Embark on a journey of self-discovery and connection with nature as Meilin Ehlke delves into the profound beauty of observing stars, sunsets, and the cosmic wonders of the night sky, while exploring the impact of architecture, artistic creativity, and the transformative power of embracing natural elements. Enjoy...
Meilin Ehlke reflects on the profound connection between nature, architectural well-being, and artistic creativity, emphasizing the transformative power of embracing natural elements and artistic exploration for personal growth and connection on the Moving to Oneness podcast.
Three key takeaways from the episode:
1. Embrace Nature's Beauty: Meilin highlighted the joy of observing the night sky, sunsets, and the changing moon, emphasizing the importance of connecting with natural elements for personal growth and well-being.
2. Honor Your Rhythms: Recognize the differences in energy between mornings and evenings, using each time of day to engage in rituals that nourish your mind, body, and spirit.
3. Cultivate Creativity: Whether through writing, sketching, painting, or contemplation, Meilin encouraged listeners to explore their artistic side and appreciate the transformative power of creative expression.
One poignant quote from the episode captures Meilin's reflections on the calmness of mornings and the cosmic energy of evenings: "It's the calmness of a start of a day where at night is this calmness of having achieved something, even though we are not under pressure to achieve, but to reflect on what I have done or someone else." This sentiment beautifully encapsulates the essence of finding balance and connection through nature and creativity.
Meilin Ehlke's episode on architecture and landscape serves as a reminder of the profound impact that our surroundings have on our well-being and personal growth. By embracing nature, honoring our rhythms, and cultivating creativity, we can deepen our connection to the world around us and find moments of beauty and inspiration in everyday life.
Moving to oneness. Nourishing curiosity. Embracing differences. Becoming one.
00:00:45 - Meilin Ehlke
The summer solstice is a turning point. The days are becoming shorter again, so it puts a little tear in my eye. And the nights, or the night sky is becoming longer once more. It's a beautiful rhythm that we go through every year, and depending of where we are or what kind of person you are, you favor the one over the other. Or even in different situations, you favor the one over the other, even though both are so magical and beautiful.
So, hello, everyone. I am Meilin Ehlke, your host of the Moving to Oneness podcast. Yeah, after the solstice here in Germany, the days really became hot and warm.
00:01:38 - Meilin Ehlke
It reminds me of the days when I lived in Georgia, those hot summers, not so much clothes on. That's what I like, the lightness. Wearing dresses, having all windows and doors open. And even though it's a little hard at the moment to leave all the doors open, because I've got still some wild young cats and I monitor a little bit when they go out and when not until they're a little older.
00:02:06 - Meilin Ehlke
But these warm nights that arise when the days are so hot that our pores sweat, which is a good cleansing, I really love that it sends out everything that is stagnant within your body. Our body. My body. Right? And we can refresh our body with a lot of beautiful water. So choose your water wisely. Maybe you have a spring in the area you can get fresh water from, or you put your water into the sunshine and drink it. Right. And I do hope you use water in glass bottles if you can, if you live somewhere where that is possible. As we're learning more and more about the negative side of plastics in our nutrition, especially if you watched the last episode with Jeff Garner, you may have become more and more aware of this.
00:03:08 - Meilin Ehlke
But what also is so beautiful? The nights are so warm. Also reminding me of my life in Atlanta and in Athens, Georgia, where you could sit outside for a long time and chat and exchange stories. You could go dance. You would wander through the streets. You could go for a long time into the woods right after work still or after college and just to breathe in that fresh air. That felt so good. Yeah, okay. The air conditioning was not such a good thing. Mostly too cold because the men had to wear those jackets often. Yeah. But here in Germany, we have warm nights seldom. So I really enjoy that. And to look into the night sky and see the stars or the change of the moon or the sunset, to go on a hill. I have a hill close by. Where I can go on to and just sit there for hours and watch the sunset.
And recently I was in. In the Netherlands and it is even more west than where I live now. And it's the same time zone. And the sun goes down one hour later. That's such a gift. If it's 11 o' clock and finally dusk arises. Yeah. For me I'm also a night person. I don't know. How are you? I become more creative in the evenings. I need my mornings for myself.
00:04:50 - Meilin Ehlke
Not that I'm tired in the mornings, but. But I like to use them for myself, for me and my body, to take care of my family, of my animals, the birds outside, the plants. Yeah. So, I cherish that calmness. It's a different calmness. It's the calmness of a start of a day where at night is this calmness of having achieved something, even though we are not under pressure to achieve, but to reflect on what I have done or someone else. And maybe you reflect on what you have done, but also then for me I can think broader and further out into the cosmos more. A more long distance, a more deep into the earth. Or maybe I do that thinking about it, talking about it. I do that more in the morning. So you see, I'm more an earthly girl in the morning and a cosmic girl in the evening, and then back and forth throughout the day.
00:05:57 - Meilin Ehlke
And the day often belongs to others if I work to support them. Right. Or be there for others. And so what is it for you? You may have a different rhythm. There are people that are in hospitals. Right. Some of you. Or you have night shifts in the restaurant, business or entertainment. Right. There's more going on at night, police officers. I mean, there are many different shifts that are timely, different, and I think that's good. And I think we can do that even more and bring that even into the school system, that we have different time shifts for different kind of people, because we're all, in a way, different. Yes, it is good to get up early in the morning to really take in the awakening of the world. Right.
00:06:49 - Meilin Ehlke
So if you're anyway a riser with the sun, you experience that often. But I invite those who are not a little bit like me sometimes maybe put your alarm up and go outside and experience how the noise or the voices or the one sound of the world becomes more volume, becomes louder. Right. I had my last guest, Puccini, you know about him, who has passed. But for a while he would wake me every morning.
00:07:22 - Meilin Ehlke
It must have been very important for me for almost A year, just shortly before the sun rose. And I opened the door and let him outside and hung out with him on my terrace in the garden and observe the sun rise and listen to the birds, how it was quiet, the insects, how their voices came more present as they were waking up. And they have a certain kind of song. It's like a welcoming good morning song. I love that. It was really a beautiful experience. I do thank you, Puccini, for having me brought through that almost for one year, maybe a little bit more than a year, I should say. I went right back to bed. He stayed outside, especially some. I could leave the door open and he could enjoy. These mornings sometimes I would sleep outside as well and lay down again and get up when it was my rhythm to get up. But those mornings also, when it's so vibrant and the sound is vibrant, it's a good time to write something.
00:08:30 - Meilin Ehlke
So if you're a writer or sketch something, if you want to paint or just to contemplate or do some exercise or breathing exercise. I was more an observer and taking it all in, feeling the oneness with nature. I should do go maybe now that it's warm the next weeks, and sleep in the woods and experience that fully there. And to wake up then when the sounds arise, because when then the sun comes over the horizon, it stops. It's like it. The voice, I don't know, it becomes less loud. It's like you turn down the volume, pump up the volume. That's a good song. It comes from the 80s disco time, right when I was young. But what do we experience that? How often have you experienced that? It's really invigorating. So I needed it for myself, for my body to learn more about myself, to take in this information. Because it's so crystal clear that.
00:09:43 - Meilin Ehlke
So pure. It's crystalline, right early in the morning. So maybe now, if you live somewhere where it's the sun, if you live on the other side of the earth, you can sleep in a little bit longer. But to go maybe outside with a jacket or something. And if you live around the equator, yeah, you're lucky. You may experience it when you go out those times when we would go out and party, right? If you go here at the Mediterranean and you would come back when the sun rose. But here in Germany, I do experience because of the richness of birds that live in my area here in the Franconian Switzerland, Northern Bavaria, it's a little hilly. It's a very ancient landscape. It's limestone. So it is the ocean floor that has risen or the ocean went down.
00:10:40 - Meilin Ehlke
And so it exposed coral (coral reefs). It gives a really fascinating atmosphere and life. Needless to liveliness to the landscape and a color that I love. I love those beige colors. And the landscape here, because of the limestone is so beige. And you see it in the architecture. And they cut the bricks really big, maybe almost a foot wide and maybe a foot and a half long. And they have used that now for over thousands, over thousand years, not thousands of years in the architecture.
00:11:19 - Meilin Ehlke
And you can still see it. It gives the warmth that really speaks to me. As an example in northern Germany or now that I'm going to speak about the Netherlands again, because I really thought about that again that there the bricks are more dark, burnt colors or dark Bugunda red or Bordeaux red or dark brown. Yeah. Or red tones. And it is not so my color. I've learned that. So I really enjoy and thank all my spirits that they let me here to soak in these colors because they do me well. So what colors or architecture or architecture material do you feel good in? I just had to think about it. The limestone is also a lot of beaches. So that's why I love to be at beaches. It's the same color.
00:12:21 - Meilin Ehlke
And I also like to be in the desert. I've been to many deserts in this world. I have not been to the Gobi Desert, still on my list. And in Australia I haven't been. They have these colors and that is something really calming. And what does it touch? Is it the sunlight that they reflect? The cleansiness, maybe the cleansiness of light or the bright light that I connect to.
00:12:53 - Meilin Ehlke
So think about what is being used in your area. Not every area has so many stone buildings. Too many have, just concrete buildings nowadays. I think as a former landscape architect, I miss that a little bit that we. I think it's a pity we do all these concrete buildings around the world that look the same. No details or love to detail, only cheap, which I can understand there's a need. But at least I desire that there is more creativity, that more ways of different materials are used to bring cooling.
00:13:36 - Meilin Ehlke
What is it? Lehm. (clay) Oh, Ton (clay). God, I can't remember the English word. But you make. If you have wet earth, you can use it to make vessels. Right. Or you can use it to put on houses. The adobe style. Right. And many other cultures around the continent on this globe use that and use maybe straw and other materials. And there's so much new inventions coming and we're not seeing them fast enough. So if you are listening and you're somewhere where you are an architect or an engineer or a craftsman that looks for ways to build in a new way, less edgy, maybe more round, that the air can flow.
00:14:27 - Meilin Ehlke
Tomorrow I have an art show. I'm exhibiting artwork, mostly white painting with earth tones in them, right? But white out of earth and flower pigments, you know, me and some gold and a whoosh. This time with the international women, we come together. But it's in a building rather new, maybe 20 years. And by then everyone knew how to use ways to construct, ways that the air can flow and does not get stagnant in a building. So I'm going to set that intention out into the world, that more young people or older people that have that experience are able to teach others that their way of building is implemented and that will bring change.
00:15:18 - Meilin Ehlke
So ecological materials as well, because that becomes medicine for us. So maybe you can influence and also put your intention on there. So these things happen and we have to question our status quo.
And there I want to go back to the painting I did. I tried new style because once upon a time I did a lot of. With a palette knife. I painted with papers and oils, little acrylic. I don't use acrylics anymore. Just can't touch it anymore. The plastic, how you clean everything, it just makes the world not a pretty place in my view.
00:15:59 - Meilin Ehlke
But I wanted to use these natural pigments. I used egg tempera. I played with that around. So I experienced new ways there as well. And it's not so easy. Sometimes I couldn't paint. I sat upstairs thinking, oh, you have to go downstairs and paint. Until then there came inspiration from within. So if you are creator, do wait for the inspiration from within and try something new out. Nudge yourself to try new ways. Also, if you are a painter, use more earthly materials. And I saw recently in a art store that more and more companies are bringing colors out.
00:16:42 - Meilin Ehlke
They call it even vegan, right? That don't use so much poisonous or synthetic pigments. And if they do, at least they write it down more precisely. There is an education going on, and I never told the story about that. I went into school from one of the painters that paints with me. Her daughter teaches elementary school. And I was invited then to join and help with children during workshop week to make their own pigments.
We use paprika, we use cherry, we use blueberry, carrots, spinach to make pigments and paint with them. And it was really interesting to observe the children and because the children noticed that it didn't cover up so much. It was these thin layers, and the white of the paper would shine through the first moment. It was something new for them, and they acknowledged it. They noticed it, right? In Germany, it's called deckfaben, because the watercolor they use in school, they cover each other. It's white, heavy, right? And so you cover each other, the colors. And here, with these thinner, more watery pigments, you had to layer over, or it was more fine little bone, like elf and fairy paintings. And after a while, they loved it. And even there, I thought, I have to give a shout out to the teacher. She didn't tell them how to paint. She let them explore. She showed many different ideas. And from there, the children could be creative.
00:18:26 - Meilin Ehlke
So some used a toothbrush, some used their fingers and hand to paint. Others, you cut out pieces of cardboard and used it as a shablone and rubbed color around it. That was really, really fun. So it's also invigorating when you try new things and you explore new ways and let yourself be surprised. They were all laughing, they were excited. They went back with a new skip in their step, right? And they could tell stories to bed. I couldn't be there in the afternoon when they hung everything up and showed their parents that would come and walk through the school. It was the last day of a workshop week. Yeah, it is this unfinished, what I want to get to. So it looks like a little bit unfinished because they're so used to the colors that cover everything up.
00:19:21 - Meilin Ehlke
And we're here in a time now where things are uncovered and we do not need to cover ourselves up the way that we are. And getting back to my paintings, they're not totally done because I was exploring so many different avenues and because I couldn't paint in the rhythm I thought I was able to paint.
I didn't finish. But the nice thing, a painting is never done or already done when you put the first stroke on the paper, right? If the first intention, the healing, is on the paper and it vibrates already out, so that attention is there. So let's see how people react. I think the other last shows, last time, I had a simple little bit more abstract, spiritual, also out of plant pigments and a lushness. It was about a lightness to bring that into the world. And it made a man cry. And I thought that was so touching. So every piece you create touches a person. So if you're an artist, please paint, paint, paint. If you've never tried and wanted to, now is the time.
00:20:35 - Meilin Ehlke
Because also through the painting that you do, you pull things out of you. So that's where the moments where I couldn't paint, I had to digest what was coming up. I had to contemplate. I went and researched new avenues to explore and implement them, or try out different materials and learn new techniques. Nowadays, with Internet or Instagram, social media, it's so easy. We're never alone and we can keep on going.
00:21:03 - Meilin Ehlke
Invigorating. Invigorating, yeah. And two years ago, I also had one painting that was done and the other one wasn't. I didn't have all the layers. I had thin layers. I had white background, and it was a cheetah kissing or in a way, licking a woman's face. She was down with the cheetah on the ground. And it really had just the first layer. So you really had to look at the painting to see what was happening.
And even that made someone cry. So it touches the fine parts, if that is a way to say so. Explore, maybe to be. To explore the finesse that is maybe a good way in cooking. You can explore it. You can painting, you can even use it in writing, in creating songs, even in dance, in the way you walk, in the way you talk to someone. Explore new possibilities, new ways of being that really speak to yourself. And I think this finesse, or lowering the voice, or taking the voice high to celebrate and then going lower again through the day until it's night, right? And then others take over the sounds and the songs of the evening, and stars take over the brightness, the white in the sky and the moon, maybe, if you can see them, or the moon makes the clouds white and the day, it's the white clouds that may go past you, above you, and that's also so nice.
00:22:46 - Meilin Ehlke
There is no perfect cloud. So look at those skies. So we can let go of what really is perfect and what has to be done to make something finish. But there is never something finished, because who is the judge? There is no judgment in this cosmos. Whatever is in the moment is perfect in the moment. And if it changes in the next moment, it changes in the next moment.
00:23:12 - Meilin Ehlke
Isn't that a beautiful way to live? So nudge yourself to be a little bit more courageous, to pull out the fine side, the unfinished side, the lightness, the quietness, and then the spurs of. To celebrate yourself and celebrate the part you are. Because if you go outside in nature again and we are quiet, everything comes to you. If you're quiet, right, if you sit down, you melt into everything, and everything melts into you. That is so beautiful. And then the exchanges that also quiets the mind. If we take of the pressure of we think we need to do to just be who we are, to be who you are. And so I am putting my intention out to be who I am. Because when you are who you are, I am who I am. And we all together are all others can also move into that to become and be more fully themselves and discover themselves. You can discover yourself the light full being. You are the light and brightness, the clarity, the purity, the truth you express in every moment. Ah, this is so beautiful.
00:24:44 - Meilin Ehlke
Sacred Sounds...
00:25:31 - Meilin Ehlke
Here comes my cat, Genji. The deep voices moved him to come over and say hello to me, but at the same time to you. Because he's smelling the microphone, exploring what is out there in the world. So for you to bring to life what you desire in your way and let everything that you are shine. And the world we're in will shine brighter.
I wish you the best. I'm Meilin and I send you a lot of love, light and playfulness. Especially the Genji sends me. And also the sensitivity to be there for each other and just hug and smile at each other. Goodbye. Enjoy your days and your beautiful nights.
Bye bye.