"We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.

 

"We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.

We have forgotten what plants and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be - to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.

Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking. To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal, does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your Awareness. Its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so, the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.

When walking or resting in nature, honor that realm. Be still. Look. Listen. See how every animal and every plant is completely itself. Unlike humans, they have not split themselves in two. They do not live through mental images of themselves, so they do not need to be concerned with trying to protect and enhance those images. The deer is itself. The daffodil is itself.

All things in nature are one with the totality. They haven't removed themselves from the fabric of the whole by claiming a separate existence: "me" and the rest of the universe. The contemplation of nature can free you of that "me", the great troublemaker."

~ Eckhart Tolle

Through Rajesh Arora