For several years, I’d been living in
the wine country of northern California — and
I grew tired of whining. One day I made the
conscious decision to segue from sour grapes
to sweet, luscious blackberries. This is how
blackberry love begins…
I was tent-surfing in my friend
Dorisse’s backyard — on my way to becoming a
galactic citizen, I don’t have a "permanent"
residence these days — and one evening she
suggested we take a walk at sunset. Outside
her country home, Dorisse exclaimed, "I’ve
just got to stop and pick some of these
delicious blackberries." Until she said that,
I hadn’t noticed that there were blackberry
bushes all around us. Dorisse told me the
iridologist Bernard Jensen calls blackberries
"one of nature’s most perfect foods for
healing," and suggested that if I wanted to
enhance my own well-being, I take advantage of
this gift while staying with her.
I was amazed. Here I was surrounded by a
potential source of nourishment, nectar of the
Gods, readily available, delectable and free,
and I hadn’t even seen the bushes dripping
with ripe blackberries until my friend pointed
out what was right in front of me. It reminded
me of the quote from
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "It is only with the heart that one
can see rightly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye." I wondered how many
times potential partners or friends might be
right there in front of us, yet invisible,
until someone points them out to us. "Oh,
here’s a blackberry, and it’s ripe."
So I began to pick blackberries, and to
walk the path of wise relationship.
Gift #1: Zen and the Art of Blackberry
Picking
We want to look for the berries that are
ripe to be plucked right now. In this
instance, the mantra might be, "learn to
discern". If we go for the berries that are
overripe, they’re going to squish in our
fingers and we’ll have juice all over the
place. If we choose a berry that’s too red,
we’ll have to tug to get it off the vine, and
it’s going to be bitter. An old commercial
playfully vowed, "We will sell no wine before
its time!" Forcing a berry to be yours as it
is clinging steadfastly to the vine will
result in whining. The perfect berry comes to
you with a very slight pluck; tugging isn’t
necessary.
Gift #2: A Grasp That Equals Your Reach
Conventional wisdom says, "Your reach
should exceed your grasp, or what’s a Heaven
for?" That’s poetic, but if we live this way
in terms of relationship, we’ll be forever
hungry, grasping for berries that are always
just slightly out of reach, or not quite ripe.
After picking berries for several days, I
developed a certain dexterity. I became adept
at angling my arm in between the thorns to
find just the berries that were ready right
then, even if they were slightly above my head
or a bit of a stretch from where I was
standing. I began to get the sense of how to
connect with them, and it became this
wonderful dance: "Oh, hello berry bushes!" There
was a grace, an ease, to my berry picking, and
it was fun! Relationships can actually be fun.
Gift #3: Visual Acuity
My resonance, my homing signal for "ripe
blackberries" grew keener by day. Like
anything else, you get better with practice. I
learned to scan ahead as I walked down a row
of bushes. On the way out, I’d pick the ones
that appeared ripe. On the way back, I’d
notice ripe blackberries that I’d missed the
first time. I was enlarging my visual field,
engaging my peripheral vision: "Ah, there’s
someone that Spirit has placed in my path whom
I didn’t notice before, that I ought to
consider." Sometimes the choicest morsels are
a slight stretch outside our comfort zone. By
looking again, we raise our sights to the
highest possibility.
Gift #4: Choose Which Berry You Would
Serve
My friend’s two dogs trotted along
beside me, happily devouring any berries I
tossed their way, ripe or not. There will
always be people who are so hungry that any
blackberry is better than none. They’re
willing to take the bitterness just to have
the taste. However, unripe fruit will only
give you heartburn. Nourishing berries feed
your soul as well as your stomach. Once I
started tasting the sweetest, most perfectly
ripe blackberries that were ready for me, I
couldn’t return to a less discerning method of
selection. There was just no comparison with a
berry that was right for me, right now.
In this same light, it’s most important
to know what kind of berry you are. Are you so
ripe that anyone who comes within range is
going to get drenched in berry juice? Or are
you clinging to the vine so tenaciously that
if somebody wants to pick you, they’re going
to have to tug, and you’re still not going to
come loose? Are you hiding on a branch that’s
so low to the ground, or so high up, that no
one can see you in your ripeness because
you’re invisible to the eye? Or are you ripe,
sweet, available, and ready to be chosen?
I encourage you to know your ripeness
level right now, because that’s going to shift
over time. Then, you can forage for the
blackberries who are ripe to meet with you at
this time, and enjoy the beauty, the elegance,
the joy of the quest. When you find the berry
who’s right for you, there’s going to be a
fruitful recognition. You can savor the
sweetness of this remembering for a long,
delicious time.
