“How would my own thoughts and ideals have played a role in helping to create this situation?”

For a long time, I thought that my attitudes, beliefs, and feelings had nothing to do with what is going on around me. I might have had a little influence on my immediate family – not all the time, as it seemed. It didn’t even occur to me that my thoughts about my relatives, neighbors, friends, co-workers, environment, and things in general could alter a course of history, prevent wars and epidemics, and even result in a climate change.

Watching TV, listening to radio, reading articles, and discussing various initiatives with my family and friends inspired me to take action and make my own contributions towards a better world. I started a small backyard garden, made a decision to buy mostly organic and sustainably produced items, joined several environmentally focused organizations, and eventually came to the conclusion that designing a sustainable homestead “from scratch” would be more efficient and less expensive than converting individual features of an already existing household. An idea of an online community where each of us could share our environmentally friendly designs came to mind, and in 2019 an online platform Your Green Homestead was launched.

From the beginning, I considered Spirituality, Creative Forces, Connected Universe, Higher Power, Supreme Architect of the Universe, Intelligent Design – or God – as an integral part of a sustainable household. If I want to be in sync with Nature and solve our environmental problems, it makes sense for me to learn what is behind our manifestations on the Earth and how we could design our way of living in accordance with these principles.

The famous reading by Edgar Cayce, “He who understands nature walks close with God” (1904-2) has been guiding my explorations of various spiritual teachings and gradually changing my views on our everyday life. In Nature, everything is connected and functions as one whole. Some forces may appear to be in competition with each other, yet they end up cooperating and giving way to the most beneficial and effective outcome. A seemingly insignificant flip of wings by a little butterfly creates a chain reaction that is often called a “butterfly effect.” Similarly, every action of each of us has the same powerful “butterfly effect” on the whole even if we consciously don’t recognize it.

Getting in touch with the spiritual meaning of everything is often blocked by our own belief system, especially by the assumptions that we “inherited” from our parents/ancestors and stored in our vast unconscious and/or subconscious minds (they are also part of one whole). Everything that we see and experience manifests according to the combination of our conscious and unconscious thoughts and ideals that have been active and not always clearly recognized or appreciated. The recognition that our hidden ideals have played a role in creating the circumstances that we perceive as problematic is the first step in the process of transforming these conditions into opportunities for their correlating and cooperating. Asking a question such as “How would my own thoughts and ideals have played a role in helping to create this situation?” is directing the spotlight of our conscious attention to an appropriate answer within the vast “floodlight” of our enormous collection of subconscious and unconscious beliefs – like the underwater part of an iceberg.

For me personally, it took several years of practice to quiet my chatty “monkey mind” via meditation, yoga, and mindfulness exercises. Sometimes I pose a question before a meditation or a walk in nature, and an answer appears “from the thin air” in front of me. Ideas start to flow and many times continue their development in my dreams.

A few years ago, I joined a local study group A Search For God (ASFG) offered by the Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) – they are also available online (please feel free to check them on the A.R.E. website). In addition to going through ASFG readings, experiments, and group meditation, we are also encouraged to share our dreams and help each other interpret them. I started recording them in my journal, as Edgar Cayce recommended, and noticed that I am remembering them almost every morning now, unlike in the beginning when I could remember only a few dreams sporadically. After seeing mostly strange dream images for many years, I recently started also hearing the conversations between the dream figures that “incidentally” direct me to exploring particular topics or paying attention to certain people that help me in the exploration of my hidden (unconscious) ideals and agendas.

As I mentioned in the post The Greenhouse Effect from The Magic of Findhorn, in 2020 a few of the members of Your Green Homestead organized a Permaculture and Spirituality group to discuss foundational spiritual topics for designing a sustainable way of living. We have been amazed about multiple synchronicities that started appearing on a regular basis. On the same week, different teachings that we were exploring would cover the same theme or topic and complement the descriptions in one of the sources with examples and experiments in another book that we were reading – notably, The Power of Unconditional Love by Ken Keyes, Infinite Self by Stuart Wilde, Ringing Cedars Series by Vladimir Megre, Edgar Cayce on Channeling Your Higher Self by Henry Reed, Why Is This Happening to Me… Again?! By Dr. Michael Ryce (based on A Course In Miracles) and a few others.

It was not a big surprise for us when the Mid-South A.R.E. Area Team posted on Your Green Homestead its Summer Workshop The Consciousness of Christ: Edgar Cayce and A Course in Miracles featuring Tom Baker, M.Div., L.C.S.W. that will take place via zoom online on Friday, June 11, 2021 (7-9pm CDT Social) and Saturday, June 12, 2021 (9:30am – 4:30pm CDT Tom Baker Webinar). Please feel free to use this opportunity to register and attend this remarkable webinar!

Another synchronicity developed with several groups in the local Tennessee area actively seeking a possibility of establishing cohousing communities that employ the principles of Intentional Communities letting its members make all the important decisions as a group based on the consensus decision making process. I met some of the leaders of a few of these groups at the gatherings of the Cumberland Green River Bioregional Council (CGRBC), along with a great group of people who deeply care about the environmental issues in our local region and the whole planet. This year’s CGRBC gathering is happening Friday-Sunday, June 4-6, 2021 at the Group Camp 1 of the Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, TN under the theme of “CELEBRATION!” AKA Hip Fest.

It will include traditional fire circle, drums, guitars, hiking in the woods, canoe/kayak safari, meditation, music, and dance featuring our local celebrity Jeff Poppen, “The Barefoot Farmer,” with his music band. Anyone is welcome to attend, including guests from out of state and local non-members. I hope to see you there! By the way, at 2pm on Saturday, June 5, 2021, I will lead a short discussion about The Magic of Findhorn at the CGRBC Hip Fest, just before the fun afternoon activities (either one-day or multi-day participation is encouraged).

A sustainable farming-focused group in Tennessee and Virginia has just launched the first ever Rogue Food Conference that will take place June 4-5, 2021 at Flat Rock Farms in Lewisburg, Tennessee and August 13-14, 2021 at Polyface Farms in Virginia. Please review the full description and schedule on Your Green Homestead and use the promo code for a discount registration. When it comes to awesome events like this, I am happy to “take credit” that my positive thinking and ideals have played a role in creating them in our oneness consciousness. It is much harder to take responsibility for creating the environmental problems that we see in the world. I am excited that more and more people are doing the right thing and having an attitude that any kind of work in this world could become the Love in Action (as described in The Magic of Findhorn).