Essence Presence through Changing Seasons

Essence Presence through Changing Seasons

I want to share with you some unforgettable, vivid memories of childhood that have helped shape my understanding of essence presence. The residue from these memories has fed, informed, and guided my mystical path as an adult. These experiences not only influenced my understanding in my youth, but also evoke presence when I “re-collect” them now – in the present. I felt at the time, the unmistakable magical touch of something higher —presence— even though I did not know about the idea of “self-re-membering.” Something inside me knew they were special, and I think that most of us have examples of these pearls from more innocent times.

Spring Snippets

· Crunching and stomping through the brittle ice with my boot that covered the puddles before winter gave way to spring.

· Floating plastic boats down an ephemeral stream that annually appeared at the bottom of our driveway from the melting snow after the long, snowy winter. Watching the colorful little boats in the warm sunshine shoot the rapids and disappear down into the hollow.

· Building stilts from wood scraps and walking around the yard two feet taller.

Summer Smidgeons

· Picking blueberries in the Northwoods and running home to bake fresh blueberry muffins.

· Gathering two huge eggs each morning from “Wibble” and “Wobble” – the two yellow ducks that arrived in a cardboard box as chicks for Easter. Most of the time the eggs were laid in the indentation made from little kids feet under the swings or in the basement window wells. The eggs were so large that, in my blueberry muffin recipe, I could use one big duck egg when the recipe called for two eggs and many were double yolks.

· Lamenting my mid-summer birthday because I could not have a party at school with my class like most kids whose birthdays occurred during the school year.

Fall Fragments

· Finding a cache of closed pinecones that squirrels had stashed and collecting them in bushel baskets to sell to the forestry department for planting trees.

· Playing hide and seek just before the Autumn harvest in the towering corn field next to my family’s home.

· Enjoying the huge bonfire built on the pitcher’s mound of the neighborhood baseball field on Halloween and roasting hotdogs and marshmallows on sticks before climbing in the back of the assembled convoy of pickup trucks to take us around trick-or-treating.

Winter Wisps

· Skating on the pond at recess with classmates near my one-room schoolhouse in rural America.

· Getting dressed for playing in the snow and feeling my mother push the cuff of my mittens under the sleeve of my fuzzy red coat, tuck my hair neatly inside my stocking hat, zip me up, pull the wrinkles of my pants down underneath my snow pants to make the layers of clothing more comfortable, and finally, vigorously forcing my boots over many layers of socks.

· Cutting pine boughs, bundling them together with binder twine to sell to the forestry department for making holiday wreathes; thereby, earning money for giving gifts.

Just by recalling these things from my past, I can still hear the crackle of ice in the spring and witness the beginning of growth; taste the blueberries ripening in the summer sun; smell the bonfires and envision the pinecones of Autumn – surely a resemblance of our own pineal gland (Third Eye) which turns toward hibernation as we tilt away from the sun; and feel the winter's biting cold on our face, soon after warmed by the touch of our mother’s hands.

This example of one year through four seasons is a sequence of time within which I retained elevated memories that created moments outside of time. See if you can recall similar moments in your own life. If I keep essence alive, I can increase these essence experiences with my presence and attention—essence aware of itself—and arrive at the realization that they are higher moments. This act of participation with our inner child educates essence and brings us more in harmony with Higher Centers – where essence transcends itself into Presence.

What is Presence but essence aware of itself? A simple, gentle child. — The Teacher

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Maria Frederike van Reed Athlone at Seven, Jean Étienne Liotard