- Dianaverse
Dandelions again... and Beltane
I woke up yesterday morning with Beltane on my mind.... lamenting my lack of a partner to make festivities with.... I had some expectation, I mean, there's a flower-sowing dark-haired beauty right there next to me on my vision board; yang to my yin; but things, and people on these boards tend to show up when they're ready. Maybe it's just about falling in love with my shadow self.
So, I turned my thoughts to a reminder I got from @therebewitches on Instagram about ritual being most powerful when done with mundane actions. As I looked lovingly at the dandelion "heads" out in the yard, I had some thoughts about the mundane and common things in the world and how our approach to them creates radical changes in consciousness. A lot of humans love to go out and find exotic and extreme species and scenarios and tend to ignore or debase what's beautiful about the common and everyday.
Take Dandelions, for example; they're strong survivors. They show up where the soil needs help, digging down their roots to bring up minerals that they then shed at ground level as they drop their leaves, for other species to use. How hard do humans try to eradicate them? To the point of poisoning themselves and the land. Yet Dandelions cheerfully put on their sunny faces and thrive. What a radical change in consciousness it would be for humans to leave behind their poisons and well-manicured lawns and embrace Dandelions as allies instead of as enemies. The world would be a healthier place for humans, pets, plants and wild life.
Nature doesn't really go for monocultures; not in the plant, animal or human species. While we are drawn to the exotic; the great athletes, dynamic writers and artists, and exceptional and bombastic leaders in every field; it's the common person that makes up the hum of human civilization. Like the Dandelion, commonality in humans isn't terribly cherished by us and without that connection to purpose, or means of being exceptional, many people lead unfulfilled and unconnected lives and search for distractions to fill up that space; sports, movies, drugs, religion, etc.
Last weekend I was reminded of the diminishing colonizing effects of the dominant culture on other cultures, which lead to thinking about the colonizing effects of a dominant American culture on other world cultures, from which we benefit largely without being aware of how it affects those societies, and then on to how degrading human culture is on the cultures of other species; plant, animal and mineral...... Once I fell into that rabbit hole, it just got deeper and deeper. Having glimpsed these patterns, I can never go back to thinking about Life in the same unconscious way that I did before. The next thought was "Well, what do I do about it all? What great and grandiose actions do I take to change this downward spiral humanity is in?" I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.
There are great people whose speeches and actions have made great changes in the world. But change on a much larger scale could happen if the common people, the working classes, the majority of people, became more conscious about the effects they have on life around them. Small efforts to be inclusive and connected could lead to huge shifts in human consciousness and our effects on each other and the other living beings on this planet. Society's attitudes at large underlie much of what's wrong with the world. While it's easy to create scapegoats to blame, and they may have deserve that blame; often these are just symptoms of what's wrong on a more pervasive level in society at large to varying degrees.
I'm wondering what in my life can I set on fire? And then what would it take to jump over it? Who will jump with me?