Tag: Nature

• Outside and Inside

  It feels different to be outside than to be inside. Knowing this distinction seems so basic to consciousness that doctors might ask patients coming out of a coma this question: “Do you know where you are right now? Are you inside or outside?”

  And yet we forget. We forget we have been given bodies and hearts. We forget we have been given capacities to sense and feel. We forget that life is offering itself to us. This why it is important to put ourselves in different circumstances—to go outside in nature, or to meditate–so that we can experience ourselves as more than a brain on a stick. Meditating means remembering that we are not just a story in our head, urgent and dire as that story may seem. We are alive and part of a much greater story.

  Sitting down to meditate with others is a quietly radical act. Even if we don’t consciously know what we are doing, something inside seeks to re-root ourselves in life, even if just for a moment. We want to remember the essential truth of our lives. We want to remember how it feels to be here, alive on the earth.

  Even if nothing great seems to be happening, sitting down to be still, making the effort, helps us cultivate a different kind of inner intention towards ourselves. It helps us let go of our endless battle with reality, trying to fix ourselves and gain something, and avoid pain. When we let ourselves stop and be still, we remember that we are part of a greater story.

  Henry David Thoreau:“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”. People debate about how cut off from civilization he really was in his tiny cabin at Walden Pond. Someone once posted on Parabola social media that Thoreau’s mother did his laundry. He also had visitors. But his intention was true. He wanted to move from the surface to the depths of life, not to waste his brief time on earth“living what was not life.”

  Meditation is a way of manifesting this intention in the middle of an ordinary life. Even only for a few moments every day, we can sit down and be still, or walk outside, creating a clearing in which we can  remember that we are more than we think we are. We really do contain multitudes.

  August 13, 2019

  A Greater Story, Mindful Writing, Mindfulness at the Rubin, Mindfulness Meditation, Nature, Thoreaux, Tracy Cochran

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• Hanging Out with Trees

  Summer reminds me of childhood, does it you? There is something about the smell in the air in the morning that reminds me of climbing trees. There was one tree in particular in the backyard of the house I grew up in that was easy to climb–inviting me, it seemed. It had a limb at exactly the right height for pulling myself up, then hanging by my knees, swinging around and dropping down to the ground. How I loved that tree. I can still feel how it felt to hug her cool butternut bark. All these years later it is clear to me that she was communing with me. She didn’t speak in words, of course, but she had a presence.

  We don’t  usually think of the body as comprehending deep truths. But the body is wise. In really challenging times, we tend fall back on our earliest way of relating to the world, which is not in words, but through the body. We go off by ourselves and have a good cry. We go for a walk outside.

  In a time of overwhelm or uncertainty, in the midst of a crisis, even confirmed atheists may find themselves looking up at the sky and the trees, thinking, “Help me.” The body innately knows to how to seek. We reach in two directions: inward and outward. We seek a connection to a living world, a greater life.

  Research that reveals that trees are not isolated beings struggling for survival, as Darwin and others once thought. They live as members of vast interconnected communities, sharing nutrients and information across species in a system that some call the “wood wide web.”  Some beings in this system, especially big old trees fondly called “mother trees,” are benevolent and very generous. A few others, Black Walnuts and orchids among them, steal more than their share of resources or even spread toxins, just as in human communities.

  This week, if you wish, go for a walk and look at the trees. Allow yourself to know that they are giving us oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. Know that they are communicating with each other and helping each other in the face of their challenges. Allow yourself to notice that they are also patiently, oh so patiently, offering to communicate with us. What are they expressing?

  Notice how it feels to experience yourself as a body that is part of a greater ecosystem, a greater life, opening to receive impressions and wisdom and sustenance from other beings. Just for one wild moment entertain the possibility that you beloved on the earth.

  (Photo courtesy Wikimedia )

  July 16, 2019

  family, Healing Presence, Inspiration, Nature, Space, Tracy Cochran, trees, truth

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