Grounding In the city

Among the earthy-crunchy, barefoot loving, sun gazing, green leaf eating folks like me, the prejudice against city life is strong.
It's harder to feel things in the city if you're attuned to the gentle rhythms of nature, we say.
The mental noise from people and technology everywhere is deafening and mind numbing, we think.
The straight lines and right angles and horns and engines and hustling bustling pace is a life drainer, we feel.
Yet, somehow, I find myself back in LA, again, and several months in, I'm waking up each day with that lightness in my heart that I'm so used to finding on the road. 

I'm sure that it helps that I live on the side of a mountain where I'm quite literally above the busy streets below, and I have fresh air from the trees outside my window, I can see the moon shining on me at night (she's woken me up for the past few nights as she's reached her brightest fullness) and I have a sweet little yard with a hammock in it where I can soak up the sun... but still, I wouldn't have thought I'd acclimate this well so deep in the concrete and asphalt world.

Maybe this prejudice comes from the way that endlessly seeing serious faces and flat walls isn't what we humans evolved doing. We walked with our bare feet on the earth, clean oxygen in our lungs, and few enough people, usually, that the numb "don't-talk-to-me" expressions so common and needed in cities full of people potentially using each other to climb upward are unfamiliar and uncomfortable to us. 

That is certainly how I've felt sometimes, visiting cities. Even this one that calls me back time after time can get a little wearing on the spirit if I forget to attune my senses to the nature that is still all around, just under the tech, always growing green and sweet and tender through cracks in the concrete, buckling sidewalks as tree roots expand in the earth below.
Sensitive tendrils curl around pillars and wind their way up walls. 
Rose gardens lovingly tended in yards all over the city give places of solace and shelter for pollinators and other lovely little cousins keeping our world going, under our human radar.
Nature is actually thriving here. I never noticed it until I started to look.
Now, when I pass a particularly epic tree (there are so many in LA - does this surprise you?) I make sure to create a map pin for it in my phone to return to later and one of these days, I'll start sharing them with you.

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A truth I've found repeatedly is that what you look for, you'll find. That goes either way, and it's a much studied function of the human mind that not only can we set our senses to confirm that which we already think is happening, but that we can actually create things in our outer world by repeatedly affirming them to ourselves.

We know how positive attention affects children. 
When we talk to our houseplants with loving affection, they thrive, even sometimes defying logic in how lush and green they grow. 
Research about the effects that positive intentions have on water (by Dr. Emoto) has become more and more commonly discussed over recent decades.
Of course, our pets are happier and healthier when we give them love.

So... what about the world in general? 
It is a living place. Of course, the consciousness of reality in general isn't identical to human consciousness. That would be like saying a skin cell on your arm has the same thinking potential as all the combined higher order functions of your brain, nervous system, and the complex signals brought from all the parts of your body. Yet, a skin cell does have consciousness. The cells that make up our body and move along our internal highways (veins and arteries) have entire life stories, dramas, rest and work periods, and probably a bunch of other things we don't even realize. They are still less complex than all of us put together, though. We can feel when they need something (a tiny paper cut, for instance, can take up ALL our attention for awhile) but they don't necessarily understand the complexity that we are as a whole person.

That's how the world is alive around us. We are each parts of it. We move through it with our own little stories and dramas, interacting with other parts, surviving and thriving as best we can with the understanding we have from our limited viewpoints. Potentially unaware of the big picture. Maybe it's not even realistic to expect to be able to fathom what's happening out there.

It stands to reason that the world around us is yes, huge, yes, complex, but also infinitely sensitive. Each blade of grass and curve of clover has its own sensory reality that also contributes to the whole. 

So what if we began to talk to the world around us, even silently in the privacy of our thoughts, in the same loving, encouraging way that we talk to our houseplants? Our pets? Our children? 
It's worth a try. 

(I know every time I remember to make a point and do it throughout the day, straight up miracles start coming in within a week or two...)

It may take time to create this habit, but it certainly won't hurt and it really could help. 

Regarding being in the city, I'm currently experimenting what happens when I beam Reiki energy all around me, sending it into the ground and the skies, listening to the city hum and talk as if it were an entity allowing me to travel with it.
Very interesting things are happening as a result. 

For instance, as the weather warmed up the sweet grass and clover started to decorate the formerly sparse white rocks beneath my hammock. 
(Yes, they're quartz, and yes, I've been charging them up with intention. The first time I did this I felt the heaviness that has been dropped into them from so much pain in the people and places around here... but for every unconscious pain dumping moment, a bit of deliberate compassion, clearing, and intention made to sustain life, protection, health and inspiration carries lots more power - it's the intentional aspect...)
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When it comes to Nature, she moves slower because she's so much bigger. We live in a world that is changing and sometimes scary. Problems like pollution, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters can feel so huge.

We forget that the world can hear us. Can feel us. Responds to our pain and our love.
Why not, if we're one of the lucky ones who are safe and fed and warm and sheltered today, why not beam some love in to bolster and support wherever needed?

Just a thought. 
If you try it, make a note of when you began and what happens. Watch for miracles. Celebrate the tiny ones. They'll grow into much bigger blessings.