I recently spent several wonderful days in the mountains of northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Leaving schedules and cell phone behind, I moved into a space more of being than of doing.
I found myself wanting to simply sit on a high rock overlooking a green valley, or by the stream rushing through the valley. Feeling into the earth, the water, the sky at night full of stars. Letting nature’s rhythms flow through me, opening to them intentionally. Staring at the flames of the fire, or feeling the energy and grace of the horses in the pasture, relaxing into a beingness that is full of life and movement.
Nature blends its doing and being. She is coherent and flowing in a way that I don’t often feel in my daily human life.
I let my mind go, floating away like the clouds, releasing the things that need to be done, that I shouldn’t forget, that hover like mosquitoes that refuse to let me relax. I find a new mind, soaring like a redtail hawk, riding the flows of wind and water, opening awareness to the trees, plants, and animals. There goes a yellow swallowtail butterfly, or three, playfully dancing through the sunlight.
I feel this mind in my being, feeding it with the breath of awareness. Coming back to my essential self, the soul that remembers it is connected, and that in that connection it knows without having to figure and think. It drinks in the experience of the natural world, flowing and expanding with joy and gratitude.
Today I am back in Boulder, but I am not quite the same. I have brought home with me some of the web of life from the mountains, and permission to breath into it and remember. My mind is not so busy yet, my beingness is still palpable, the natural rhythm is here also, underneath in the still and quite, even in the city. I can carry it with me, nourishing it through out the day, through giving it space, or taking a walk outdoors.
Find a tree blowing in the wind, or a flowing stream, animals in pasture, birds or butterflies, or the clouds up high. Allow your being to feel the natural rhythms that it remembers when you let it. Know that your soul is being fed just being with them and intending the resonance. Nothing more required.
Rejoice in your own natural being.
(© 7/2008)
