Suggestions from an angel for making the earth greener, more fertile and more beautiful
My name is Jane. I would like to share some suggestions for making the earth greener, more fertile and more beautiful. I am a bit of a gardener, you might say, although obviously I am not using hands to do this work as an angel. We don’t have hands! What I do is best described as life weaving. That probably sounds pretty funny to you folks… I will try to explain a bit better because I can see and feel that there are many, many life weavers among your people. My hope is to support you, life weavers and your kin, in making your gifts more explicit through your actions.
So, what is life weaving?
Life is like a pile of tangled threads when you come upon it in nature. It is exquisitely beautiful. The tangles have a harmony that entices the senses and causes a state of rapture among many. Think of each of the threads as a being… maybe a fungus is one thread, a bacteria is another thread, another thread is a small mammal, a rodent, yet another thread might be a small plant.
What life weavers do is lay down patterns of threads just as if a cloth were being woven. The cloth, or the outcome of life weaving, is similar to what you know as gardens, yet life weaving expands beyond how you think of gardens. I think permaculture is a closer approximation of life weaving because it emphasizes listening, leaning into the land and life forms that surround you, before taking action.
Let’s talk about some principles for life weaving first. I know of about 18 or so that will be helpful.
The first principle for life weaving is listening. I am using this word in a way that is more expanded than the traditional definition of the word that means simply to hear with your ears. Listening in life weaving is about taking time to gather information and hear the voices, so to speak, of the various life forms with whom you will be working. The vast majority of these life forms are invisible because they are so small, but most people are aware now of the importance of microbiotic life to health. This is true of the human body and it is true of the land.
Today listening to the tiny life forms that comprise the soil is a very important task because so much of the soil on your planet is losing or has lost the life within it. Don’t worry, that life can be restored! First though, it’s important to listen, to feel into what is missing. Touch the soil, smell it, hold it in your hands for some long time as you’re walking the land one day. If you are strong of body and constitution, taste it. Talk to the soil too. Ask it to share its secrets with you. It will! The minerals within have voices and will tell you what is needed to bring balance and joyful health to it. Take soil from different places on the land you steward and listen to it in these ways. I know there are ways to test for the various minerals and other components of soil, but I would ask you to trust me when I tell you that many of you have incredible spiritual gifts around listening and life weaving in general. There are insights you can gain through listening in the ways I have described here that cannot be gained through scientific testing, although that too might be helpful. Still, trust your listening first.
The next principle of life weaving is adding water, and not just any water! There is a way to invite water into the land and the soil. Your ancestors once practiced this. It was like an art form. It begins with shaping the land in ways that allow the water to collect and flow. Some of the rice paddies on the island of Bali are examples of this, but there are many other examples around the world in many different kinds of terrain and climates. Stones can be used and trees too. One way to think of adding water is to imagine the whole of your land as a sort of rain garden. How can you form the land in order to make best use of the rains?
Next, let’s talk about the idea of bringing beauty to the land. So often, the mind’s eyes of life weavers imagine the land in ways that are in keeping with the yearning of the land itself. It’s as if the land sends a picture or a vision to the life weaver of how it wants to be one day. This vision might seem like a riot of color or a cool flow of open space or anything really. There are so many different ways for land to call to us. What is important is capturing this vision and using it to guide us. Making some sketches or a painting would be a good supportive practice for bringing beauty. You might also want to do some writing or journaling about what it is you envision. Trust yourself with this. There is deep spirit at work here.
The fourth principle that comes to me is making friends with the old ones on the land. Old ones might be vines or trees or shrubs that have lived on a land for a long time. They might also be people or animals that know the land intimately through many seasons of change. Sometimes the old ones are nature angels who have been stewarding the life on the land. The old ones might be visible or invisible, but almost all land has them. Seek them out. This can be done through the dream time. Set your intention to meet with the old ones before you go to sleep at night and pledge to honor them with your words and intentions. Be prepared to listen to them and take their counsel deep into your heart. They will tell you of the things that have happened to the land over time and share their concerns and dreams for the place. If you are making friends with the visible old ones of the land, go out and spend time with them. Touch them with your hands and bring the same honor, intentions and open heart to your time with them. There is great wisdom, of a kind ineffable and of incomparable worth, to be had by making friends with the old ones.
The fifth principle of life weaving I carry is sowing joy. What does it mean to sow joy? I’m sure it means different things to different people, but there are some commonalities too. For some life weavers, sowing joy into the land is about talking lovingly to the land and its denizens, almost as if they were best friends or a lover. For other life weavers, sowing joy comes from walking the land, kissing the land with you feet and especially your bare feet in places where that is possible. Still others sow joy through their tears, and others sow joy with their breath. We angels believe that one of the most important messages we can bring to your people at this time is the value of stepping more fully into your joy, and truly feeling the power of the love that results from joyful activity. We understand you don’t see the effects of your joy, the difference it makes, but we ask you to trust us. There is such hope and possibility for everything good in following your joy. The saddest, most neglected, even polluted, land can be transformed through your love and the joyful activity of life weavers.
Number six among my list of principles is worshipping the sun. Hopefully that doesn’t offend anyone. I do not mean for you to value the sun above Spirit or God or however you understand the divine. But the best word for what I am trying to explain really is worship. The sun is your best friend and through him miracles await your people. He is the answer to your energy needs. He is the answer to healing the land where it needs healing. Worshipping the sun is about embarking on an adventure in holy friendship. Talk to your sun and ask for what you need. Then thank him for the gifts that are sure to come. Pour out your gratitude and love to your nearest star. He is conscious and can direct his beautiful loving energy in amazingly specific ways to your land and your people.
Now number seven among these principles of life weaving is somewhat more practical and accessible to people who love to use their hands… This principle relates to actually touching the soil, as much of it as you can handle. Putting your bare hands into the soil in different places around the land will seed it, in a spiritual sense, with your intentions, your love and your vision. This probably seems unbelievable to many of you, yet the life weavers can feel the truth of my words! Their hands yearn to touch to soil and run it through their fingers. It’s almost a craving like hunger! There is purpose in these feelings. Honor that purpose and witness miracles small and large flow from your loving hands.
The next instruction is number eight and supports balance. Balance is a challenging thing on most pieces of land. Sometimes the land is too steep, or too rocky, or there isn’t enough water, or there is too much water. Working with land that is already balanced is almost antithetical to the beautiful tangles of nature.
Human beings are agents of balance and harmony. It is the gift you bring to the land when you weave life. How to effect balance, you ask? Well, that is a mystery, mostly because balance itself is so hard to define or capture. It is a thriving, an underlying energy of harmony, that results on lands where life is weaving. Despite the difficulty in capturing this idea, we want to share some ideas about how to be more intentional in bringing balance to the land. Maybe something among these suggestions will call to your spirit and excite you. That will be a sure sign that we have captured some essence of this principle of supporting balance.
Some people, life weavers, support balance in the land around them through spiritual practices. Those practices might include prayer, talking with ancestors, healing rituals for the land, singing or chanting, lighting candles or fires, and more. Other life weavers seem to lift balance out of the earth herself. This is a sort of deep channeling of life force energy. It is a calling forth from the earth of her desire and capacity to support life in all ways and forms. She is truly remarkable, your planet. Sometimes people support balance in the land with other people or animals. Certain places yearn for activity and once the activity of many feet are brought to bear, the land itself begins to sing. I know there are other ways too. Balance is a gift many have.
The ninth principle of life weaving I am sharing is fire. Fire is a core element of your planet and it both ends and rejuvenates life. Using fire intentionally in the right season under the best conditions is an incredibly powerful tool for weaving life. Human beings have used fire for many eons in cultivation. We angels, especially those of us who serve life weavers, are inviting you to use fire with greater frequency and greater spiritual intention.
Principle ten is singing. There are many life weavers among you who can literally sing life into existence from nothingness. This will be an important gift to share in the years to come because of the extinctions your planet is experiencing. I am not talking about literal singing here. Rather a kind of spiritual song that comes from the soul. There might be an almost tuneless hum happening under the breath of a person who is singing to life. Most gardeners have this gift, but some people who practice loving animal husbandry have it as well. It’s so incredibly beautiful to witness!
Just as I tried to give some hints or sense of what supporting balance is like among life weavers, so too I will try to share what I know of singing to life. Singing to life is almost like spirit flying and I know there are those among you who understand flying. Your body might be on the ground or even tucked tightly into your bed, yet your soul, your spirit, flies free, soaring above the land, taking you to amazing destinations or on a tour of whatever it is you want to see. Those who sing to life are transported, almost as if to another dimension, when they are doing this activity. You might find them asleep or wandering aimlessly. Often they are joined by animal or spirit companions who create a choir of spiritual song. Their work is very holy and the results of their singing defy logic and convention. Land that was once dead springs back to life with vigor. Once barren soil bears fruit.
The eleventh principle I wish to share is fruiting. Life weavers understand fruiting intuitively and they celebrate the fruiting of a plant just as we celebrate the birth of children. Fruiting is not something to take for granted. It does not always happen. Conditions must be welcoming, but the plant must also have the desire. An invitation must be placed. It’s almost like an ovation to love making. Inspired gardeners do this automatically. They literally love the plants into bringing forth fruit. Life weavers have the capacity to take this process one step further. Fruiting is a gift, not only to the human beings who steward the land, but also to all the other beings and spirits that share the land with them. Therefore fruiting is a sacred time of generosity, of sharing what the land and plants are giving so freely with everyone and everything in need, and even those who might simply be passing by! There is something profoundly gracious about sharing fruit widely. To return to our analogy of weaving cloth, sharing fruit is almost akin to creating seams between different pieces of fabric to create a garment. That garment is a community.
Principle twelve is one I refer to as generating life force. Ah, this is a beautiful aspect of life weaving, one of my favorites! Generating life force is tremendous fun. One of the ways to bring new or renewed life force to land is through the use of water, and especially falling water. Another way is by inviting animals to enjoy the land, especially if you have a community of animals diverse in size and kind. Trees increase the life force of land exponentially, again especially when they are planted in a diverse community. Windmills are another example of life force generators, as are solar panels. These applications might seem like collectors of energy, but they also draw life force to the land and create movement of life energy. Dancing and parties are other ways to generate life force.
I know I am describing something most people cannot see, using words and ideas that challenge some of what you believe to be true and real. Yet this is precisely why the angelic perspective is needed right now. Your species is traveling through the darkest days of separation ideology. Many of you are awakening or have awakened to the truth of your interconnection with one another, all life and all of existence. Angels have the capacity to perceive deeply into interconnection, into spirit if you will, and what we know to be true about who you are and what you have to give can change the fate of your world. Suspend your doubt. Follow your heart, the deep longings of your soul, and heed our words.
The thirteenth principle of life weaving in this list is clamoring for justice. What is justice in terms of the land?
First and foremost it is the idea that no one can own the land. The land exists so all might share it. Native American and aboriginal peoples around the world, your First Peoples, knew this to be true. Now is the time to return to this truth in word and deed and law.
Second among the changes needed for land justice is sharing. Reaping profit from the fruits of the land is contrary to the sacred purpose of the plants and the sacred purpose of the land itself. When fruiting happens or the gifts of the land are harvested lovingly and within the limits of what the land can give, those fruits and gifts are intended for everyone in the community, not just the people who claim the land or nurtured the plants. You teach sharing to your children, the importance for everyone to receive a share, for no one to be left out and yet your separation-driven laws and customs repeal this teaching.
Third and finally, land justice will happen when you return to listening and deeply loving the land as it is. There is an epidemic of manipulation and forced change happening among the lands of the earth. Reefs are being turned into islands. Meandering rivers are turned into swift flowing channels. Whole hillsides are being eaten for minerals and wetlands are being filled. Your people have the capacity to honor the land as it was shaped by the sacred elements and by Mother Earth herself. Her wisdom is so much greater than you can imagine. When you return to honoring the land and weaving life from that starting point, you will again return to Eden.
The fourteenth principle of life weaving is pronounced ah-TAY-sha. I will spell it like this… Ataysa. This is an idea that roughly translates as “land speak.” Weavers, again, will have an intuitive sense of what this means. Ataysa refers to a language, a real language, that exists among those people and animals that share a particular piece of land. It is a holy language, a spirit tongue, and ataysa is still spoken in some places on the earth. The aboriginal peoples of Australia and New Zealand still speak a dialect of ataysa, as do the peoples of New Guinea and Borneo. There are three aspects to ataysa that can be explained. Life weavers and others can reclaim this piece of your spiritual heritage.
First, ataysa emanates from the minerals that underlie the soils or sands of a particular land. Think of these spirit sounds as the base notes and percussion of the language. They can be accessed through petition, through dance, and through prayer. Then you need to step into the rhythm of the land. Do this through tapping of your feet, through spontaneous jigs, through your breath. If you hold the intention of learning the language of your land, it will come to you in these or other ways.
Next, life weavers will want to find the melody or sound notes of this language. It is not based on words; it is based on feelings or emotion. This is the purpose of bird song. Nurture the birds of your lands and they will bring you this gift. Learn their songs and practice them. String them together in creative ways and you will begin learning the syntax and grammar of ataysa. This is where your ability to play will come to bear. Play with these notes and know there is sacred meaning in learning them, committing them to your heart.
Finally, ataysa needs to be shared with the animals of your land. This is actual singing and speaking with your voices I am referring to here. It’s very different from the singing to life that I spoke of earlier. The best way to bring ataysa to your land is to celebrate through songs and stories. As you do so, you can weave the baseline of the minerals and the melody of the birdsong into your celebrations. There are gifted artists and performers who will be called to this practice, but all the community can be invited to participate and learn the language, the stories and songs of the land you share.
Yet another principle of life weaving is something we angels call springing forth. Springing forth refers to the ways of water. This is not about the rain that falls or the tides and floods that flow as much as the water that exists within the ground. You call it groundwater. We know in some lands the groundwater is very deep or difficult to access. In other places the groundwater is nearly at the surface of the land itself. We also know nearly all the groundwater on your planet is sickly, tired and polluted. Life weavers can help restore the sanctity and life giving capacity of groundwater by learning to spring forth. There are eight ways to practice springing forth.
When the rains come, say a prayer of blessing and gratitude for the water your land has received. Ask that it bring healing and restoration to the land and the groundwater it will soon join.
Praise the water that your draw from the earth for your needs, whether it’s for drinking, irrigation, or building. Thank the water for the heavy work it is doing and pledge your commitment, to the water itself, to supporting its return to joy. Speak to the water!
Become water protectors. Stop the pollution and waste of water everywhere around the earth.
Stop living in the deserts. Just because you can do a thing does not mean you should. Desert lands are beautiful and can support life and life weaving, but for very few people and animals. These lands are not able to sustain large populations of people who are drawing water from far beneath the ground to support their needs or importing it from far away. We angels know this is a challenge, especially for nations that consist largely of desert lands. Yet there is now already a migration of peoples away from the deserts to lands that can better sustain them with water. We will help you in rebalancing your use of the land.
Bring water to the center of your lives. It is time to revere water and appreciate the miracles it supports. They are many! Reverence is gratitude and respect. Practice reverence through your actions by not wasting water, speaking lovingly of and to water, asking permission and listening before taking action around natural bodies of water, and blessing the water you drink and use for bathing and washing.
Seed the water with stones and crystals chosen for their power to heal and purify. This can be done at springs, along the shores of natural bodies of water like lakes, rivers and oceans, and at regular intervals throughout the land itself. Imagine cairns of sacred stones that have pledged to support the water in healing and cleansing itself.
Share your joy with the water! Splashing and playing in the water is a perfect example of this. See how the children play in a fountain! Allow all the fountains of your cities to become places of play with water. The water itself will pick up your joy and it will heal and release the poisons it carries quickly and safely. (Now I know some of you are thinking…. How can we allow our children to play in poisoned water?! And yet, you already are. This is the state of water and especially groundwater over all of your planet. Do not fear. Use the power of your love and joy and extraordinary spirit to support the healing of your water. You can do this! The children will lead you.)
Use your birth waters, the waters released from the uterus of a mother giving birth, for powerful sacred ceremonies of healing for the benefit of all water. Birth waters are incredibly sacred; from them a child of God is born. There are wise ones among you from all cultures and religious traditions that know this and can step into action on behalf of sacred water.
Principle sixteen for weaving life is something we angels call smoking out. This actually has nothing to do with fire. It’s metaphorical and describes a common way, among angels, of perceiving spiritual activity around and from the land. The “smoke” we perceive is akin to the release of steam from a piece of clothing drying in a hot sun. We see the same movement of spirit lifting from land where life is being woven. This happens everywhere loving hands are moving the earth in activity. It’s important to understand that it’s not the activity itself, but rather the love behind it, that creates the release of spirit.
(My writer is now asking about the application of chemicals to the soil in the form of pesticides and herbicides… Do these activities release spirit from the land? To my knowledge they do not. I think this is because there is no love in these products. I’m not even sure it’s possible to create a tool of death, something intended to end the life of specific plants and insects, in a way that is loving. I suspect it’s not possible. It’s certainly not necessary.)
What I am referring to are the activities of people with loving hands and tools. These include most of the activities common to gardening such as tilling the soil; adding much needed natural amendments like animal feces; planting crops, especially diverse mixtures of plants that grow together well; watering or irrigating the land; weeding or removing competitive plants from a place of cultivation; building walls and hedges of stones and border plants; allowing animals to graze; aerating the soil; shaping it for water retention and flow as described earlier; and all manner of spiritual activities done with the benefit and healing of the land in mind and heart.
All of these actions cause spirit to be released by the land. The spirit released is then made available to the many plants, animals and people who live upon and around it. I know your people are becoming aware of the practice of Feng Shui, of the cultivation of life energy movement within human created spaces. Smoking out refers to ways of releasing life energy, in the form of spirit, from the land. That spirit will then nurture life is myriad ways. It is a beautiful thing to behold and something that is felt by many life weavers. Love is the key to bringing this life energy forth.
The seventeenth principle I have to share is one most of you will recognize. We call it time to rest. Land is like a living being and just as humans and animals need to rest, so too the land needs to rest. Weavers of life will feel this need or may recognize by the seasons when the time is right for the land to rest. Oftentimes there are special ways to put the land to bed so that when it is ready to wake, it is nourished and fully refreshed, ready again to enter the dance of active life weaving.
Finally, the eighteenth principle for weaving life revolves around the seasons and the moon. There is a way of learning when the best time is for everything to do with the land. For many generations your people held this wisdom, but now much of it is lost. It can be reclaimed however! Your people have spiritual gifts and the capacity to listen and lean into knowingness in ways that were previously very difficult. For that reason these forms of wisdom were passed down from generation to generation. Your almanacs still carry some of these teachings and of course, your First Peoples also hold much. Today there are those among you who are gathering this knowledge again and sharing it through your marvelous mediums of communication such as the Internet. With this principle we mostly want to affirm the existence of divine timing for land-based activities. We know you can recapture it and follow it for the benefit of life everywhere.
Now that I have shared these principles for weaving life an obvious question comes to the fore. Which lands are best for weaving life and which lands are best left in the exquisitely beautiful tangles of the natural world, untouched by human hands?
We have some guidelines for making those decisions! There are fourteen I have gathered from my friends in the angelic realm. I will list them below. I believe most of them are self-evident, commonsense and/or guidelines that will speak to the heart and soul of many.
Do not build on or cultivate the beaches. This includes the shorelines of the worlds oceans, lakes and rivers. We angels would recommend leaving a ribbon of wild lands of at least 100 meters in width from the high water mark (or average high water mark) along each of these water bodies.
Do not build on or cultivate upon wetlands. We recommend leaving a boundary of wild lands of at least 400 meters in width from the high water mark of wetlands.
Watch the amphibians. Where they live are sacred places where there should be no building or cultivation.
Do not build or cultivate lands at high altitude.
Do your best to migrate your peoples to places already constructed or interrupted by human activity. Stop moving into the forests of the world and any other still-wild places. These places are now living arks where the biological treasures of your planet may still survive.
Do build and cultivate on the prairies and flat lands of the earth.
Cultivate the lands in your cities with love and an eye for vertical possibilities.
Bring your creativity to the challenges of climate change. There will be opportunities for life weaving and restoration of lands that might once again be allowed to return to a wild state.
Do not force people to leave a place they love. Some people will always live in the wild places or the places that cannot widely sustain life. Do not begrudge them their calling. Support them in living there peaceably.
Know that we angels will be offering incentives to people who choose to willingly relocate from a place that might be repurposed or rededicated.
Practice listening to the lands around your homes in groups of people. Often this listening can take the form of setting intentions around silence. These gatherings might also involve healing ceremonies or celebrations of various kinds. Lean into this practice. It will bear great fruit.
Bring rainbows into your hearts when considering questions related to land use and building.
Consult with the animal communicators among your people for additional wisdom on land use and building.
Bring your whole community together to discuss land use. Exclude no one, especially the children.
There is another concern around land weaving I would like to mention. This is the use of oil and petroleum products. Your species has the capacity to end your dependence on oil very quickly with hearts and minds reaching for solutions to some of the world’s most difficult problems. I have said this before, but it bears repeating. The sun is your answer. He has literally everything you need to thrive and flourish. It will no longer be necessary to hurt the earth (and it does hurt her) by drawing the oil from her skin.
Ah I think I’ve come to the end of my work, my love made visible, in this collaborative book creation project. Peace to you all and blessings upon your life weaving endeavors.
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