Aligning With Nature
Jan 31, 2023
Does it mean using natural products, drinking pure water and eating pure food? I think it includes those acts. But I cant help but sense there is a deeper connection we are, collectively, missing. To truly align with nature we must extend our responsibility beyond products and “things” and uncover nature within. After all, that’s what authentic connection ultimately is, right? To love is to extend our sense of self to include others. To connect with nature we must extend our beingness to include the natural world.
TO KNOW NATURE, WE MUST KNOW OURSELF.
The distinction of ourself from nature can be traced to dominant narratives of separation, control, and notions of a concrete self that are deeply woven in American culture. Part of this separation is rooted in our separation from ourselves. We cannot truly know the world around us, until we know the world within us.
Just as we have come to know unconditionally loving our friends and family requires extending our humanness to include them, while accepting our limited perspective of their experience, and loving them anyways, we must relate to nature in a similar way. This is where inquiry into our humanness is an important piece of restoring our relationships on earth. Both inner and inter species. We must know ourselves to know nature, and to know ourselves we must know via our true experience. This requires a return to our direct experience, our body. Our internal knowing. If we continue to use ways of knowing outside of ourselves, outsourcing our intuition, we will continue to distance ourselves from nature. Carry Mills writes, “Nature is limited conceptually and experiential by the lens of a being who understands itself to be finite and separate. As a result, it has become something to be subdued and overcome as it represents a challenge to the survival of a species in a cosmology of hierarchy and dualism.” By relating to earth, we begin to recognize the ways in which we are similar. We may sense the same spirit that animates the world around us, animates us. We may stop corrupting ourselves with ways of living that disconnect us from our organic-ness and live in ways that are reflective of nature.
In honoring our relation with Nature we can let go of our narcissist role. We can harness the power of observation, rather than force our bias onto nature. Only through relating can we move away from “the world is here for our benefit” and into “our being here benefits the world.” There is so much that can be learned through connection deeper with nature. The outside world has a story of balance restoration, harmony, and health to tell us.
RETURNING TO YOUR ORIGIN.
Can you recall a moment when you were so moved by the beauty of the natural world that you were taken out of your limited sense of self? That, to me, is to connect fully with nature. To give reverence to the magical natural world, and in return be gifted with the felt sense that the same spirit animates us. Nature is not something to be defined, controlled, protected and named but rather LIVED. Nature is everything we are. May you always remember to extend the beauty and awe of the external world onto your internal workings.
CONTEMPLATE
- Have you ever felt spirit or spiritual? If so, when did you first feel it?( fun fact, Gautama, Buddha, transmuted his first teaching after watching a worm in a plow field)
- Can you recall a time when you were completely awed by nature? Entranced by earth’s beauty?
- Have you experienced similar awe by the inner workings of your human body?
- If not can you sense an underpinning of viewing yourself as separate from the natural world?
- How will you reignite this sense of wonder within yourself? How will you allow your body and mind to play in nature? With your own nature as part of nature and as such open room for your being part of something divine?
- In what ways does your way of living distract you from your organic-ness?
KNOWING NATURE THROUGH RELATIONSHIP, WE UNCOVER THE WONDER THAT WE REALLY ARE.
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