Listening to Nature - Part 2
This morning I did a modest hike through the jungle up to a waterfall. I set the intention for my journey of deepening my connection to nature. I sat down on a rock near where the stream of the waterfall flowed into the pool below. I allowed my attention to rest on the sound of the waterfall and to let go and open to what wanted to be heard, both from without and from within.
Relatively soon there was a feeling of fear bubbling to the surface. Recognizing “this is fear,” and just allowing the fear to be there rather than resisting it, I then got curious about the fear, investigating the felt sense of where this fear might be located in the body. I could feel it located somewhere around the upper chest and the throat. When the fear became too strong I opened my eyes and allowed my attention to rest again on sounds, both of which can be skillful ways of working with fear when its presence can feel overwhelming.
I knew in part that this deep seated apprehension was the fear of the unknown:
being out in the wild of the jungle, where theoretically I could run into something potentially threatening.
This was a reminder that being in nature is also an opportunity to become intimate with fear. It cultivates a healthy sense of perspective: that life is indeed fragile and precarious. All of this—the fear, the fragility, the danger, both real and imagined—is part and parcel of what’s so enchanting about nature: it’s raw and wild and ecstatic.
At its best, nature is enchanting and seductive. It’s anticipation you feel when you hear the sound of the waterfall walking through the jungle; it’s the awe you experience seated at the foot of the waterfall; it’s the exhilaration you experience as you’re swimming in the pool, looking up at a shaft of light shining down upon birds and butterflies flying high above the cliff.
It’s those powerful moments in nature that points towards the paradoxical qualities of The Divine: it’s both transcendent and immanent. It lifts your spirit up, yet you are fully immersed and embodied in the moment. It draws your gaze upwards but it’s not just above you, “It” is everywhere and yet nowhere in particular.
It’s a feeling of being completely immersed, which invites a dance between resistance and surrender. On the one hand, there’s a very palpable sense of being overwhelmed and afraid, which is real since being in nature is an archetypal encounter with the unknown. Yet that fear is the flip side of the awe that you feel of being in the wild, intuitively recognizing that you are not an isolated individual with all of your own needs and problems and ambitions, but part of something much more vast and primal and magisterial.
That’s why the call to go forth into nature is also an invitation to go deeper inside yourself. What you’re seeking is not outside of yourself, but it’s also something beyond the ego, the dualistic mind that keeps that sense of “you” feeling separate, disconnected from nature, from other beings, from your own heart and deep inner wisdom.
Ultimately, it’s because this is who you are: you are nature. Every one of us is nature.
This isn’t a grand metaphysical claim. It’s simply to point out that you could not exist without the sun, the stars, the trees, the oceans and the rest of not only our natural environment on Earth but the Universe itself.
When someone reminds us of this point, we nod our heads.
We know this is true intellectually, but we haven’t internalized the wisdom of this basic truth in our bodies, in our hearts.
In modern society, sadly, our heads and our hearts are disconnected; we’ve lost touch with the kind of innate wisdom that’s deeply embodied--and the experience of consciousness is fundamentally one of being embodied.
As so many of us find ourselves cut off from nature during the global pandemic, nature is giving us this precious opportunity: to recognize its importance in the wake of its extreme absence from our lives, as well as the opportunity to look within ourselves.
The question is: are you making the most of this opportunity?
Or are you spending most of this time wondering when things will finally get back to “normal?”
Hopefully, more of us are now becoming more keenly aware of just how unsustainable the pace of that sense of “normal” was, both for the planet and for our own well being individually.
As I sat on the rock listening deeply for a couple of hours, many visitors came and went: fear, joy, loneliness, connection, awe, gratitude. Mindfulness could notice them all come and go, without judgment. When I noticed boredom and restlessness arise, I came back to one of my favorite inquiry questions:
“What is it that I’m seeking that’s not already here and now?”
When you train your heart-mind to listen deeply, it’s remarkable how many answers emerge from the depths of silence.