New Year, New Direction

I started this blog for a couple of reasons. I felt I needed something where I could share my thoughts, but not with so much depth as The Grove of Quotes. Also it was made to accompany me through my work through OBOD‘s Druid grade (third and final grade that I started a little over two years ago). Now I’m coming to the end of the course I can reflect a little on where this blog has been and where it will go.

This blog has helped me express some thoughts I encountered in the course, sharing ideas on learning and creating languages, sharing other creative endeavours such as art and stories, and so on. And I shall carry on, but my focus will be changing. The course is ending, but the process of becoming a Druid is just starting. I have aquired the tools, now it’s the time to apply them in my life. For that reason “druid in training” is still apt.

In the new year I’ll be starting a course in Ecopsychology (Mika has just finished it) and we’ll be do more activities combining art with ecopsychological insight (Ecoart workshops). We’ll also be working with CEN (as mentioned in a previous post) and continuing our development of a sustainable ecological project, and so taking my druidry into action.

Happy New Year!

The Wild Patch

Rocket (and if you look carefully you might see spinach poking through too)

Looking carefully amongst the straw and grass I’ve found some radish, rocket and spinach growing! I’m curious (and not a little impatient) to see how they develop.

This afternoon I went into the garden and put some ashes down on top of the garlic (ashes are supposed to be good for garlic, but not for other plants, so I’ll see how that does).  I also put a line of wheat down, with hops that, in the summer, they’ll form a sort of wall to protect the rest of the plants from the excesses of the heat. I put mulch of top of it to protect it from the birds (mmm, big juicy grain!).

Radish

A Message from CEN

CEN (Associació per a la Conservació dels Ecosistemes Naturals – or Association for the Conservation of Natural Ecosystems) wishes to share this message with you.

A bit of background: Biosfera2030 has signed a ten-year land stewardship contract with CEN for the protection of the land and sustainable use of resources. In the coming years we’ll be collaborating on various projects. I’ll keep you informed. 🙂

 

Semi-Wild Veg Patch

A light covering of straw mulch over the “no-dig” beds

Some news from the veg patch: there are some radish and rocket already growing. I’m still waiting for the lettuce, spinach and garlic to take hold.

Happy Christmas!

And hoping that the holiday season brings you greats gifts.

Our christmas tree made from hazel branches cut from the orchard.

The Iceberg

The ego is just the tip of the iceberg, a fragment that thinks it’s a whole; the individual is deeper and broader than the ego, as the iceberg is deeper and broader than the tip. But the ego doesn’t always recognise this, so everything that it doesn’t recognise as “self” must be “other”, and so the unconscious is projected outside. Once the ego learns a bit of humility it’s limits can be punctured and then begins the work of integration.

When we are “educated” (read conditioned) all those unwanted qualities get hidden in the unconscious, and rest there until rediscovery. Perhaps confidence was buried; perhaps gentleness was hidden; perhaps curiosity and creativity were deftly swept under the carpet. And we learn to live with this and get on with our lives, even if we feel unsatified with our lot. We have within us treasures awaiting discovery.

Also, the ego interferes with the unconscious as it tries to impose itself on the world within and also the world without, but cutting itself off from its treasures hidden in the unconscious – until it can learn a bit of humility and learn that it belongs to something deeper, higher and wider than itself. Then the conscious and unconscious can become well functioning parts of a whole that is the Self in the process of Individuation.

Questioning Beliefs, Questioning Yourself

One very easy tool I’ve found for self-investigation is questioning my beliefs. It wasn’t enough to have beliefs but to understand why I believed such-and-such, what motivated me? And do I really believe it or is it something that I’ve inherited from the world around me? What are really my beliefs?

I call it easy because it’s a way of looking at yourself without really looking at yourself (it has the appearance of “questioning and investigating belief systems”, but it’s an interesting preliminary step to finding our own motivations behind how we think). Our beliefs are symptoms of the way we think, and so too what ideas we find most appealing or convenient for explaining the world around us.

I’ve also learnt that beliefs don’t represent static statements on the nature of reality (at least not for me) but are simply ideas we have about the world that need testing and updating every-so-often, because as our understanding expands, and experience and reasonings develop, so should our beliefs, aligning more with “what is” rather than “what could be”.

The Veg Patch – sowing without digging

For a couple of years me and my girlfriend have been working on a veg patch in the traditional way of digging it up. We haven’t weeded much, just put down mulch when it’s needed, and the weeds we do take we put back on the floor, helping to mulch everything. You can find it described on Biosfera2030 (in Spanish, but you can click on the posts to see our veg patch, “la huerta”, and its products).

This year I read The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka and got inspired to try something: no-till farming. This afternoon I went out with some seeds (spinach and radishes*), threw them out onto grassy-weedy ground, covered them with a bit of straw (for mulch and to protect against birds) and gave them a bit of watering. Without digging the ground up. I’m interesting to see what comes of it.

*I was meant to plant some lettuces seeds too but accidently nicked Mika’s rocket seeds, so I have rocket too.