how to love the wind
nature's law > human law
I live in Southern California. Today, we are experiencing an “unusually strong” wind storm. We have been told to expect power outages and for tree branches to come down.
As a mother (and lover of trees!), this wild, forceful wind has my respect.
As a member of my local community I am staying alert and visualizing safety for everyone, especially first responders, school teachers, fire fighters, etc.
As my true, wild-creature-self, experiencing these chaotic, powerful gusts of air is exhilarating.
Even if the power goes out before I get this message sent out, even if my favorite trees lose branches, even if I have to fight the school-zone traffic if my kid gets out of school early, I truly am energized by this wind.
This wind shows me, that however cocky humans are, however much “tech” we develop - nature’s laws (gravity, polarity, etc.) still override human law (real estate, stock market, etc).
I’ve written about natural law vs. human law on Substack before…
… and today I feel the need to talk about it some more.
Yesterday someone sent me this weather warning about the today’s windstorm.
Because I understand both human law and nature’s laws I prepared on two levels.
The first level was to make sure we had water, batteries, candles and food we can prepare even if we don’t have power, etc. I considered what a night without power would be like for my family and pulled together some lanterns and relaxing activities (games, reading, SoulCollage®) to help the strange weather feel cozy and unusual rather than as a loss. I also deep, slow watered my trees and put away anything in the garden that could become a projectile of any kind by the wind. These preparations were to keep us safe according to human law.
The second level of preparation included a fortification of the magical protections I maintain in partnership with the actual land I live on. I meditated, I did a little magic, I fortified the energetic boundaries of this little piece of land, I called to my guides for protection and I pulled cards to see how I can best show up - even in the middle of a “destructive windstorm”. I also spent some time outside this morning in the wind, feeling at-one with its power and being in awe of it. These preparations were to keep me in sync with nature’s laws.
BOTH types of preparation are important. The Over-Culture will only suggest the first type, but I would argue the second type is equally essential to our well-being.
This is how we learn to love the wind.
I think part of what excites me about this wind is that it shows us once again, nature is BIGGER and MORE SENTIENT than mankind supposes. Even air, which is invisible, can overpower and take down our internet, our electricity, our structures.
Humanity has this upside-down view of things. We believe ourselves to be on top of the power pyramid and all nature sits under us. And though, in the Anthropocene, the way corporations plunder the earth for resources might make us think nature is under our thumb; windstorms, and other extreme weather, are a great reminder that earth could shake us off her surface and still keep going just fine. Even if humanity creates so much climate change that we ruin our chances to keep living on this beautiful blue-green planet, the planet (and certainly the universe) will continue to exist - and other species (who knows which types?) will naturally get their turn.
There’s a paradoxical increase in magical power when we align ourselves with nature and her laws. It is paradoxical because in order to access the power of this natural alliance, we have to accept we are small and nature is immense; while also staying open to an increase in our empowerment by virtue of our magical connection to nature. We need to see our true size (small) in order to connect with nature properly, and then when we do connect we need to allow the container of our being to expand in order to properly direct the natural powers we receive.
It’s a heady balance, but if we can maintain it, wonderful magic happens.
And that is what I want for all of us. That we know how to depend on and abide by human laws, but also that we know how to depend on and wield power in the context of nature’s laws.
Because (as I often say) humans are mammals, and a mammal IS an animal and an animal IS a part of nature. So to be in sync with nature’s laws should be (and can be!) the most normal, natural thing for us.
If you’d like to get a feel for some elevated natural law, do check out The January Free Page - where, when I set it up about a week ago, I was unintentionally psychic in picking meditations to share that align us with the kinds of power that are more-than-human.
Until next time,
Jess
p.s. Here’s a 50+ foot tree that lives on my street, this video barely does justice to show how tall it is. I included this tree’s wellbeing (as well as the wellbeing of all of its inhabitants) in my magical practices. So far, so good…
“We need an opposing wind to fly. It’s the hardship that catalyzes our awakening.”
- Joanna Macy
“The powers that momentarily have gained ascendance in our culture know how to manipulate our fears very well. They know how to try to turn us against each other. So a big challenge is to not buy into that, and to be able to look at each other with trust, saying, “Here is a brother or sister, brought by the intelligence of Earth, to be alive at this moment, then this person can also deep within them have a care that life can go on.”
So there you have something in common right away. Instead of contempt and judgment of them, and we practiced this recently in our work…moving that contempt into curiosity, which is very helpful.
We’ve got to use our wits, and by grace re-knit and find our way into some solidarity with one another.”
- Joanna Macy
ON EARTH
The body contemplates purpose.
Meanwhile, the spirit takes a nap.
The body considers word choices and life paths
while the spirit yawns in the sun.
From its corner, the body pouts and insists
the years must be accounted for.
In its palm, time is a gap
that’s closing,
but the spirit throws its head
to the wind without hurry.
It has looked out at time’s expanse.
It already knows it’s infinite.
- Lora Mathis
"Take time to stop and smell the flowers," says an old homily. Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD and lived to age 102, had a different approach. "Take the time to stop and be the flowers," he said.
That's my advice to you. Don't just set aside a few stolen moments to sniff the snapdragons, taste the rain, chase the wind, watch the hummingbirds, and listen to a friend.
Use your imagination to actually be the snapdragons and rain and wind and hummingbirds and friend. Don't just behold the Other; become the Other.”
To Give This a Name, Astonishing
Since the weather is mine, or the window
even the separation from the weather,
it is my body, only my body, that knows
this weather. Whatever shapes those crystals
fit, edges connect, they coalesce, fall,
agglomerate, and change in fragile patterns,
original, infinite as the continuum, whatever.
I see the veil of illusions, the momentum
into which I may thrust my arm, hand, fingers,
to feel from the couplers and nerve endings
my heart glowing out from me, crushing their
geometric inventions, the silent click of crystals
fracturing. At this moment thinking that the shapes
of starfish, along a similar lattice, reflect another
pattern of angles crossing and recrossing within
the magnet of an invisible circle. The weather
fills my lungs, is allowed by the multiple corporation
of my interlocking cells to conjoin within the oceans
and abysses of this fabulous puzzle and I become
the weather as it becomes me, as water, the enabler,
mirage of pattern, illusion of vapor, snowfall,
even the window, all fractals become conjured out of chaos.
- Ruth Stone
I. HOW TO LOVE THE WIND
Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.
Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind. This summarizes this author’s nonmeek attitude to randomness and uncertainty.
We don’t want to just survive uncertainty, to just about make it. We want to survive uncertainty and, in addition – like a certain class of aggressive Roman Stoics – have the last word. The mission is how to domesticate, even dominate, even conquer, the unseen, the opaque, the inexplicable.
How?
II. THE ANTIFRAGILE
Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile.
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance… even our own existence as a species on this planet. And antifragility determines the boundary between what is living and organic (or complex), say, the human body, and what is inert, say, a physical object like the stapler on your desk.
The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means – crucially – a love of errors, a certain class of errors. Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them – and do them well. Let me be more aggressive, we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile that extremely smart and fragile, any time.”
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
“Everything is energy vibrating in a pattern. The pattern, or combination of patterns, determines how the energy manifests itself, whether as wind or a bird or a human. It would seem logical, then, that the most basic patterns would be resonating with the most basic energies.”
- Serge Kahili King, Ph.D.
I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:
In every corner, wildflowers bloom.
In the front garden, trees
Offer their branches for drying clothes;
Where I eat, a wine glass can float
In the springwater’s chill.
From the portico, a hidden path
Leads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose
From among the heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat…
Every place the wind carries me is home.
—Yu Xuanji
Hi All! In case anyone is checking back here to see how we fared in the L.A. wind-fire-storms, we are fine. Lots to help out with our community, but we (and our home) are fine. xoxo Jess
Whenever I need to banish my old ways of being and bring new energy into a situation, I do a little house cleanse. I do this by opening all the doors and windows and turning on all the fans and vents to change out the air and energy in my home. Windy days, even tho they are not my favorite, are great days to do this simple yet effective house cleanse. And after reading this, I now revere the wind and its magic. Thank you Jessica for turning me on to this super power!