Introduction
I have had a longing to be outdoors since I was very young, so it was a great blessing to have my grandparents' forests and fields to explore nearly every day. Soon I began to recognize that I felt more at home in nature than in any building. Yet I would frequently leave my forest visits feeling like something was missing. It was an odd sense that I was leaving before I was done, like there was something I wasn’t quite “getting”.
I remember clearly an event that may have been the very first time this feeling occurred. I stopped in my tracks, and suddenly felt compelled to turn back and stand in front of a large Red Oak Tree. It resided just a couple of hundred yards before the heavily shaded forest floor opened up to the bright sunlit fields, which meant I would soon be home. It may seem odd, but I felt it was trying to get my attention. I knew there was some way to interact with this magnificent life that I just wasn't seeing. It was as if this tree held a message. I stayed and looked at it for a bit, and even headed back into the woods for a while, trying to figure out what I was feeling. I could hear it, but I didn't know how to listen. It made it hard to go back to my house. It was an uneasy feeling. A very sad if not “let down” feeling. A feeling of longing for more. It felt like there was an awareness that was asking to be seen and known, yet at the same time I got the sense that I was done for the day and needed to head home because I wasn't "getting it". This sensation would occur regularly for many, many years and it served me well. It kept me wondering and searching, trying to figure out exactly what I wasn't seeing.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, at least in part because it was a gradual process, but at some point I recognized I was leaving my time in nature and feeling fully satisfied! That feeling of "missing something" no longer followed me. What I realize now that had changed for me, was that I wasn’t simply going for a “hike in the woods” anymore. (Not to say that a hike in the woods isn’t a wonderful experience in itself.) I wasn’t any longer walking through a sea of green ambiguous plants hoping to see a deer or fox. I was walking slowly among individuals as I took time to recognize and acknowledge each life as important. I let go of my need to see or experience any particular thing. I tried hard to let go of needing to have a goal or expectation for my walk. My pace slowed because I wasn't trying to "get somewhere". Every footstep was as much somewhere as the last, or the next, and I became aware that we enter the homes of countless living beings with each footstep. Every square inch was blessed with unique life and eternal teachings. Giving each space its own time acknowledged the importance of awareness of the moment and the sacredness of all. It seemed to me as if one could see infinity in an inch, or walk a mile and miss the inch. As I allowed each moment to be relished and more deeply absorbed, the slower pace and enhanced awareness meant I saw deer I would have walked past, and fox and other animals I would have scared off, long before I could have ever had a chance of seeing them. I saw beauty and complexity in plants that had been hiding in plain sight. I was walking familiar trails, yet really seeing them for the first time. I had been missing so much, for so many years, of what was right in front of me.
Most importantly, I began to feel a deep connection with the plants and animals that I came into contact with. I began to have a deep feeling of love for not only nature as a whole, but for individual plants and animals. I learned how we can allow our eternal self to connect with that part in another, and found when we do this, we not only deepen the feeling of connection, but attain deeper mutual insight and awareness not available when using our physical senses alone. We are able to truly see and know the essence of that life, and allow that life to know us in the same way.
Life took me in a different direction for a few years out of (what I thought was) necessity. I still longed for that connection to nature, but felt it hard to maintain due to job and life changes. Soon I could no longer resist my longing for a deep connection to nature, and had to, to a small degree, retrace my steps that led to the “formula” to this deeper connection and relation to nature. As I was in part, relearning it, I decided to try to bring to the physical world the process that resided in my spirit and heart. This was done by trying to “translate” things of a spiritual nature into words. Doing this has helped bring greater understanding for myself, and allows me to share it with others that may be interested.
Words and language
We don’t often stop to consider the huge impact that words and language have on us. Normally, if we give it a thought or a moment of appreciation, we think about the ability they give us to share our ideas and feelings with others. That of course is monumental, but there is perhaps an even more profound ability that words provide. Words are the tool that give us the ability to think, to formulate the ideas we share, and to help us recognize, categorize, and remember our emotions. Try for a moment to “think” outside of having an internal conversation with yourself using words. Words bring physicality to ideas. They give ideas a structure or "body" that can "live" in, and be processed by, our physical brain.
As important as words are, they can by their very nature, put limits around us and our perception of the world. We are able to have infinite types and levels of experiences and feelings, but have a very finite number of words to process, express or describe them to ourselves and others. When we use thought and word alone as an avenue to perceive our experiences, anything that we don’t know a word for gets “rounded up” in essence, to the closest word that it can be associated with. Imagine the word “love” did not exist. The feeling of course would, but we might round it to something like infatuation, affection, caring, or fondness. None of those really quite measure up to what most of us think of as love. In fact, we might benefit from having even more words for different types of love. There is the love you feel for your husband, wife, or life partner. There is the love you feel for your children or parents, there is the love you feel for friends, (which can often be comparable to your family). There is even the love that you feel for special possessions, favorite songs or hobbies. These are all different types of feelings. Some are very different, while others hold more subtle differences. Then there is, for lack of a better word, Pure Love. This type of love, as we will learn, directly applies to this writing. It is different again, and hard to explain but easily identified once experienced. It is a rapture like feeling that elicits awe. A love of acceptance, appreciation, respect, admiration, and “oneness”. Again, this is reminding me of the cage that words put around us, for I struggle to communicate this feeling. I promise you however, if you have never felt it, you will know it when you do.
Words are therefore a crude tool when using them to describe this process or any process involving a higher, deeper, or spiritual nature. They can also get in the way as you are having deeper experiences and trying to process them through thought. As I am attempting to put this process to words, it feels as if I am "chasing it". When I feel I am getting close, it suddenly feels so far away. Deeply heartfelt emotions live somewhere outside of their world.
I am sharing these points about language and thought not to make excuses for when I fall short in my writing, or to point out limitations of being human. I am bringing it up to invite you to consider that there is a whole different way of perceiving the world when we allow ourselves, even if only for brief moments, to step outside of living in a place where word and thought need to be applied to everything. A place of deeper experience that allows feeling the moment, without being tethered to the need to describe or define it. It is my experience that when I am able to walk in this space, my awareness and ability to connect with myself, the world, and all life in it, expands. It expands to a boundary as broad as my ego (identity of self) is willing and able to allow in each moment.
Many would say that it is a fallacy to attempt to use words to guide someone to an experience beyond words. I can understand that sentiment. For those that agree with that idea, it is true for them and there is nothing wrong with that. Others will find it is possible to follow words or other expressions of a physical nature to attain experiences beyond the reach of the physical realm. That is what many poets, musicians, painters, and artists of all media reach for.
We can choose to be directed by another who has gone before us, to the summit of a breathtakingly beautiful peak. Everyone will experience the journey and destination differently. Some will return from the trailhead saying something like, "What a nice hike to a pretty summit". Others will find their unique experience so powerful that it escapes the confines of verbal expression. Although they can't fully describe their experience, they can describe to others the path they took that got them there.
If you were thirsty and I had water to share with you, I would present it to you in a glass. The glass is not the water, but simply a way we can contain it to share it with others. The water is the (truth) that is held within the glass (words). You have to look beyond the glass to see the water. Studying it will only give you surface knowledge. You must drink it to have the experience of it and to understand what it really is and how it can fill and nourish you.