For those of us living in this aggravated, hustling-bustling world, just BEING is hard to do. We almost feel guilty when we are not DOING something constructive. I know at times I do.
But I remind myself that my presence here is not dependent on how productive I can be. Rather it is dependent on how present I can become in witnessing the world surrounding me; and the WORLD is far more than human beings scampering about for sustenance, security, or comradery.
The WORLD I love so deeply is nature-based—both infinitely vast and variable.
I’ve often sat out in natural settings and just closed my eyes listening: to trees whose leaves are rustling in the breeze above my head, to the song birds singing loudly and continuously, especially at dawn, and to the squirrels angrily chattering warnings to me about my disruptive presence in their daily endeavors.
But if you sit out on an open plain atop a barren hill, with the wind and the clouds as your only companions, their language is far more subtle; far more to the point made by the Lakota elder in the image above. “Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.”
There is a FEEL to that type of natural unspoken communication—a FEEL that is almost indescribable because when you connect in to nature at that level, you are no longer separate from it—no longer isolated from it and observing it—you now ride the winds wherever they go and you float with the clouds as they build or disperse—amassing or dissipating. You become the landscape you were previously observing—except now you FEEL within you the massive over-riding consciousness that you were once separate from; and you then feel great peace with that knowing.
When you can actually DO that—when you can BE the winds and the clouds, you realize that the Lakota elder was exactly right: “Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.”
And you had just personally tasted the immensity of that conscious awareness.
It’s a very humbling experience. One not easily forgotten.
FINDING YOUR TRUTH 