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| Photo by Seaq68 on pixabay |
Nature can teach us many things about life and ourselves. It
is a teacher if we’re willing to listen, but this post isn’t about how Nature
can be our teacher. It’s my story of how Nature became my guru.
In order for a guru/student relationship to work, there must
be love. From an early age I felt as though I was safe in Nature. I trusted Its
presence. I loved being surrounded by It and felt loved by It.
My first sense of the spiritual was in Nature and not in a
church though visiting Sainte Anne de Beaupré in Quebec City as a child brought me
to a higher order of spiritual feeling. It was those early ventures into the
woods that first captured my spiritual imagination. It wasn’t the awe I felt in
the cathedral but a quiet, peaceful feeling. Nature embraced me and I embraced
It.
I was I very sensitive child. The noise of the playground
was a bit much sometimes. The woods behind the school yard provided solace and
even healing. I felt alone in a crowd but the crowded forest of trees and rocks
and birds felt like one being holding me. There was no noise, only soft
whispers of wind and birdsong. The solid boulder, rough with lichen upon which
I sat grounded me. These woods were a peaceful sanctuary and the Being all
around me was a greater teacher than those in the school.
For me Nature is so full of the Presence of Being, but as I
got older, I paid less and less attention to Its love and teachings. In my late
20s I discovered Paganism, and made an attempt to listen and bring Nature into
my life again. It was touch and go and I never really reached that deep
relationship I once had as a child.
About 10 years ago, in my late 30s I began to bring Nature
back into my life in a more visceral way. My husband and I acquired a mountain
cabin in Green Valley Lake. I spent time walking in the woods behind the cabins
across from us. For the first time since I was a child I began to relax into
Nature’s Presence. I had grown somewhat fearful of being out in the woods
because it had been years since I spent any time in a forest or with Nature at
all except a little time in a park now and then.
I walked and got to know this particular land. I opened to
it and it opened to me. But then the fire came and burned much of it. It was
too painful to spend time there anymore. Nature receded to the background of my
awareness again.
Lately I am a watcher in the window rather than a walker in
the woods. Seeing the trees sway in the wind outside my office window does feed
my soul to some degree, but I’ve lost touch with Nature’s heart. This blog is
an attempt to bring my awareness back to Nature and regain the connection I
felt as a child.
Nature is our greatest teacher. We need only to pay
attention to Its rhythms as they express in the cycles of sun, moon, trees,
plants, animals and our bodies.
We are Nature just as we are Spirit. I am earth, water, fire
and the air that passes through me. I am clay, my blood a river, my heart the
fire and I am inspired by the air I breathe.
Nature is my guru. It teaches me through all I do and
experience. And when I am tired, it holds me and lets me know I am not alone. It
will always hold me. Even as I transform, I will eventually leave behind what
is Nature’s, my body. Even as I become identified with my soul, I will also
become the wind in the trees and the soil that brings forth new life. I and
Nature will always be together in the One Spirit that is all.
