The Beauty of Apricity
Celebrating the Earth, Our Two Minds and A New (Ancient) Way to Find Your person
I just learned this new word and I love it. I can even FEEL on my skin when I think of it…
Apricity.
From the Latin ‘Apricitas’ or sunny. Apricity means “the warmth of the sun in winter.”
You know that feeling of standing knee-deep in the cold snow and you just can’t help yourself. The sun is FINALLY out for the first time in weeks and you take a moment to silently close your eyes and tilt your head towards the light like sunflowers in a field.
Apricity.
It’s a welcomed reprieve during the long grey months of winter.
Apricity also offers us something that warm weighted blankets, block heaters, and heated seats do not: perpetuation. It’s the gift that keeps on giving because it penetrates our essence and feeds our life force.
It’s the beautiful simple sensation that nature offers us in what can seem like a bleak time.
It may officially be spring, but I’m up in Northern Ontario right now and woke up to snow and frost, but it quickly melted and the sun is shining brightly today.
Gracie just paddled out into the deep water for her first swim of the season and had a good shake beside me (eek!) and is now giving me puss in boots eyes to play with her.
“As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the same thing.”
– Alice Walker
Can you see the big barrels of water on the dock?
The waterline on Lake Nipissing has risen right over the top of the dock and has spilled onto the lawn. This is a new phenomenon (it happened once 4 years ago) but it’s unusual. We’re expecting 30 mm of rain tomorrow and there are flash flood warnings so please send a lifeboat if you don’t hear from me next Sunday:)
I’m feeling incredibly appreciative of nature this week.
The full moon was so beautiful I woke up in a daze I was sure I’d fallen asleep with a light on because the room was so bright and it took me a few moments to realize where the light was coming from. Gracie seems to be in her element - she caught a grouse in her mouth last weekend in some thick bush and Scott and I pleaded with her (me a bit hysterically) to please let it live. She went against her instincts and let go reluctantly. Then a few short days later she had her first-ever deer encounter in the woods.
They stood frozen staring at each other long enough for me to fumble my phone out of my pocket…
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
– John Muir
Some heavy Muskoka chairs were swept off the dock into the water with the wind and waves and that is my handsome hubby rescuing one from the Bay and a few pics of our wildling living her best life to give you a bit of a Sunday nature fix.
I love how things come to life in the spring. The brown will all turn green in a few short weeks.
It’s funny how we say that we enjoy being closer to nature when we head out of the city when we’re never really away from it. It may be buried under a concrete crust, but it’s always here. We are no more removed from nature than any other creature, even in a large city. Our animal nature dictates our essential needs: clean air, clean water, clean soil, and clean energy. These “sacred elements” are created, cleansed, and renewed by the web of life itself.
If there were to be a fifth sacred element, I think it would be biodiversity itself. We are born of the Earth and constructed from the four sacred elements and I think all of us here understand that whatever we do to these elements, we do directly to ourselves.
I’ve been thinking about the weather and the snow and how much conditions have changed since I was a little girl and I officially no longer take the snow, wildlife, or even our shoreline for granted.
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
– Albert Einstein
Not even this little bumblebee who just stopped by for a visit. Did you know that he flaps his little wings about 200 beats per second and can carry up to 75% of his body weight in nectar and pollen? Good grief, no wonder he’s bushed. Let’s all try to relax when we see them this summer- did you know that the males don’t even have stingers? All our panic swatting is for not:)
Have you noticed that the earth seems to be shifting in subtle and not-so-subtle ways?
I’ve observed how quickly the weather can turn and how unpredictable it is during seasons that used to be more delineated with certain temperature patterns. It even has our daffodils confused.
Maybe it’s always been that way, I’ve just never noticed. I had a Facebook Memory pop up with these photos side by side from the same chair lift one day later with the caption… “What a difference a day can make”.
I’ve made peace with the changes and unpredictability, but every day feels like Earth Day to me now.
I’d like to pay homage today to someone special whom many consider the Mother of the Environmental movement, Rachel Carlson.
Rachel’s 1962 book Silent Spring changed the world.
When she published her work, the companies that manufactured the pesticides that she was warning us about launched a personal attack aimed at discrediting her and her book. Rachel was told she was a woman and she should keep her mouth shut. She was called many worse things but “a whore, a slut, and a communist” on mainstream media. Even Time Magazine accused her of being “hysterical”.
Sigh. Ads by pesticide companies said things like “Isn’t it just like a woman to panic at the sight of the chemicals we need to grow our food”.
Double sigh.
She was right. But we didn’t listen.
Who else aren’t we listening to?
Eco Feminist Dr. Vandana Shiva is Montsanto’s worst nightmare and she has started a very public global seed movement. Her life has been threatened on behalf of our global well-being and deep concern about our microbiome, regenerative agriculture, and the seeds. You can learn more about her story in the movie: The Seeds of Vandana Shiva.
We are 90% or more made of microbes and they are being killed by toxins. Last night I watched another entertaining documentary called Hack Your Health about our microbiome and there seems to be an explosion of gut education that proves that Rachel WAS right all along.
Thanks to Rachel, Vandana, and countless others we are turning our ship around and I’m filled with hope for our future.
In religion, in particular Christianity…the cover-ups, theological censorship, Vatican denials, and book discrediting of people telling the truth to power are not acceptable. Books can be burned but we’re finding them buried. Truth can be denied, but it seems to have a way of revealing itself in the long run.
I ran across this incredible statement in the Gospel of Love and Peace (the Essene Gospel which is probably on the Heretical Hitlist) this week by Jesus that made my mouth drop. An interesting side note is that Jesus was an Essene and he didn’t share the gender separation and degradation of women that was common at the time and here up until the 1970s.
Here is Jesus’ response to a question about listening to God in his works (creation/the Earth) that you may not hear in the church where scripture is worshipped that rang true and gave me goosebumps.
It felt so good and true that I had to read it twice and share it with you:
Seek not the Law in your scriptures, for the Law is Life, whereas scripture is dead. I tell you truly, Moses received not his laws from God in writing, but through the living word. The law is living word of living God to living prophets for living men. In everthing that is Life is the Law Written. You find it in the grass, in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of Heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves. For I tell you truly, all living things are near to God than scripture which is without Life.
God so made Life and all living things that they might by the everlasing word teach the Law of the true God to man. God wrote not the Law in the pages of books, but in your heart and your Spirit. They are in your breath, your blood, your bone; in your flesh, your bowels, your eyes, your ears, and in every part of your body. They are present in the air, in the water, in the Earth, in the plants, in the sunbeams, in the depths and in the heights.
Wow. It’s just too good and it makes sense.
More on the Essenes another day, but I just wanted to give you a little taste of how connected Jesus seemed to be to BOTH his “Earthly Mother” (The Angels of Water, Soil, Joy, Air, Sun, and Life) AND his “Heavenly Father” (Eternal life, Work, Power, Love, Peace & Wisdom).
I always wondered at Catholic school why there was so much Father talk and no mention of a Mother when we love our Moms. Hmmm… anyone else wondering if the commandment asking us to obey our Mother and Father was possibly lost in translation and it never was referring to our biological parents, but our Cosmic ones?
If only we had that one right 2000 years ago we could have saved ourselves a lot of suffering.
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
– Jane Goodall
In reverence for the earth, this week let’s celebrate some wins for the planet…
Three cheers for the way we celebrate Earth Day around the world together - zoom in on this photo that I found online and can’t find a source for…check out the expressions on people’s faces and you’ll see HOPE and JOY:)
Before the Paris Accord, we were forecasted to go up by 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) but we have dialed that back to 2.7%
In the cases where governments are not measuring up to their Paris Accord promises, people are taking action. I saw a news segment on two Australian brothers -Pabai Pabai and Paul Kabai from Boigu Island in Australia's Torres Strait leading a landmark climate change court case against the Australian government. This would set a huge precedent and could be a game changer for every country around the world to keep their word.
There is more good news…
10 years ago 0.7% of cars sold worldwide were electric and today it’s over 20%
In 2015 experts speculated that solar plants would be cheaper than natural gas and today onshore wind and solar ARE!
I’m excited to see these changes and many more in the months and years to come.
We may have a ways to go to change our minds and shift our consumption habits, but it feels like things are coming together now more than ever.
It’s uncomfortable to change, but we must.
Now is the time.
A new study published in Nature last week found that global warming will cost $38 trillion every year by 2050 (the global economy is about $100 trillion) One idea proposed by the brilliant Esther Duflo (2nd woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics) is that the richest people should compensate poor people for the climate damages they disproportionately caused through a climate tax on billionaires and large corporations.
Whoa. Ripples are being made. BIG TIME.
GOOOooooooo Esther, Pabai & Paul!!!
I wonder what I could do?
Are you wondering that too?
To close this first part, I wanted to share one of Joni Michell’s catchy little songs I remember from when I was little…
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
– Joni Mitchell
PART 2
When you were growing up, did you watch cartoons?
On the weekends my brother and I did when we didn’t have to get to the ski hill or swim practice - I just LOOOOOVED them.
My faves were the Flinstones, Scooby doo, and Looney Tunes. My brother liked Spider-Man and afterward, he’d point the inside of his wrist at things around the house and me and say “Phfffffffssssssssssshhhhhhht”.
They were fun. I suppose it’s why our generation also created adult cartoons like the Simpson’s which we watched for years. I can remember getting together with friends at University to watch a new episode as a social event and all of those hours left an impression on me.
As adults, cartoons and jokes can help us bypass our egos and somehow slip past our defenses and see a deeper meaning. Our magnificent intellects step aside so we can experience ourselves on another level.
Drawings are like bedtime stories, they don’t threaten our worldviews and can be received openly with an innocent child-like curiosity.
But don’t let their simplicity fool you.
Today I’d like to tell you a story with drawings about our two minds.
The core problem we face today is that we’re trying to change our lives with only one of our minds and there is another way forward.
Credit for these drawings today goes to Jeffrey Allan and Hisami Reiko Allan (I’ll tell you their personal story at the end).
The Earth is changing.
The energy around the earth is shifting and so are we.
The Earth’s energy field has been blocked since the beginning of time by an impenetrable dense filter that is in the process of being lifted and replaced with a higher vibrational filter which is changing our experience of Earth and ourselves.
The lifting started in 2012 and will end around 2030.
During the transition, we will notice physical changes, and natural disasters all around our planet as adjustments are made to clear out the old and more dense energies and lower frequencies to make room for higher frequencies.
Individually, we may find ourselves triggered by old traumas that will come up to the light to be seen and healed in our personal lives.
We will all feel and see the change to some extent.
As we deal with our “stuff” (see black sandbags weighing us down:), we will lighten our load and lift…to higher and higher levels of consciousness.
This new ascending energy is shifting the planet and guiding us to our true nature.
We can make it a smoother transition by trusting and aligning with the energy in nature.
Living in integrity and being a vibratory match to nature. It will be finer, lighter, and much faster than it has been in the past.
This unified energy field has been called many different things…
There seem to be two major approaches to our personal development and spiritual alignment during this transformation.
First, we can consume content (learn stuff) and take action to change or control our external world. We seem to all be familiar with this method as it is the way we’ve all been taught.
It’s a helpful and Hedonic approach where we seek pleasure (or avoid pain) as our main motivation to set goals and make changes in our lives.
This outside-in carrot-and-stick approach often does work but the effect is not always lasting.
The second is more of an inside-out job - or a “eudaemonic” approach that is about increasing meaning. It’s based on the idea that happiness (and miracles) ensue from a perspective shift after finding deeper meaning.
Spirit mind teaches that you don't need to learn something new, and you don't need to follow guidance from outside. You simply need to remember your true nature and follow the guidance that comes from within you.
To be clear, this guidance is not from your analytical mind or thought, but from what one of my beautiful teachers, Hisami Reiko from Japan calls the “Spirit mind”.
Before I continue, just a reminder that neither mind is right or wrong, both exist, but one gives us a different experience of life and ourselves…
The more beautiful world we all know is possible will only come if we learn to BLEND both into our everyday experiences.
Humanity is made of two minds:
A Mental mind that operates in a service-to-self orientation.
A Spirit mind that operates in a service-to-others orientation.
Today I’d like to tell you a story about these two minds and how we can activate them both to optimize our human potential.
The material mind (M) speaks first and loudest. Some call it the small self or the ego mind. We use this mind to function in the material world individually and collectively.
What many of us immersed in materiality and lower density don’t realize, is that we also have access to a Spirit Mind (S).
According to prophets and wisdom teachers from every major world religion and native wisdom teachings, it is from the Spirit mind that we can communicate with all forms of life, including other dimensions, trees, and water, but primarily we can use it to heal ourselves, the planet and experience deep physical, emotional and mental healing.
Best of all we have the power to tap into Spirit Mind to experience deep inner peace, fulfillment, and salvation (freedom) from suffering on Earth in THIS lifetime.
We have free will and can live our whole lives in the Material Mind if we choose.
The Spirit Mind
The spirit mind is different. It doesn’t exist outside of you, it’s in you. Not like a brain is in you, it’s energy and it can’t be seen.
Essentially it is the primary organizing principle that animates all of your cells. It is highly intelligent and adaptive.
This Spirit mind is eternal, wise, abundant, and loving.
It is the higher awareness in you that never ages or dies. The part of you that feels the same when you’re 9 and 39 even though your body has aged.
It is the mind connected to the Creator. It’s all-seeing and knowing and exists multidimensional.
It’s pure energy or consciousness. It solves problems and can guide you to the best outcomes for all. It has no judgment or other motive than to love unconditionally and forgive.
It’s quantum in nature and it can bend the Newtonian laws of space and time. It exists here and now in what some call Heaven or the Upper Room.
Operating from this higher mind often results in what material-minded people call Miracles.
Popular prophets like Zoroaster, Krishna, Jeshua (Jesus), Buddha, and Muhammed demonstrated how to transcend the Material Mind and to be one with the Spirit Mind in or as this highest human expression.
Spirit Mind is a quiet observer, it is soft-spoken, a good listener, and unconditionally loving.
The “S” mind is the energetic eternal part of you that exists beyond time and space.
The Material Mind
This mental part of you seems to operate brilliantly on earth. It functions in and through our brain and nervous system on a horizontal or physical plane.
It is neutral and programmable by our thoughts, senses, and perceptions and runs all of the incredible processes of our physical bodies.
It’s the Mind we inherit at birth. It’s taught to us and we use it at home, in school, in church, and every culture on earth. It’s responsible for medical and technological advancements and is governed by Newtonian physics and man-made laws.
Most of the world operates from this mind alone. We set goals, make lists, economies, judicial systems, governments, and small talk with others with this mind.
It’s amazing. It can get things done. It can solve problems, adapt, run fast, design and make nuclear bombs, and artificial intelligence.
It naturally cares mostly about earthly things..security, and satisfaction, and tends to be more preoccupied with what it believes will give it more of that.
Accumulating money, accomplishments, status, a nice home, health, beauty, family, religion, and education are understandably its main motivation and focus.
It has limitations, is controlled by the ego, and tends to operate in fear out of self-preservation.
It wants to inflate itself to protect itself because it is not Divine and it feels lacking on some level. It feels separate and is never fully satisfied until it’s aligned with “Spirit Mind”.
It will serve and even worship God or nature and science through religion, medicine, and technology but through the Material mind filter it judges others critically, needs to be right, to win, and it wants to look good doing it. It often behaves unethically. it bends the truth in service to self, rationalizes, and manipulates them with fear out of self-preservation.
It has trouble changing and can easily become addicted to feeling pleasure and avoiding pain.
Here is a cross-section of your brain and spiritual anatomy;)
Most people on earth operate solely from the material mind and have no clue that their spiritual mind even exists - they have forgotten and it will remain asleep until it’s awakened.
The Material Mind is filled with judgments and man-made laws.
It’s competitive. Righteous. Ambitious.
It is kept alive with shame and guilt. It carries grievances. It’s defensive and based on a belief in separation and lack so it tends to want to hoard things to try to feel safe.
It loves being social, being online, on social media, in the know, and on-trend.
This Material Mind is always changing and wants things to feel complete.
I’m reading Anne Lamott’s new book “Somehow: Thoughts on Love” and this part jumped off the page at me yesterday that seems to capture the Material mind:
“We humans screw up; that is our nature. Francis Spufford wrote in his book, Unapologetic that the human propensity is to fuck things up. There is a flaw in our genetic and social coding, which is why we keep kicking up errors in the form of damage to our relationships, to ourselves, and to the planet. Most of the blame goes to the ego, protecting and promoting itself without a thought for the neighbor, the community, the divine. It is always trying to get away with more, while obsessing about how unfair it is that others get away with so much. It’s the part of me that always wants the bigger cookie and glares at someone else if they take it before I can. It’s the part of me that would have me pushing aside women even older than I am to get to the Titanic lifeboats.” (p. 81-82)
The last couple of lines made me laugh out loud.
I think we can all relate.
Annie’s a Sunday school teacher and endearingly calls herself 'the world's worst Christian.' I’ve heard the joke in another book (sorry I can’t remember which) that she’s just grateful that her mind doesn't have a PA system because she admits how she talks and preaches goodness and kindness, especially to people who are hurting, which is most of the people in the world. Then in her mind, she’s just scrambling and striving to get ahead of everybody.
She is describing the activity of the mental mind.
Spirit mind compels quietly and is only love. It’s incapable of judgment.
The awakening or inner shift sometimes called enlightenment occurs naturally as an expression of love when the Material mind quietens and reverently serves the Higher or the Spirit Mind.
The Material mind is a gift and makes an excellent servant like every other organ in our body like our lungs, hearts, and digestive system, but we suffer when it is our main mind or master.
Once we shift from the material mind alone to both we understand that our life experience comes FROM us.
We’re spiritual beings having a finite physical experience.
Our powerful perception IS creation.
We are divine intelligence expressing itself.
The moment we understand the deeper meaning of who and what we really are and why we’re here we feel a bliss that we never imagined possible. We feel things but aren’t deeply affected by them the way we used to be.
We begin to have new skills and we can develop new spiritual gifts at the higher level of frequencies. We can see new spectrums of light and transform in new and exciting ways.
Historically, the material mind in us has been overly active.
The Spirit Mind quietly awaits our discovery.
Let’s learn how to activate BOTH minds in a balanced way.
When more of us learn how to shift all things are made new.
The more beautiful world we know is not just possible… it’s inevitable.
We are whole now, so we don’t need to change or become something new…we just need to do the work to remember and come back into alignment with nature, which is our essential nature.
Knowing this, it feels like there has never been a better time to be alive.
The End.
Is this a true story?
Maybe it is.
Apricity and peace be with you.
With love,
Rev Nona
ps. Here is a real-life example of what having a blended material and spiritual mind is like…
A NEW AND ANCIENT LOVE STORY
In 2021, I was searching online for others who had a similar spontaneous awakening experience to help me make sense of what I experienced in 2020 and I found my teacher (left) Hisami Reiko.
She had a powerful awakening in 2005 and she gained deep psychic insights.
I teared up when I found her, she validated my own experience, and everything she said I also knew to be true.
I love that she is gentle, kind, and all about the energetics of this truth beyond all of our human labels at a time when I was trying to connect the Universal dots to find out what was true for all of us.
Her love connection with Jeffrey started energetically, not with words because they didn’t even speak the same language.
Hisami met her partner (and now husband Jeffrey Allan) in Japan.
Jeffrey tells the story of standing outside a restaurant in Tokyo and feeling nervous because he knew he was about to meet his wife-to-be. He had never even seen a picture of her, talked, or even texted with her.
You’re probably wondering how he knew.
A week earlier he had arranged to have lunch with a friend and she said “I’m going to bring my friend Hisami with me”….and as soon as she said her name, he saw a beautiful light and he knew she was his person. (Jeffrey can get very clear guidance from Spirit, he already knew what was going to happen with this person he’s never even met before.)
Waiting for the two of them outside of the restaurant he saw them coming up the escalator and as they both approached Hisami said in a friendly voice..
“Hi. I’m Hisami, nice to meet you.”
Jeffrey responded…
“Hi. I’m Jeffrey Allan Dennis.”
There was a long awkward pause.
Other than the greeting, he didn’t speak a word of Japanese and she didn’t speak a word of English and that was their first encounter. They had a magnetic connection and a week later they decided to have their first date.
The day arrived. He stood on the platform at the train station in Tokyo, the only white person for miles wondering how he’d find her with 100’s of people swirling around him.
The crowd parted and there was a beautiful bright light as Hisami walked up to him and took his hand. They hopped on the next train to Yokohama and they couldn’t talk but he had this powerful feeling that he wanted to know her better.
They are both energy healers so he picked up her hand and (using Spirit Mind) they circulated energy, no words were spoken and they laughed and had the best 8-hour date he’s ever been on in his life.
8 months later he describes being on a moving train and seeing her on the platform. As he’s waving goodbye to her bound for a European Tour, he teared up because he didn’t want to say goodbye or feel this way ever again.
Even though she lived in another country and they didn’t speak the same language. When he came back to her a week later he proposed.
She immediately said YES and they were married 3 days later.
That was more than a decade ago. Their love connection started purely energetically and has continued to grow and deepen and both are learning to speak each other’s language.
It was their hearts that were connected first, they were fully present in the moment and it was a powerful lesson for both of them.
Our material minds can’t imagine marrying someone when there is no language.
Imagine a world with no dating apps, just using the full capacity of our dual minds.
Hisami and Jeffrey are living proof of the power of using this loving energy to communicate and to trust the synchronicities and guidance from the all-seeing and knowing Spirit Mind.
We all have access to this knowing or Spirit mind, and like any skill, it just takes practice.
*This story today was made up by me but it was based on Hisami and Jeff’s work and the name “Spirit Mind” is trademarked by Hisami and Jeff - I’m not an affiliate, I just really like their work. They have an online course and community that you can learn more about HERE.
I like the ‘Hisami and Jeffrey’ story. It reminded me of…Yes being my answer. Thank you for sharing!