book or online.  The web address online is http://danberkovitz.com/the-power-of-intention-2/ .
Suggestions for raising your energy vibration:
 Become conscious of your thoughts.
 Make meditation a regular practice in your life.
 Become conscious of the foods you eat.
 Retreat from low-energy substances. 
 Become conscious of the energy level of the music you listen to. 
 Become aware of the energy levels of your home environment. 
 Reduce your exposure to the very low energy of commercial and cable television.
 Enhance your energy field with photographs.
 Become conscious of the energy levels of your acquaintances, friends, and extended family.
 Monitor your activities and where they take place.
 Extend acts of kindness, asking for nothing in return. 
 Be specific when you affirm your intentions to raise your energy level and create your desires. 
 As frequently as possible, hold thoughts of forgiveness in your mind. 

I decided to enclose this list after I read number 8.  ‘Enhance your energy field with photographs’.  You see, I do this with my own and others photographs, mostly of birds and animals, nature scenes.  My nature photographs are a joy to me.  And I get a shot of that joy when I see them.   Most of them I can remember where I was when I captured the image.  Carrying the camera has always been a fun thing and then when I get the chance to capture that beautiful bird, that animal, or the sweet face of a loved one, I feel fulfilled.  This is why I enjoy sharing my photographs.   Perhaps your vibration is raised some when you see the images I share.  I hope so.  

The Nature of Things...

As we walked the board walk around the lake, my companion remarked to me something to the effect that you never see a sad or angry face on the people that we pass or that pass us when out enjoying nature.  I hadn’t thought about it really until he said something but I think there is something to it.  Whether out for a walk, a run, a bike ride, walking the dog, there is something about nature that soothes us and takes away for just a little while the cares of the world.  Often we are told by our therapists to get out into nature.   And nature is something we can enjoy whether we are with someone or by ourselves.   I believe these are the reasons that we have a tendency to create parks and green spaces in our city.   In her futuristic novel, THE FIFTH SACRED THING, Starhawk has created a San Francisco that has been turned into a park, a garden, and a farm all in one.  Streams meander through the neighborhoods.  It is a beautiful vision, that she contrasts with southern California, which has become a military industrial state that is smog, cement and metal.  
We all have our specialities.  I can see birds and recognize them.  My companion hears even the smallest birds beautiful song.  Another friend recognizes both small and large wildflowers and if she doesn’t know it, she works diligently to identify it.   Often people see a photograph I have taken of a bird, for example, and they ask about it, what it is and where I found such an exotic bird.  They are amazed when I tell them I took it in the park next to the area they live.   It took a photograph for them to notice something they have literally right in front of them.  
If you are troubled, if you simply have a stressful life you might look for a park or a green area to take a walk or go sit and listen for the birdsong or just think.   Take your children out and point things out to them.   Show them there is more to nature than chopping trees down or digging for oil.   Learn for yourself and then teach them what nature can do for them.  Actually the children these days just might teach us.  

If You Want to Look on God...

A look at nature is enough to see the Divinity in all things.   The diversity and beauty and even the raw ‘natural’ violence in nature are all part of creation.   And trees, plants, flowers... such diversity, old trees, tall beautiful trees, plants with healing properties, beautiful flowers...  We scream if we see a small mouse run across the floor but we use mice to test our medicines.   A tiny bird, the hummingbird, can hover, fly backwards and cross the entire Gulf of Mexico in one flight.   We gaze in awe at the beautiful bald eagle riding the thermals.   And have you ever wondered how the animals in Africa came to be?  Striped like the zebras, long necks of the giraffe, long trunks and gigantic ears and bodies of the elephants.    We haven’t even touched on sunsets and sunrises, beautiful clouds, views of the moon, eclipses...
If you want to look on God, take a look at nature...
If you want to look on God, look in the mirror...

Nature and Love.... Teachers...

We have a tendency to get caught up in our personal worlds.   Sometimes we simply have not been taught to see what nature teaches us and sometimes we are too busy keeping the family together, making ends meet, or simpley surviving in this interesting world we live in.  
Nature has a lot to teach us including keeping us in touch with that which is the the most basic in our lives.  How do you feel when you see a great awe inspiring view in nature?  How do you feel when you see a baby deer or a baby duck?  Have you noticed those feelings are very similar to the feelings we get when we see a baby child smile at us, your loved one tells you they love you.  These feelings that we get from observing, being in touch with nature, and from love and including even pets, are the basic feelings of the Divine.  It is when we feel these feelings that we can most easily touch the Divine.  A mystic is defined as one who seeks a direct experience of the Divine.  If you pay attention to the the feelings you get from nature and the feelings you get from experiencing love in it’s many forms you begin to touch the Divine.  

The Shaman in You...

What is a shaman?  There is agreement that a shaman interacts with the spirit world while living in the physical.   That is a simplified explanation but quite adequate and true I believe for the our world.  Shamans are often associated with nature and having less and less access to nature I believe the shaman is adapting even as he/she has done through all time.      The shaman has a unique relationship with nature, and especially animals and birds.  There are a lot of books and websites telling us about the messages that the animals and birds have for us.  Look in a mirror.   Look into your self.  Think about it.  Do you carry the power of the shaman in you? 

Rays of Light to Guide us Home....

The earth is beautiful.  That is a reason that I enjoy taking nature photographs even though I don’t feel I do it justice at all.  Moments in time, a constantly changing natural order, a symphony of color and sound and diversity....  Sometimes we humans do not add to the beauty or care for it and yet we are a part of it.  Our wars leave great bloody holes in the earth, sometimes literally, sometimes energetically.  Some times our love, however and to whomever we express, it adds to the overall beauty, and harmony.
When I left town this evening the sun was starting to set.  Constantly changing and yet sometimes the same, I followed those clouds and colors all the way home.   Pinks, Reds, oranges, peach colors, and in the middle of it there was a ray of light between earth and sky....  We need those rays of light, to guide us home, to direct us in our love. We need to be those rays of light for the earth and for each other.   

Spirit is our True Nature....

Have you ever noticed that organized religion never mentions where we came from?   I believe they teach that we are eternal souls or at least that we have eternal souls and eternal means always and forever so why is where we came from never addressed?  One of the reasons that being on earth can be so difficult is because we are so used to having the freedom of being a spirit.  Being born with a body of flesh and forgetting who and what we really are is a shock to the system.   And this amnesia of Home happens every time we incarnate.   No matter how many times we have incarnated as human we have been spirit longer, forever.   Spirit is our true nature and always will be.