The Creative Power of Nature Lessons from Nature for the New Year In This Issue: Creating a New Year Our New Year's Wish Book Review: The Secret Universal Force  New Resources   Creating a New Year    by Sarah Anne Edwards    Are you feeling a bit spent by all the activities of the     past few weeks? Does it feel more like you've just finished    a marathon than getting off to a fresh new year? Well, it's     no wonder. We've just completed another a full year that     began this time last year. We've celebrated and feasted its completion and it's time for a few long collectives sighs so we can let go of the rush and settle into a quiet, calm place, a Winter place, where the new year can be conceived and germinate. Creation always begins in the quiet stillness where the seeds of the new can lie dormant to be fed and nourished. From the beginning of human consciousness, there has always been something magical about creation. Science has tried to explain and measure it so we can better understand and control the future. New Year's resolutions spring from this same desire to escape the uncertainty and mystery of the future. We make them, if we dare, in hopes we can control what lies ahead through determination, willpower, visualizations, affirmations, or ... but ultimately we can't.  Two of out three Americans don't make New Year's Resolution any more and most of those who do find they're unable to keep them. So, the magic of creation remains.  A New Paradigm Now a new theory of physics is attempting to bridge the gap between science and the many seemingly magical aspects of life we can't yet understand, let alone control. This new paradigm is called Zero Point Field. You can read more about it in the Book Review below. It tells us that: 1. We are all connected to a giant field or Web of Life that     encompasses all of Nature 2. This field is endlessly creative and self-generating 3. It is held together by natural attractions that bind all things together     in a  harmonious way (especially when we humans don't mettle with     it too much). 4. Anything is possible that can be created from within our relationships     to the whole through that place within us and all things where we      are naturally attracted one to the other. This suggests that while we cannot be "in control" of the future, we can participate in its creation, not by planning and controlling, but by interacting creatively in the moment to allow our natural intentions and desires to align with the web of life. We don't need to study Zero Point Field to discover how this process of creation works. We can see it all around us simply by spending more time in Nature and learning from our relationship to the natural world.   As we watch Nature's creative force in action, we see that it's not in the planning that our future is born. Creation occurs in the dance of the moment, the dance between all that is and all that can be. Two Creative Questions So instead of evaluating our accomplishments over the past year and projecting and planning for the one to come, let's look at what has been and what is now in our lives from a more natural perspective. Let's ask ourselves two questions:       First, what in our personal and family lives, communities, nation and planet has been attractive about the past year? What has nurtured and supported us and our global community? The past year has been difficult for many of us personally as well as nationally and globally, but if our minds tend to drift to the unappealing aspects of 2003, we can simply focus on the attractive lessons from those experiences or simply move on to thinking of more appealing aspects of the year. These attractions are the soil in which our future will take root.       Second, what in our personal and family lives, communities, nation and planet is attractive for us to create in this present moment? What do we want to create right now that will nurture and support us? Now is where our future will be born, here in this present moment.  Living in this way, we need not make resolutions for the year to come; we can take action right now to create this new year together in the moment of the dance.  A New Year’s Wish: To Be as the Creatures  Large and Small   It has been windy here in the mountains this Winter. I hear the windstorms howling around the corners of our house and roaring high above us in the ancient Jeffries. As I look out the window of my office I can see the Poplars swaying gently or wildly with grace even in the midst of all the fury and the ruckus of the wind and I am stuck by how different they are from us. It’s been raining here a lot, too. Gentle sheets of rain drifting across the meadow. Pummeling gales of sleet deluging the earth. Whirling gusts of snow wrapping us in billows of white. Yet throughout it all, here on our deck the Jays are ruffling their feathers and the squirrels are shaking their coats, busily looking for seeds and seemingly unperturbed by the downpour as they eagerly await our morning ritual of tossing peanuts out onto the snow. Again I am struck by how different they are from us. I’m delighted, of course, by all this moisture, as I’m sure are the parched trees and plants of our forest as they soak up this life-giving weather. But I wasn’t always so delighted by such weather and when it comes to other harsher things in life I'm still often not so pleased. How many years when I lived in the city did I complain about the rain and bemoan the snow? “Oh, no, it’s windy!” “Ghee, I hope its not going to rain.” “Drat, it’s snowing! What a mess this will be.” I still hear such complaints about "foal" weather, not so much from around here, but certainly from TV weather forecasters and from friends and relatives in the city. “The weather’s been awful” they say. “It’s been so cold here.” “It’s such a lousy grey day.” “I can’t believe it’s still raining!” And again I am reminded, how different we are. Sun, snow, rain, wind. Nature seems to take it all in stride without complaint, but not us. Too often the different faces of Nature are considered to get in our way. We prefer a world of perpetual sunny days and starry nights. Why is that, I wondered, on one of our loveliest snow-covered days? Why are we so different? Why do we resist change? Why is all but the least challenging so complicated for us and so simple for the rest of Nature? Walking in the forest that day, I think I discovered the answer. Everything in Nature seems to know who and what they are and they aren’t trying to be anything or anyone else. The ducks on the pond below our house are unperturbed today by the thin sheet of ice that covers most of their pond. They aren’t flapping about or pouncing on the ice to break it with their beaks. They aren’t flying away to warmer climes. They’re not even strutting impatiently in a twit along the shore. They’re just lined up in the water along the border of the ice, waiting. Because, I assume, they are ducks and  consciously or unconsciously they know that’s who they are and what they do. The Poplars don’t resist the wind. They bend and dance with it. Nor do the Jeffries fight the storms. They simply sway gently from side to side. Again, I assume, because that’s who they are. The Red Wing Blackbirds don’t wail in the rain and the snow, they sing in the trees and rushes just as they do in the sun. So, what is it with us? Are we just resistant complainers by nature? I think not. I think we too have a natural place in life and wouldn’t resist and complain and wail were we to escape the pressures of expectations that drive us to have things “just so” – even when “just so” is way too hard to maintain and sometimes altogether impossible. But we get lost in who we think we should be instead of who we are, yet another of Earth’s special creatures.  In Nature, floors get muddy. Hair gets messed up. Clothes get wet. We can’t go fast in the snow.  So sometimes we are late and sometimes we can’t go anywhere at all without a whole lot of effort, risk and difficulty. Why must we make things so hard on ourselves? Why don’t we find ways to be as we are instead of how we think we should be when we and others would be better off, happier and more at peace if we did? As I look around our Forest, I see Nature showing us how to be who we are and I resolve this New Year to learn how to be like the creatures large and small. To bend in the wind like the Poplars. To shake off my troubles like the squirrels shake off the rain from their coats. To wait patiently like the ducks for things so near and yet so far. And, like them all, to know and accept myself and others for who we are in all our messy, muddy, slow and steady humanity. And finally, to welcome the sun, the wind, the rain and the snow of life for whatever gifts they each bring. A Book Review:  The Field, The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe by Lynne McTaggart,  San Francisco: Quill, 2003 In this mind-stretching book, investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart presents an overview of the scientific data and theories that explore emerging paradigms in physics, consciousness, and subtle energy fields. McTaggart describes discoveries that point to a unifying concept of the universe called Zero Point Field. This paradigm purports to reconcile the previously irreconcilable mind/body split, the gap between Newtonian and quantum physics and the chasm between science and religion. Although considered open to theoretical interpretation, this new view of reality would explain phenomena such as clairvoyance, telepathy, remote viewing, prayer healing and other unexplained experiences. It describes a world similar to the world view of ecopsychology in which all things are connected to one another through a unified field composed of an endless sea of energy. All things within the field are in constant communication with one another through electric charges, continually organizing and re-organizing in unfolding patterns of life. For more on this book, click here. Our New Resources We hope you enjoy the new format for our newsletter and invite you to explore our new site and its many new resources by clicking on the navigation buttons at the top of the page. Since the site is brand new, if you find irritating errors or missing links please let us know. We welcome your comments and stories of Nature’s Wisdom. E-mail us. Happy New Year! Sarah Edwards, Editor                                          Copyright Pine Mountain Institute, 2004 Home  Coaching  Online Courses  Continuing Education  Newsletter  Books  Contact Us

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