MUSINGS

By Mystic Trish

As the days grow shorter and the sun slips lower on the horizon what are your thoughts?

What did you plant in your personal garden last spring? Did it bear any fruit? Did you weed it? Did you fertilize it? Is it an annual that must be replanted every year or a perennial that will be there year after year as long as you tend to it?

Last Spring I planted seeds for a new beginning. This Autumn I am harvesting the fruit of that planting. I have found that going back to basics really works. I planted with the intent to change my life and I did. With my intent, with my words, with my work, I am harvesting with gratitude.

The balance of life is where we find our happiness and prosperity. The wheel of life goes up and down from light to dark and back again. We move in a spiral dance year after year, each one of us with our new beginnings and endings.

Is your spring planting metaphorical? We tend to be a rather practical people. We want to know exactly what the return on our investment will be. Is it really worth it to do all that work and have little to show for it, will the return be worth the hard work?

What do we do when there is not a plentiful harvest, even when we try our best to tend to our little garden of life? We look to see why? That’s what we do. Was there a problem with the weather? An insect invasion? Poor soil? Did we offend the Gods in some way?

No, we didn’t offend the Gods, if our harvest is poor we need to look to ourselves. How did we handle our personal garden? How are we handling our larger garden called planet Earth.

Have we polluted it so much that we are killing our fellow earthlings... Bees, fish and so forth? Or did we just not pay attention. We need to live in balance and harmony with the world around us. What grows and blooms in the spring will not grow and bloom in the autumn.

Are we in balance? Remember September 22 is Autumn Equinox, a day of perfect balance of light and dark. Are we showing gratitude for our prosperity? The opposite of pros-perity is scarcity, and we’ve had plenty of that in recent years.

When I think of prosperity I think of gratitude, how can you have one without the other? So let’s be grateful for the balance that has been restored.

How do you express your gratitude for all the wonderful things you have in your life? The harvest festivals we all celebrate in one form or another are expressions of gratitude.

We all have troubles in our life but we all have something to be grateful for as well. Whenever I start complaining about some appliance in my house needing to be repaired, my children will remind me that what I’m complaining about is such a “First-World Problem,” and they are right. It is a First World Problem.

I am grateful to be living in this first-world country in spite of all of its faults. We still have the right to complain about it. Yes someone is probably listening to us complain, but we can complain and vote someone out of office. Or not buy a product when we don’t agree with that corporation’s beliefs or actions.

There are several houses in my neighborhood that are being remodeled. This is a sign of prosperity, for this I am grateful. As are all the construction workers who are now employed. The other side of this is my first-world complaining about the noise of jackhammers. It disturbs my peaceful garden. My large amethyst started screaming from the back garden when they were tearing down most of the house behind me. I keep going out into my garden early in the morning and in the evening and repeating the same words, “peace and healing” as a mantra.

Prosperity comes in all forms. Some people have prosperity of wealth — that is the usual form of prosperity that comes to mind. While other people have a prosperity of talent they can share with the world. The talent might be singing or painting or writing. This is part of the prosperity that is unique to human beings.

The ability to find a form of expressing thoughts and ideas, of expressing human emotions, is truly a form abundance of the heart and mind. An overflowing of the fullness of what it is to be human. And it is the human expression of gratitude that we should all be focusing on at this time.

Happy Harvest!