Reconnecting...
Monday, 17. July 2006, 07:18:00
: Today's Reflection is about Mother Nature.
The part below is written originally by John Milton, who has been teaching these lessons for many years now. At least, I think it is his writing. Tomorrow morning I am off for two weeks of being in the wilderness of Northern BC, and am certainly looking forward to slowing down, reconnecting, and taking the time to be...
The profound healing power of Nature. This healing power comes directly and naturally, without any artifice or complicated treatments, prayers, rituals or ceremonies.
All that is required is a commitment to come alone to Nature's heart, to relax into the silence, and to trust. In living closely and alone with Nature for the first time, most people's initial experiences are of radical slowing down... and of silence. Both are powerful healers. Modern technocratic culture is characterized by ever-increasing pressures for speed, and by almost continuous noise - inner and outer. In our contemporary cultural frenzy to boost our economies, we produce increasingly processed products; we consume increasingly greater quantities of these goods and energy, hoping to fill the gnawing void within we fear to meet. As we feed this growing industrial/technocratic mesh, our natural world is systematically replaced by an artificial one. And in this artificial world, the values of silence and slow, organic rhythms are rarely encountered.
Consider how many millions of years it has taken for our current interconnected web of body, mind and emotions to evolve. And consider what kind of environment supported this evolution, and coevolved with us. The environments were natural ones, where organic rhythms of day/night, moon cycle, solar cycle, constellation cycles were part of us; and we were part of them. Trees, flowers, streams, lakes, ocean shorelines, mountains, rocks, sky, clouds - all of these elements of Nature have been companions in our journey into our contemporary embodiment, and influenced our growth. Now, in a few generations, we have leapt into incredibly new processed environments. Plastics, millions of new chemical compounds, air-conditioned air, fluorescent lighting, artificial food, powerful drugs, glass/steel/plastic housing and transportation units,
alien electromagnetic fields, intense performance stress, speed, environmental pollution of every imaginable kind, breakdown of community/extended family/core family/marriage/children and parent relationships - the list can go on and on. But it is characterized by one thing: the sudden shift from natural, organic, whole, mostly rural environments within which human beingness evolved - to highly artificial, speedy, noisy, crowded and polluted urban centers. No wonder the species is in trouble.
When we drop all our artificial lifestyles, and move back into Nature with simple, open hearts, Nature heals us. Healing happens even if we can only return for a short while. And the healing comes naturally through simple reconnection with the countless ancient relationships our species has always had with all the other living things, with Mother Earth, and with the cyclical energies of the Heavens. Our minds, bodies and hearts move into their ancient harmonies. Time slows into the way the moon fills the night, the way the eagle circles in the sky.
A sunny week to you all, inside and out.
Simon
