Five things I do to raise my vibe

There is a game going around the internet started by somebody blogging at OptimistLab.  The rules for this tagging game can be found there, or at  Tammy Vitale, who tagged me.  I have spent most of today meditating on the question.  My meditation was complicated by having read the rules of the game, which talked a lot about links and coming back and leaving comments with links, and I don’t know if I can properly accomplish all that.  Frankly, all this technical linking and backtracking and feed stuff about blogging is a total mystery to me.   I feel lucky that I was so well-trained by Archie in uploading photographs that it has become relatively easy for me.

Once I decided I would try to play this game, I spent a lot of time cogitating about how to answer this question as I went about my work today. 

The first and best thing I do to raise my vibe to a higher state is to walk my labyrinth.  It is a wonderful spiritual and meditative practice, and I feel quite fortunate to have a labyrinth on the place.  There is a lot of work involved in having one of these, and today was a good day to get some work done out there.  While Jim and Jesse were busy cleaning up from the fence demolition which preceeded the fence mending they have been doing this week, I headed out into the labyrinth to give the inner circle of stones a badly needed trim.

I gathered up the requisite tools (dandelion root weeder, pruning shears and singing shears), put on some gloves, went out there and started in clipping back the grass that has grown up to hide the wonderful rocks I have distributed there.   While I was working I disturbed a wolf spider as she was crouching in her home under one of the rocks.   She had no babies riding on her back, so I guess they were all off on their own, learning to hunt and survive elsewhere in the labyrinth.  

I also came across a young praying mantis.   She was hunting in a clump of grass, and scurried over to a plantain leaf after I clipped away her hiding place, squatting there staring over her shoulder at me accusingly.  I called for Jim, and he came over and gave her her due in admiration.   She rushed precipitously off to another plantain leaf when he showed up.   I think two giants cooing over her caused her to lose her composure, but we do appreciate our predators.

Anyway, after an appropriate period of admiration, Jim went back to his job of pulling nails out of old oak fence posts, and I continued my task in the inner circle.  As I go around the whole collection, I greet each rock as I come to it.   I spend a certain amount of time recalling where each rock is from and how I acquired it.

This process brings me to the second thing I do to raise my vibe:   I count my blessings.   There is nothing more likely to get me started doing that than the process of greeting my rocks.   I did pick up a lot of them myself, but many of them from far away came to me as gifts.   Going around the inner circle reminds me of how blessed I am with friendly strangers, loving friends and clients.  That always reminds me of how wonderful it is that I am able to earn my living doing my right work, and how fortunate I am to live in the midst of such beauty.  

I love to walk around my yard barefoot and admire all the beauty I have worked so hard to surround us with, and that, of course, is the third way I raise my vibe.   I make sure to smell the lilies and the roses, to look deep into the veins that run to the center of the balloon flowers.

These are probably one of my favorite flowers.   I love the way the little hot air balloons that are their buds split open to reveal this intricate pattern.  

The fourth way I raise my vibe was another thing we did today.   We had a beautiful bonfire.   All that oak that Jim and Jesse were cleaning up, plus the cedar ends and scraps from building the sauna, sauna dressing room, garden fence and table grape arbor needed to be disposed of.  As I was working out in the labyrinth, I heard Jim and Jesse building the bonfire.   When it was ready to light, Jim called me over to help start the fire.  I rested my clipper hands for a while as it caught, enjoying a beer and some desultory conversation with the guys.   Then I went off back to the trimming and weeding while they fed the fire.   Even out in the labyrinth I could hear the green branches from the forsythia and the bush honeysuckle I trimmed out from around the pond yesterday crackle as they were added to the fire.

It was a good thing that we started the fire early, because shortly after it caught well the heavy overcast that had kept the air so nicely cool all morning finally gathered itself together and we started getting sprinkled on.  I continued to work in the light rain, finally finishing the trimming just as thunder and lightning ushered in a heavier rain.   I got all the weeds and grass clippings raked up and loaded into the wheelbarrow just as the rain increased to a downpour.   We left the fire to its own devices, and went inside to eat our dinner.

Which, of course, is the fifth way I raise my vibe.   I eat wonderful home-cooked food, much of which comes from our very own organic garden.   Today we had braised short ribs, which were accompanied by carrots and onions picked right out of the garden shortly before they were thrown in the pot to cook.  I am ashamed to relate that the potatoes did not come off the place, but that did not keep them from tasting fantastic with the thick rich gravy that Jim made from the drippings off the ribs.  I picked the purple hyacinth beans this afternoon, and they were alongside the shortribs, perfectly steamed.  I must not forget to add that there was fresh home made bread to go with it, which I made today in between the labyrinth trim-job.  We accompanied our repast with a bottle of the young wine we bottled a couple of weeks ago.  It is aging nicely, although none of it will survive to any old age.   There just isn’t that much of it.

After dinner, the rain had stopped.   The clouds were still heavy and wet, but the full moon was shining through them and the thunder had stopped.   I decided to reward all my labors of the day by walking the labyrinth to celebrate the full moon.   My travel into the center was magical.  Once there I meditated with the crystal that lives in the center, and then I walked back out.

And those are the five things I do that raise my vibe.

Now I tag Archie, Charlotte, Kate, Carol, and Mandarine.