Positive Possibilities Living: Blooming Into Abundance, by Parvati Devi

If we could be a bit more like the trees, rivers, butterflies and flowers, we might find ourselves a lot healthier, happier and wise. And what better time to feel inspired to surrender to and be part of such immensity than during the bursting power of life now upon us this spring?

Do yourself a favor and go say hello to the budding trees. Notice how they do not struggle to be, but are in a rapturous state of deep surrender. Rooted in the rich Earth, trunks strong, growing up to meet the sky, the trees’ leaves dance in the flowing wind. Watch carefully. Each tree is flowing within the whole, just as you are. The trees do not try to be other than within this connection. Our ego, however, would want us to feel otherwise.

Through nature, we can see our true nature, and bloom into the fullness of who we are. Let us look at examples within nature. The chrysalis that transforms into a butterfly, does it doubt, angst and stress over the process it undergoes? Or is the cocooned creature in a surrendered state held perfectly within an intelligent whole? Really think about it. When the flower springs from the soil, is it thinking “gotta get it right” or “gotta work harder”? Or is it simply being, expressing a flow within the whole? The same for the budding leaves on the tree branches, the thawing ice, the animals awakening. Can you imagine the hibernating bear coming out in a rush from its cave with the thought, “Man! I gotta hurry. I am going to be late again”?

Yet how many of us wake up everyday, supposedly refreshed, already feeling stressed and having somehow failed? That is the baggage we carry. It is our own state of disconnection from the whole. No one is “doing it” to us. It is the story we place over our lives. It is not our fullest, most natural self, but what we have become habituated to be, usually as an expression of the ego to feel greater than or less than another as a distorted cry for love we perceive is not there. We tend to hold on to stress, fearing the jungle lion even when the lion exists only in our imagination. This fear exists because deep down we don’t feel love or loved.

But is there no love? I believe that we really need to challenge our disconnected tendencies and ask ourselves this question often. Do we need to rely on that old story of rush, push and pull to make us feel better? Ultimately, does not our push/pull make us suffer? Remember the chrysalis perfectly cocooned. Would nature take such perfect care of that caterpillar and abandon us? Or have we somehow, somewhere along our life path let go of our connection to nature instead? We believe our own distorted perceptions and go running because a coiled rope looks like a cobra to our dulled eyes. Nature is not doing that “to” us. We do that to ourselves. We place the disconnected story on each perfect moment. Ah! Beautiful butterfly, that does not have the busy mind we do, that surrenders to its magnificent transformation and flies free!

We must remember that we are part of nature, not voyeurs into it or separate from it. Nature continually holds, feeds, supports and sustains us. Now that is love!

For nature, life just is. Resting into this “isness” is surrender. Surrender is gentle, quiet, powerful, active, alive, vital… because it relies on a state of feeling connected, interconnected, a part of it all. We are constantly held within the whole, cradled in a perfect life-force cocoon, completely loved, fully supported and totally cared for. Our minds may be attached to distortions that tell us otherwise, but that does not change the fact that the loving support is here, if we are willing to let go and receive.

Parvati Devi is the editor-in-chief of Parvati Magazine. In addition to being an internationally acclaimed Canadian singer, songwriter, producer and performer, she is a yoga teacher and holistic educator, having studied yoga and meditation since 1987, and developed her own yoga teaching style called YEM™: Yoga as Energy Medicine. Her current show, “Natamba”, brings forward a conscious energy into the pop mainstream.