The Intelligence Behind it All
Recently I was listening to a talk given by Eckhart Tolle about being present with nature. He said to think about the stillness of trees and then the Intelligence behind the stillness….that Intelligence is the connection we want to make. Something about that really stayed with me.
Since then as I cycle on the back country trails of coastal Alabama, I set the intention to connect with that Intelligence behind the trees, the swamps, the stillness of nature at sunrise. As I pedal, I feel the attention I give to that Intelligence reflected back to me as amazing ‘bigness.’
On my first trip to Ireland in September 2017 I spent a couple days alone on Inis Mor, an island off the west coast, and had an experience that has been challenging to understand. It was my last day there. The next day I was to begin my journey back to the USA. I sat on the rocks overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and poured my heart out, sang and generally expressed gratitude for the wild elemental spirits that awakened me to a deeper connection with nature….with myself.
As I stood to leave, I felt a presence with me that followed me down the hill, past the chapel ruins, onto the small street, back to the bed and breakfast….and even settled into two open seats on the flight back over the Atlantic the next day. I wrote an e-book of ‘fiction’ about it called The Stone Hut but still ponder what it was I felt…and still feel.
After giving attention to the Intelligence, while outdoors and through meditation, I suspect that it was the Intelligence of wild nature found on the western Irish coast. Some might even try to label that Intelligence….God…Universe…Great Spirit…but for me, labeling diminishes It. Without a doubt, it was an immense presence that was easily palpable. And now, as I tune in closer to nature, I find it here…everywhere. I feel it everywhere.
Recent meditations with the Qabalah seem to parallel the experiences I’ve had in nature. To help illustrate here’s a bit of Qabalah info for context.
The Tree of Life or Qabalah has three pillars and ten sephirah or spheres. The diagram, to me, is the best map we have of the process of manifestation into the physical realm of existence. And perhaps the absolute best psychological model of the human experience we have.
In meditations of late I have been working with the Tree via the path of the Lighting Flash of manifestation, or the descent of power… and sitting with the energy of each sphere to see if it has a teaching for me. While I don’t want to get into the depths of Qabalah, as understood from a western esoteric philosophy, it might help to offer a simple explanation…and hopefully tie into the original storyline of this writing on the Intelligence behind nature….behind everything.
The yellow line in the diagram above represents the Lighting Flash or the path of creation. In the most simple terms, Kether is unmanifest potential or as I think of it, Cosmic Soup, where every possibility exists. The image I think of is a gigantic cauldron filled with star dust, stars, galaxies and we take our hand and scoop out an idea, something we wish to create. Kether might be compared to the Tao, where everything exists before it divides into duality.
So in the path of creation, we go from Kether to Chokmah, or the powerhouse sphere of active energy. We might think of this as masculine energy, a very necessary part of creating anything. And across from this sphere is Binah, which I see as a dark cave of enfolding that receives the masculine energy and begins to give it form…not a final product, but the beginnings. Binah represents feminine energy, also a necessary aspect of the creative process. As we continue down the Tree, it culminates in Malkuth…physical manifestation.
Recently I’ve been guided to begin at Kether and sit within the triangle formed by the emanations of Kether, Chokmah and Binah. In essence, I’m sitting within the Supernal Triangle feeling the early process of creation within the Three-in-One, like a Celtic knot of unbroken energy flow.
As I sit in this space I feel the immense energy of creation coming from Chokmah, the driving force that is simply force pushing toward Binah, the enfolding energy that brings order from raw power. We have to learn to sit in this place of stillness with our own unlimited and unmanifested potential. And this is not an easy task.
It feels like sitting in a pressure cooker with the intense, chaotic, raw power of unmanifested energy being hurled toward the container, Binah. As we grow in our lives, the more we are able to receive that raw power, the better we become at creating…or co-creating. But a warning here: In the flow of Intelligence, of that raw, unformed energy, there is just power. Energy. When we receive it, it infuses our talents, gifts, strengths with power….or anything we focus on including anger, fear, hatred. The energy is neutral until we ‘receive’ it and infuse it with our ‘stuff’….whatever our ‘stuff’ is. This is why in the western esoteric studies of the Qabalah I have participated in, much work is done on clearing the personality and resolving wounds and unhealed places within so when we do learn to align with that power, we do so in an ethical, helpful way.
Sometimes it is necessary to sit in stillness and connect with something greater than ourselves. No. At all times, this is necessary but most of us probably forget and jump ahead, foregoing the part where we learn to listen to the amazing Wisdom that is always, always available. Part of our work is to learn to distinguish the voice of ego or personality self from that of a higher self. It is this higher self, that we might call our true self, that has a direct connection to the Intelligence behind all things and perhaps is the ‘part’ of us that is in harmony with It…is One with It.
As I cycled today I heard that the flow of Intelligence is like a river and when we align with it we merge into a Cosmic Union. We allow thoughts to stop and simply open to Wisdom. When we can surrender our ego, our sense of separateness, and allow our consciousness to merge with the Intelligence behind all things, we experience Oneness.
The Eckhart talk on the Intelligence behind trees and these meditations of late are prompting me to reflect and listen. I’ve had visions of leading retreats in the mountains, helping people deepen with nature. I feel myself deepening with nature, with that magnificent, indescribable Intelligence behind all that is.
For many, many years I’ve been drawn deeper into relationship with aspects of nature…Ocean, whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea turtles. And now, I feel Earth calling me…deeper into Her embrace…like gravity calling me home.
Deepening with Nature….this is my personal work and the work I bring to the world. May it continue.
All photographs copyright Simone Lipscomb. Drawing by unknown source.
Still awake after waking at 2am, my mind wandered back to the little boy who broke my heart yesterday. I was working the cash register at my part-time job at a major outdoor clothing store. A man and his eight year old-ish son were at the counter looking at wallets. The boy was quiet and shy but given the way his dad was treating him, I understood why.
I smiled and teasingly said to the ‘man,’ “Hey, we’re almost an all-female staff. Be careful…” The guy laughed, not understanding what I was saying and kept on harassing his little boy. Finally, I walked over to the boy and said, “My brother is a man, he hunts turkey and deer and he wears pink shirts.” The little boy broke into a huge smile for just a moment and as we made eye contact I knew he felt understood. If only for a brief time, someone was on his side.
Tears prompted me to write this as a way to send love to the boy. But I also send love to his father who was probably bullied by his father. Shall we send love now, through our deep breath and exhalation, to all the bullies whose pain is so great the only way they feel relief is to pass it on to their children.
And to the little boy…may you find the courage to be yourself, to feel and express your emotions, to be the math nerd or the science whiz or musician or actor or writer or artist or professional soccer player….may you always be true to your heart and find support, sometimes where you least expect it.
Sleep isn’t something I take for granted. Too many nights are interrupted by my inability to turn off the empathic part of me that is tuned in to the energetic pulse of humanity. Tonight, as I found my favorite deep sleep music on youtube, I read many of the comments people posted from all over the world and I felt such a rush of love and a sense of Oneness.
A person from Venezuela wrote how she can’t sleep because of anxiety about her country falling apart, not having food, and civil war. A person from Iran wrote of their long history of poetry…Rumi and Gibran and reminded us that Iran is more than the sum of recent years of political strangeness. A person wrote how anxious and sad they are most of the time and how helpful the music was to them as well as the comments people were writing. There were supportive comments of love and compassion to those suffering. A woman in Turkey shared about her anxiety disorder and her gratitude for the sleep music. A person from North Carolina expressed her gratitude for compassionate people commenting and coming together to support each other. Another person from England wrote how refreshing it was to read such lovely and kind messages.
Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Algeria, Greece, Australia, Iran, Ireland, United States, England, France, South Africa, Philippines, Egypt, Brazil, Holland….just some of the places people live that commented with such support and love. For the first time in a long time, I felt such connection to a world that seems to fragment more each day. I realized we have much more in common than we know. If we could remove politics from the equation we’d all be in such a better place….mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. We allow the power-hungry few ruin it for the rest of us.
The ugliness of how we treat ‘others’ keeps me awake at night….the misunderstandings, the pain we think is unique to us but really is a common experience, the feelings of loneliness in a world where electronic ‘connection’ seems only to isolate us more, a world where destruction of the source of life seems rampant. Perhaps the greatest illusion of all is that there are ‘others.’ What if everyone, everything, was simply a reflection of us? What if everything ‘out there’ was simply a reflection of some common creative force….God, Great Spirit, the Universe, the Tao. What if everything we see as separate is simply another part of ourselves?
In the middle of the night these questions come. Perhaps my sleepless sisters and brothers all over the world are all facets in the same diamond light of Oneness and we’re simply all trying to find our way back Home….to each other….to Source…to greater understanding.
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For over a year when I ride my bike or walk, the same message is heard: make a conscious connection to nature. It began when I was in Ireland in February 2018. My friend and I were staying in a little holiday home that had very little heat. It snowed during the night and was quite cold. It was more than the cold weather and lack of warmth, the entire energy of the place was ‘off.’
After a night spent snuggled under the covers, I got up early and walked out with my camera. The light dusting of snow was lovely and the creek below had white frosting on the rocks surrounding it. As I stood at the top of a steep embankment, I noticed a lot of trash that had been simply pushed off the edge when the cheap holiday homes were constructed. Vines and vegetation had grown over and concealed much of it but the evidence was still there….pipes, cans, old lumber bits and pieces.
After spending over a week along the Wild Atlantic Way with pristine scenery and amazing vistas packed with raw, elemental energy, it was quite a shock and disappointment to see the mess. I ran back to the house and grabbed my new Low F Celtic Whistle…which sounds more like a flute with its beautiful mellow tone. I arrived back at the pile of trash above the creek and began playing.
Due to the freezing temperature, the sounds weren’t perfect. Not to mention that I had just purchased it and wasn’t yet familiar with the wider finger placements…which had my hands twisted like a pretzel. Regardless, I opened my heart to the place and sent love and compassion to it through the music. As soon as I began to play I felt the energy of the place shift. It was as if it perked up and took notice. I felt it communicate a sense of surprise that a human would send appreciation to it after other humans trashed it.
So I played with intention and felt a returning energy of gratitude and a soothing of hurtful wounds. Even with freezing fingers and metal that wasn’t sure it wanted warm breath moving through it, the low tones filled the frosty air with love and appreciation for Nature and all beings that lived in that area.
The idea to consciously play music for the Earth really took root within me. Perhaps it isn’t grand gestures that will shift our human consciousness but rather everyday efforts to intentionally connect with the Earth….the living Earth.
It will look and feel different for everyone but here are a few suggestions: read a poem to the Earth each morning; sing a song to Her every day; dance barefoot on Her every day; do yoga outside and work with nature energies as you move through your practice; meditate outdoors and consciously connect with Earth Mother; write a love letter to the Earth each day and read it aloud to Her; when you’re walking outdoors speak your gratitude for flowers, trees, grasses, soil, birds, worms, butterflies; go outside and simply listen with an open mind and heart; say prayers for Mother Earth outdoors and say them out loud.
Suggestion: keep an Earth journal and note what you did and your experience during and afterwards.
Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of the Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess.
Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock, a UK chemist, claims the resident life forms of a host planet coupled with their environment act like a single, self-regulating system.
I watched a YouTube video a guy created when he sailed across the North Sea solo during the winter. 
People have asked that same question about me….cave diving, traveling solo in England and Ireland, in Bonaire….leaving the ‘everyday grind’ to follow my heart’s calling. I understand what it feels like to have people question my sanity….just like I questioned the sanity of the guy sailing in insane conditions. Honestly, I was more afraid sitting on my sofa watching the North Sea video that I was during my adventures… except for my start in cave diving.
I think back to times when I had to choose between letting fear keep me stuck or taking the leap of faith into the vast Unknown. I believe the most powerful leaps in our lives always include an unknown aspect. We cannot know how a decision will truly affect us or the repercussions that will happen. It wouldn’t require anything of us if it was all the details were known. It wouldn’t produce growth or help us increase our strength and trust in ourselves. But I know this with all my heart: if we feel called to do something strongly and we gets signs–as in coincidences, synchronicities, etc–we are on the right track. I think the greatest tragedy is when we allow fear to keep us stuck and ignore those little breadcrumbs affirming the path that leads us to greater freedom and joy.
Cave diving….I was a diver already and wondered what could possibly be so great about being underwater in a cave. I was scared the first time I entered an underwater cave with my cave instructor friend. No doubt at all. My eyes were big, I could hardly breathe from getting caught in the high flow of water rushing out of the cave…I could share more ugly details…. but I persisted, even when I was scared. And I learned to trust my intuition completely while cave diving.
For instance, once my dive partner and I were entering a side passageway in Peacock Springs. We had tied a jump reel and everything was fine yet I began to feel really anxious. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my breathing rate increased. I signaled to my partner that I needed to return to the main line. As soon as I got to it, I was completely okay. I couldn’t’ explain my anxiety but I listened and by doing so learned to trust myself.
Cave diving has taught me the most important lesson in my life: PAY ATTENTION.
Fear is a natural response to change. The way to differentiate between fear that is normal and fear that is paralyzing is to pay attention to how the body responds…at least that works for me.
I know that fear can keep us stuck, keep us from taking the leap into something wonderful. I know this because I have experienced it. But I have also made the leap, many times, and every time….when I really felt something strongly calling me…it has been amazing.
Sailing across the North Sea in winter is not on my to-do list but there are other adventures yet to come…I feel them calling. I’m ready to leap. What is calling you? Don’t let fear keep you from your dreams….don’t let it steal your life.