Due to family circumstances, I have had some tough times learning to find my place in the world. However, I have always felt safe in the world of nature, outside, with animals. 

One of my earliest memories is at age six or seven sitting in a meadow in the sunshine, surrounded by Welsh mountains, observing a brown and white cow chewing her cud, feeling very much part of a living, changing scene (though nothing much was happening) as if I, a little child, was somehow essential to the beauty of it; as if my being there provided a focus and a reason – was important, an energy essential to the scene. When I think of that moment, I feel happy and free, secure that I was (am) very much in the world and of it. I feel whole. I see it and experience it like it was yesterday, in vibrant colour, feeling the warmth of the air around me.

It is said that when we are children we remember the sensory qualities of the things we care about. Our senses resonate together – so much so that, in effect, they are a single, marvellous instrument. In fact, our five senses are coordinated under the impulse of our 6^th sense of sensing and feeling energy: the sense of clairsentience. I count it still as one of my rare moments of deep settlement for that time of my life. Just being there. I wanted to understand why nature, other beings and my environment had such an impact on me, and to this day, seem to be essential to my wellbeing. I have always loved all animals and plants, everything that grows. My life’s journey has been about this search for meaning: my place in the world and how to relate to my fellow human beings.

In 2011, after much study, trying out various Churches, Buddhism, and alternative therapies, I was encouraged to read a book , “The Way It Is” by Serge Benhayon, and some of my experiences gathered on my journey started to make sense and to fit together. I attended some of Serge’s presentations. I became more aware of my inner self – my essence – and how I had become separated from it, instead learning to take my cues for living from the outer world, separated from my inner feelings. But I was cautious. Nothing I had tried previously had helped me re-discover the sense of being in and of the world, essential to it, being held and part of the whole.

In 2014, I was introduced to gardening when I met a lovely lady who asked me to come and help her on her large allotment. It was fun working together, and we soon got some produce going – there was a fantastic poly tunnel and a lovely pond (if we could but see it for the plants that made their home there!).

As I worked, I noticed how the insects were drawn to the ‘other’ plants on the allotment, the weeds: nettles, dandelions and the wild flowers, as well as to our herbs and cabbages and carrots, runner beans – they didn’t discriminate! I gradually recognised how the ‘whole’ was working together. One late night we sat by the pond watching the sun go down, and the moon and stars come out. It was a beautiful experience, and even then, the insects were busy. Have you noticed, bees don’t have any ‘time off ’? They just keep going until they die, serving their world, the hive and us in so many different ways that we are only now becoming aware of, now that we are losing them and the abundance they bring us all. 

There was something else, too. Our observations made us aware that there were other things at work, more than we can see with our eyes, something bigger. Just as we can’t see our seedlings developing under ground, we still know it is happening. We feel it, like we feel the sap rising to the pull of the moon and the planets as they move across the constellations of the stars. We live in their cycles.

I realised through Serge Benhayon’s teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, and my attention to my inner world, that I was re-discovering stillness – the quality of experience I had out in nature when I was a child. Through observing the wildlife and feeling how to work sensitively with the plants and accepting the whole of what we had to work with, including imperfections (what are commonly know as weeds), my awareness and sensitivity were increasing.

In the garden, we decided then to foster the harmony of the ‘whole’, to never use any chemicals that might kill some of the beneficial insects and plants that make the whole patchwork in its unique and exquisite way. Not discriminating, we kept some wild areas and we learnt to love our nettles and brambles because we noticed that the butterflies liked to lay their eggs on the leaves, and how the bees loved the flowers. In early spring, the bright yellow flowers of the dandelion provide the only food for the bees. We grew some wild flowers and herbs. Our awareness fostered a responsibility for caring, to be true and honest about the way we worked in this space, honouring all its parts and understanding our purpose there. We worked with love in our hearts, feeling our connection with ‘the all’. Feeling into what was needed and when, to the best of our ability.

Whenever I worked in the garden, I had a feeling of spaciousness under a big, open sky, as I tended the brown crumbly earth and its inhabitants. I became more aware of the lengthening of the days in March when spring was arriving, and their shortening in September/October when autumn started showing its true colours: the velvety brown-black leaves as they are due to fall, the astonishingly bright yellows and oranges, and various shades of green that have already captured and carpeted the ground. As the hedges, once neatly trimmed, began their growing season in March/April, we were advised not to cut them again until September when the birds had finished nesting and most had flown. March was the time when our water supply to each allotment was turned back on for us to use, because now there was little likelihood of the pipes freezing.

And so these practicalities, these movements, fine-tuned our senses as we relished and appreciated the subtle changes each day presented to us, and we responded to what was needed to be in harmony with the garden’s being-ness and its needs. Year after year, this cycle reassuringly repeated. I found I could look at a plant and know what it needed: whether it be feed, water or to be moved to a different spot. My clairsentience was developing. I felt the pull of the moon and stars on the young plants I had set and on the seedlings underground and I felt joy in my body.

I noticed more things about the sky now, and how I often felt tired and needing to rest more the week before the moon’s appearance in its fullness. I was appreciating the wonder of the space above us and how the constellations impulse the seasonal cycles, and how much better I felt if I followed the impulse to rest when needed and to move when needed, too.

As I re-discovered more truths about life and living through studying the Ageless Wisdom, I came to understand and appreciate deeply the Magic of God. That God speaks to us in the small details we could easily miss as we go about our daily lives, such as the whisper of the leaves as a warm breeze catches them just as I am walking by, that the beauty of nature is there to reflect to us how we can live in a way that is loving and healing for ourselves and for the other human beings on this planet, our brothers and sisters.

There is nothing new to learn, we already are everything we need to be. We have been distracted and we have lost touch with our purpose, and nature helps us by confirming what we already know. We all are evolving back to who we truly are in our magnificence, where we can truly enjoy the ‘beingness’ of all our six senses guiding our movements and can choose to listen to the cycles in which we are embedded and which nurture our body and our Be-ing.

So much of my childhood memory is back living within me today, and as such is deeply appreciated and cherished.

By Christina Mehew, Nottingham

Further Reading:
The Magic of God in Nature
Nature: The Ultimate Reflection
All of nature is here to support us to return to who we truly are