How do you create an instant sense of escape of feeling better right now? No better way than to pay attention to the local greenery.

Did you know you have a miniature rescue team right at hand? For those days when you feel low, when you feel lost or a little like no one truly understands you, go to the nearest living plant.

It may be the tree outside your door, the shrubs or bushes as you walk up the path, the local park or some lovely, inexpensive house plants but whatever form the natural world takes, you must take it in. Consciously spend some time with the fragrance, sight and feeling of these beautiful cohabitants of planet earth.

These lifeforms have been here in many cases much longer than we have. If you open yourself to the possibility they may be, as the Native Americans have always known, our grandparents, you may be surprised at the results.

A few minutes spent in quiet and clear contemplation of our garden neighbours will yield acres of inner peace, repose, and calm.

We are meant to live together on this earth. That doesn't mean ignoring, refusing to pay attention to, being too busy in our minds ( those slave driving machines of inner oppression)to notice our surroundings. Living together means being in communion with those other life forms. In doing this you will be rewarded with an instant sense of belonging, however slight. Like most experiences, you will become more familiar and more aware of subtle differences the more you practice. Take time every day to sense, feel, touch and really look at the green life around you.

It is also useful to contemplate in this way: the very life which rises in the stalks and cells of these friends is the same life that unfolds in you. You and the plant life you contemplate are not so different. The plant has definite seasons, whether in bloom or in hibernation. So too, you have cycles and times when you feel full of life and times when you feel ready to crawl into a snug dark place for awhile.

Why not? Why not use the model of plants to help you over some of the difficulties of life. Our western model of living includes unconscious understandings that we are to always be "On", that something is wrong with us if we need and want to take time out.

Like our plant friends, we too need to have down time, time when we do not want to be in the outer world, or involved in activity. We too need time to be quiet and somewhat withdrawn.

Then, like our beautiful plant friends, we too blom with the next cycle of joy and interest in our world. Refreshed, regenerated and ready to greet what sunshine or rain befalls us, we have the strength of our inner time to hold us steady.

Reach out and touch a plant, today.