We are delighted to announce that our Mariposa Reflections and its companion Meditation gathering, have started up again after the summer sojourn. Mariposa Reflections explores Nature Consciousness, ways to connect, commune, and support kindred Animals and Plants. Please join us!
Aman caressing an Elephant’s trunk, a woman nuzzling a Horse, another planting a tree, a child holding a Cat, friends camping under the stars – all are cameo portraits of humanity’s pull to contact Nature. This yearning has intensified exponentially with the dramatic onset of climate change, COVID, and mass extinctions. All of a sudden, Nature – everything that is not human or human-made – has become terribly precious. Precious because the Animals and Plants we have taken for granted are disappearing, and precious because we realize how damaging the now globalized culture has become. More and more people are searching to heal the primal wound of separation and re-connect with Plant and Animal kin.
Re-connection entails more than physical contact. Although industrialized culture strives to physically buffer itself from Nature’s rhythms and ways with things like air conditioners, heaters, fruit and vegetables on demand, and plastic, human life cannot separate from Nature. We cannot escape connection. Every aspect of life is connected – the air we breathe, the soil upon which we walk and live, the wind upon our faces. . . The feeling of separation comes from within, fed by the idea and perception that humans are somehow apart from the rest of the cosmos which has led to a damaging and disrespectful connection. Re-connection, then, speaks to something else, something beyond skin deep of a very different nature.
We know this intuitively when watching Dolphins arc through ice blue waves, Deer float through seas of grass, and Ravens lace the clouds. We feel their seamless oneness. They belong, they are home, they are Nature. How can we become like them? Albert Einstein knew the answer.
The great physicist once said that problems can’t be solved with the same thinking that created the problems in the first place. In other words, to “re-connect,” to feel at home in Nature, means that we have to jettison the ways of thinking that have led us to believe we were separate and better than Nature. Reconnecting with Nature is learning how to think like a Dolphin, think like a Deer, and other Plants and Animals. Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, describes it this way: “You sit and you sweep the garden and it doesn’t matter how big the garden is. You steady yourself, you quiet your mind, you tend your body and heart until you feel a kind of presence and courage and compassion, love, and then you get up to the garden of the world and you bring that in.” Thinking like Nature is bringing Nature inside.
Nature consciousness has served Animals well. Elephants, Octopuses and the amazing, spectacular diversity of other species have lived and thrived together for millions upon millions of years because they think the same. Each and every one embodies the same ethic. Each and every one follows the same principles which spring from Nature Consciousness. Our path of return to re-connection begins with a practice- the practice of Nature mindfulness.
What does Nature Consciousness mean to you?
~ Dedicated to Tommy ~
Mariposa Reflections is a weekly e-post paired with Mariposa Meditations, a biweekly online Nature mindfulness and meditation gathering. Sign up here to receive weekly Mariposa Reflections. Learn more and register for Mariposa Meditations here.