Resonance with Nature, Resonance as Nature

Our relationship to the natural world is an essential part of our sustenance and our existence. It is us, we are it.

Perhaps one of the great, early contrivances was that we are separate from Nature. This is, arguably, where all disease, or imbalance, emerges: when the intellect considers itself separate from its moorings - the heart-mind awareness that connects us with all of life.

When many of us walk out into a forest, along a beach, or in the desert at twilight we may feel a stillness within ourselves, if not an exuberance, an excitement. This may be due to the reconnection we experience with the natural world, reverberating with our essential nature as human beings; not just what we see, smell, hear, or touch, but what we feel, and not directly with our skin.

As beings comprised of water and light, electromagnetically charged, we are inclined towards feeling our environment, picking up on the qualities of wavelengths within our midst, or receiving information through the ether.

This is what traditional systems of healing or spiritual development have written about, or passed along orally, for thousands of years. We have come to see ourselves as “advanced”, and we’ve come to leave these notions behind as “unscientific”.

Has this been our great undoing, or simply a natural progression along the wheel of life, the cycle of time, that we must inevitably come to the point of forgetting who we are so that we can come back into rememberence?

To feel in tune with the world around us, to feel ourselves at one with the natural world: this was, at one point, some time ago, an aspiration of mine, but nonetheless an otherworldly fantasy at the same time. I felt there must be a very special state of being that puts one in touch with this alternate reality - a reality in which knowledge comes from direct perception, empathic co-relation with the life around us. In my moments of greatest inspiration, I would know this to be true, the possibility of it. But I was yet unacquainted with knowing this for myself…or had I simply forgotten?

I believe the latter was true as, in time, I came to recognize this potential to lay right at my fingertips. It was within me all along and I had only to create the space once again within myself, awaken it, uncover it, invite it back into my being, as part of my being, inseparable from the rest - in essence, a grand step towards making myself whole once again.

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There was a particular moment I can recall in which I could feel the rhythm of a place. This re-membering took place as an adult, but I know I felt this as a child as well. Tapping into this rhythm opened up a whole new realm of being - that there actually was value in simply being without doing, as there was much to experience all around us and a way to entrain our heart-mind to what Nature was providing for us.

This profound lesson has stayed with me, but I can see how challenging it is to maintain this connection, especially wrapped up in the day-to-day business of our world, or participating in the asphalt-covered, RF-laden, relatively high-paced urban environments of today. Add in a layer of artifice which suffices as status quo, but disables us from engaging more authentically with the world around us, and it is an even greater challenge. Yet it is nonetheless our challenge to commit to connecting to the life around us.

Re-entering a predominantly natural landscape I can feel my spiritual body re-emerge in my consciousness, or take prominence within my psyche. Tapping into my heart center, I reconnect with what is resonating as true within my being, and I relate that to the world around me in acknowledgement, in authenticity of spirit. I acknowledge all that is around me, seen and unseen, and I assert myself, expressing my intentions and my will for that time. May it be so, may I be supported if this is in harmony with the greater good of my surroundings. If not, may I be aware enough to learn, yet may I have the courage to continue should I encounter obstacles and not falter on my path.

This is a way I practice this relationship of resonating with the landscape, of relating with Nature. Stepping forward opens up new opportunities and invites learning about myself and the world around me. It invites feelings to emerge which are otherwise tied up within. This may be on an outing to gather medicine or food from the landscape, or it may be in preparation for leading a group, conducting a simple ceremony, arriving at a new location alone or with my family, or simply seeking or maintaining an existing relationship. The nuances are rich and varied, each experience new on this fluid path of relationship. This is why it takes all of our being to be present. Nothing is left behind; there is only that which is not fully in our awareness.

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I believe the awareness of this relationship with Nature was once palpable amongst our ancestors. Not only were their lives ensconced in the natural world (not too long ago), but I believe they carried on a long tradition of being in deep relationship with Nature. This was not merely habit, or superstition, although some aspects did inevitably become, but had emerged wholeheartedly as practices tied to direct knowledge and personal experience.

To have this view, this knowledge, I feel, is to simplify life, exceptionally so - relative to what we know today. In this simplification, a richness emerges from the intrinsic fabric of life, a weave which we are inextricably woven into.

Thus, the complexity of our lives today makes it rather difficult to settle into this natural complexity (perhaps we could call it ‘simple complexity’) which emerges from the resonant field of Nature all around us. This is commonly beyond our comprehension, and is what we may be referring to when we talk about hallucinations; an otherwise energetic form encasing accumulated thought fields projected onto a resonant electromagnetic structure of light.

It’s important to remember that we are human beings. There is a state of being-ness that is intrinsic to our presence and purpose on this Earth, not to mention our well-being. Harkening back to my previous post on Healing the Shame that Binds You, the obsession with doing overtakes our ability to be when our fundamental identity of self is traumatized via the internalized toxic shame experienced from our primary caregivers, and further on throughout the social system.

Thus, there has been a multi-pronged attack on our natural inclination to be, and it is within that state of Being-ness that we most effectively experience the natural resonance with all the life surrounding us, or the entire landscape.

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To resonate with Nature is to know that there is ultimately no difference between ourselves and the fantastically beautiful world existing all around us. In this we are free, in this we are illuminated as unique expressions of the One. For many of us, it is a long road to come back to ourselves in this simple, yet powerful knowing.

I leave you with these famous words of the Milesian bard, Amairgen, spoken as he first stepped ashore near the mouth of the Boyne to take possession of the sacred island from the Tuatha Dé Danaan, on behalf of his kind. These words believed to be the first poem ever spoken in Ireland (okay, well, the Milesian, or Gaelic, Ireland anyway) speak to the root of pervasive being-ness in all things, the sheer complexity of the individual, and the interrelationships that criss-cross over, around, and through us every day.

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats, 
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun, 
I am the fairest of plants,
I am the wild boar in valour,
I am the salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a world of knowledge, 
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the God who created the fire in the head.