May: The Dream of the Planet

May: The Dream of the Planet


Have you ever read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz?  It’s a book that Rich and I both find ourselves pulling from the bookshelf periodically for a mental refresher.  In the first chapter Ruiz discusses the “dream of the planet”.  His interpretation of life is that we are constantly dreaming: linearly when we are awake and nonlinearly when asleep.  He describes reality as a collective dream of the planet which is full of agreements that we all understand.  As children, we learn these agreements through our authority figures: parents, media, teachers.  Some of these agreements include what is good and bad, how to behave, what is beautiful versus ugly, etc.  In a way we are domesticated by this guidance and it dictates the way we live our lives and the way we judge the parts that ourselves and others play in the world.

Throughout the rest of the book Ruiz discusses four ‘agreements’ worth keeping which can help you to live within your own reality.  Rereading this book last week, I realized that I stepped into a new paradigm when we took the leap to start our own farm.  BUT just recently I feel like I embraced a new and improved paradigm…one where I realized that we DO make each day up as we go along and are in control of making it what we want it to be.  All of the sudden I felt a bit of that magic that May and Jack seem to carry in themselves all the time…like Alice stepping through the door into Wonderland.  Rather than allowing the glorified checklist checker mentality to guide my day, I have been intuiting my way through the day, breaking exactly when it feels right…closing my eyes and sitting in the spring sunshine with the kiddos while they dive into new worlds in the sandbox under the curly willow tree, stopping for a few idle minutes with Rich instead of maximizing my time and running to get more done as soon as the little lad is down for a nap.  And most importantly, on those days when something unfortunate is dumped in your lap, let go of your list…deal with it and then give yourself a rest before picking it back up.  And somehow within this paradigm, I’m more productive and the farm is well and the kids seem calmer too.

All of this is to say…I am glad to have my rose-colored glasses on this May…the month that the farm is really unleashed and alive.  I hope that you all feel rejuvenated by spring’s things: warmth, sunshine, lush green, the smell of flowers, bobbing robins.