Nature as Healing

If you had told me last week I would be studying a chipmunk, it's movements and apparent hygiene habits for over an hour on a given day this week, I probably would have said you were crazy.  But it happened.  Who has the time (besides a rodent-ologist) to do that?  Anyone who spends a prolonged period of time out doors is subject to nature's spell.

"Nature's spell" being, a much slower vibration than the modern, technology-fraught one most of us are subject to all the time. We are subject to nature's energies when we are among trees, plants, water, wild animals, air currents and the stars for lengthy periods.  They impact us.  Their vibration is much slower.  Nature's energy is a-buzz with constant activity.  But its layered and varied and harmonious with that which is around it.  Most of all, it is related.

From the decaying matter at the forest's sub-terrain with it's trillions of microbes, bacteria and insects relating to its matter and each other to the wild animals that navigate it and interface with it's layers.  Woodpeckers impact a tree's life by it's constant hammering, drilling holes, releasing from layers of bark the life working in the tree. Wind and storms topple weakened trees providing homes to live in, mulch for the ground below, fertile foundations for moss and fungi to thrive.

From a human perspective, nature can be violent and apparently ruthless. But somehow it is always related.  The great black bear of Alaska in salmon season can be seen grabbing flying fish in mid-air, taking down it's prey in a gory spectacle.  But it never takes more than it needs.  No wild thing acts outside of it's nature, because it is living it's nature.

I think we become more sensitized to outside nature's vibrations just because its mass is so immense (compared to our own relatively puny mass); our internal senses are trumped by the shear mass of nature's relating vibration surrounding us.  Our own nature's vibration is Us.  You'd think it would be hard to miss, this nature running through us. But much of our internal workings are automatic (thankfully).  We don't have to think or have an awareness of our respiratory, endocrine or cardiac systems for them to function.  Whereas that is very convenient on most days, the other side of the coin is that we take our functions for granted and usually have forgotten they are doing a massive job without any of our (gross) attention. This lack of awareness in a way desensitizes us to the more opaque layers of our energetic self.

What could be the importance of having an awareness of one's own nature?  The awareness of having a more sensitized connection to external nature is a clue.  We "See" as we become more sensitive to nature's vibration, we begin to experience the layers of relationship. We naturally start to develop an appreciation for that and a more acute energetic listening capacity.  The same is true when the nature springs from within. Becoming more aware and connected to this deeper vibrational aspect of nature and myself can only support our health, function and sensitivity to same.  This relatedness we bring to the world and our relationships is our human inheritance, a gift from the natural world.

photo courtesy:  Mie Sato