By Anthony Mecca
Co-Director, Biodynamic Demeter Alliance
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn't make any sense.
— Rumi
As wonderful as we may think spring is or will be, it often isn’t an easy time. Many times it is less an arrival, and more a journey akin to rebirth with accompanying labor pains. Spring is a time when what lives within us, and within the earth, as aspirations and ideals, remeets the wider world with its needs, practicalities, and endless potential. This is the essence of its gift and its challenge. While this meeting is bound to happen each spring, the mystery lies in how it happens and how we experience this renewed life. As each spring arrives, we are asked to meet it anew.
Each spring we find ourselves navigating a multitude of factors active in the world and in our inner being. Some we feel we can prepare for, but many are a surprise. No matter when or how the weather first shifts, it feels early or late. And many times it starts off strong in one direction, and then abruptly turns around! At times we may freeze up with anxiety or be pushed to frenetic action. If we can step outside our initial feelings and responses, we can ask ourselves: How will I meet this? How will I work to foster balance and harmony this spring, through this rebirth and renewal of life both inwardly and outwardly? What can I do as a healing, therapeutic impulse for the garden, for the farm, for the community, for the earth?
More and more it feels harder to know what to do. And sometimes we know what to do, but struggle to find the will to do it. Each of our situations is individual and unique. There are no prescriptions or dictates. Part of the difficulty is relying solely on what the senses offer us while attempting to heal life, which exists beyond the sensory realm.
While this notion of “life” may sound vague or abstract, we are constantly within it, like a fish in water. But we generally mix up our impressions of life with the physical, sensory world, smushing them together and acting as if they are one and the same. Yet they are not! This may become clearer if we look at the plant world. We don’t work with a plant as if with modeling clay; rather we work to influence how it dynamically lives, grows, and develops—working with the realm of life that begets the outer, physical plant we perceive with our senses.
We can work with a small, simple practice to directly experience this realm of life beyond the senses. This practice has the potential to cultivate insight towards what to do, as well as inspiration and strength towards doing it. The practice itself is an offering and healing for the earth, as well as our own health—as we renew and strengthen our relationship with the spirit of the earth, we are both healed.
This small practice, or exercise, invites us towards an experience of the earth in its living being. We can initiate a dialogue that may, someday, go deep. The spirit of the human being may strive to converse with the spirit of the earth, to do good work together. Spring is a particularly potent time to practice this as there is a strength to the expression of the living earth at this time, and significant change each day.
Preparation
In many ways, preparation is the most challenging and often overlooked part of the practice. We are preparing to meet the life sphere of the earth, beyond what the senses offer us. Our first step is to quiet the senses. Next, we can prepare by striving to find our center—seeking inner peace alongside an openness and interest in knowing something more, and potentially being changed through this knowledge. We strive to immerse ourselves in humility and reverence—that we are not whole and all-knowing, that there is something greater with which we wish to be in relationship.
Inquiry
Find an out-of-the-way place to be with the earth. It can be a cultivated space, but it may be helpful to find a less familiar place at the wood’s edge, or in the middle of a meadow or yard. We may focus on a plant, such as a clump of grass or other small sprout, or attempt to engage with what lives within the earth. Now, immersed in humility and reverence, we may greet the earth and bring forth an inquiry. Some find phrasing a simple question helpful. If so, make it an open question: “How are you today?” rather than “Are you doing well today?” For others, continuing the stillness without a question is best. Either way, what is important is the mood of inquiry.
Listening
Now we listen. If we’re able to direct our attention to engage with the being of the other and really listen, we may “hear’ inner feelings, inner experiences from what the earth is speaking of how it is, and how it is meeting the world this spring. We can learn to listen in ways we didn’t know we could listen, with different parts of our being. It may take practice and patience before there are tiny whispers of something. What was once a common capacity among those who cared for the earth is something we now need to cultivate consciously and anew.
Gratitude
You may notice something coming, an impression, or you may not. You may be interested in what comes, or displeased, or surprised. Whatever comes, make space for gratitude for the opportunity for dialogue and for the earth offering what it is ready to. And for your capacity to engage, for all that supports your being to experience. Soft and vulnerable, allow whatever has come to settle into the depths of your being.
Gathering and Remeeting Our Impressions
Each genuine encounter and dialogue with the earth is new. Each day, we strive to find the right place from which to inquire, and the right place from which to listen, and to allow whatever comes to impress itself on our inner being. As we practice, we gather an array of subtle impressions that we can then set next to each other to view the development of our experiences. This is where we may “see” the life qualities of the earth in action.
To practice this, we can take time away from a sensory connection to the earth, and then, in humility and reverence, we can again reach towards calling up these subtle impressions. Without an outer image, what impressions arise or remain over three day’s time, for example? Let the impressions live in your soul again and again, carving pathways through the landscape of your inner life. Sit quietly with what emerges from your inner being, letting it mingle and coalesce into subtle meaning. We may experience how these impressions relate to one another, potentially offering new revelations and new questions.
Another way to remeet these impressions is through artistic work. Depending on your inclination, you may work to call up and express these subtle experiences in gesture, form, color, speech, word, and tone. It is not about creating a literal, outer picture, though forms may arise, but about translating what the earth has spoken into another language. In the process of translation, something new may emerge.
With whatever comes, care for it as you would a tender young seedling. Cultivate it gently and regularly, help it root and meet the light, so that it may slowly grow. Perhaps one day, after much work, there will be fruits to share with others.
~ ~ ~
Building and deepening this direct relationship with the earth may help us to meet spring, and each day, anew. It can become a simple five minutes each morning, or evening, or once a week. Through this relationship, we may develop a new way of knowing the earth, a new way of knowing what to do. As we reverently engage in dialogue with the earth, we may be inspired towards caring, healing impulses that we might otherwise feel we “don’t have time for.” And we may also notice a different quality to our inner life, one that may allow us richer relationships with all of life.
Each time we practice, the path is worn a bit. At first, the path may be difficult to see, but it will become more familiar each time, supporting us to find where these feelings live in us, and to remeet the forces that are active there. Continuing this practice in an ongoing way helps develop a capacity that we may more regularly utilize towards deepening experiences and healing our relationship with the earth.
I hope you go well in meeting spring anew! If you enter into these exercises and have questions or sharings, feel free to reach out to me: anthony@biodynamics.com.
Anthony Mecca is Co-Director of the Biodynamic Demeter Alliance. Anthony is a farmer dedicated to healing the relationship between human beings and the earth through education, community building, research, and development. Over the past decade, he has developed and led training programs for the Biodynamic Association. As Co-Director, Anthony is responsible for programs and training, as well as working with the social arts towards building a more harmonious and vibrant biodynamic community. Anthony is also a director of EduCareDo where he offers a distance learning course on Biodynamic Agriculture and Nutrition and contributes to the Foundations in Anthroposophy course. Anthony works and lives on Sun Heart Farm, an educational and therapeutic community farm in the valley between the Berkshire and Taconic mountains in New York.