This is my topic tonight for tonight's Las Vegas Pagan Information Exchange. There is so much more to say, but I don't want to bore them. I want to do a group meditation and just talk. I will try to start with this and then hopefully we will break free from it.
Learning from Nature
Our Awareness of Nature
Nature is a non-verbal reality except for humanity. When we describe something in nature we use our abilities to share our perception. The problem is that in describing it, we are limited and many times disconnect from it. We lose the wholeness of it because of our limits. We often get into short cuts with our relationship to the natural world. We separate our awareness from the world around us. We lose interest, or things become so common place that we take things for granted. We go through motions that we have learned to work. We drive or walk around and only see things that catch our eye or have specific interest to us. Think for a minute that nature is like the words on this page. Most of the time we just speed read right though what is in front of use. We look at the ideas and try and comprehend what we are reading. That is fine for the most part, but more and more the words disappear, the letters are pressed together. We know them and the individual letters are not important to us anymore. As a child or someone learning to read, each letter and sound was a discovery to us. We were delighted in our ABC’s. We took a step in our development. Our awareness changed and more of the world was opened to us. Letters formed words, words formed sentences, and ideas could be shared in more than one form.
Let us take some time and open the awareness to the world around us.
We really have not lost our connections to nature. It affects us every day. It shapes us and works to live a very active life. When you stop and look at the world around us you can see how active it really is. The wind blows, the ants search for food, trees soak in the sun, flowers deliver their intoxicating aroma, even water and rocks are active parts of the world around us. Listen to the traffic, hear the ice-cream man, hear the conversations in the restaurants, and see the lights and the patterns unfold around you. Learn the vibrations of life.
We need to develop our base connections to nature. They are our foundation and base. If you don’t think they are, then hold your breathe for 10 minutes. Don’t drink or eat anything for a week. Nature sustains us. We are connected to our core. We can not forget it.
The thing about learning from nature is that we are so connected that nature can teach us things about ourselves.
Nature is the groundwork for which your path, your goals, your purpose derives itself. Take the time to interact with the nature around you to create a solid foundation so that you can take those leaps and bounds without stumbling.
Let’s take something that we see around us here in Las Vegas. Take the Palm tree. There are many different varieties. Some Palms are tall, some are short, and some have many trunks. Palm leaves are different as well; some have long fawns that go all the way to the trunk, others have leaves that look like a fern, some have a bunk that group together like a fan and have a stem that goes back to the base. Palms survive by absorbing what they need to survive. If they grow too many leaves, those leaves die. If you plant a group of them together they will grow away from each other so that they can all share in the sun. If you damage the lower part of the trunk or the main root, they will die. They have a shallow root system, is it because of the ground it lives in. That ground has to have a specific alkalinity. If it has too much acidity, it will die. How did the Palms get here? There is a debate of the origins of the first palm in the valley. There are stories about a traveler who planted them. There are also stories that there was a variety that was here already. The Native Americans of this area have mixed views of it. Some say their grandparents used them and there are paintings depicting them. Other want the Palms removed from native lands because a white man from Phoenix planted them. Can they tell us about ourselves and how we populated this area? How do they propagate? Some have flowers, some have roots that make new trees, and some grow fruit and have seeds.
Take a look at the other trees, flowers, bushes, cactus, weeds, and vegetation that are both naturally planted as well as planted with a specific purpose by humans. Why are they the height they are? What feeds them, waters them, lives in harmony with them? Why do flower have the smell and look they do? How do the plants survive and spread their seed?
You can look at animals, the species, their characteristics, their habits, how they adapt to different things.
Take a look at a rook and sit with it a while. How did it get to be the size it is now? Why did you choose that particular rock? How does it feel, are their any features to it? Is it one of many, it is by it self? How did the dirt get on it? If you move it, can you really ever put it back to where it was? Does it help keep the dirt from blowing away? Do insects have to go around it? Do they live under it? When it rains, does it change? Did you trip on it and then kick it or throw it? Does it resemble or remind you of anything?
There are so many questions that you could ask many different things. Being non-verbal you are only going to gain a certain amount of knowledge from it. It may teach you things in ways that you can not express.
We can move on to events and things that are larger than earth, plant, or animal. How about a sunset? Have you taken the time to feel the sun setting, or even rising for that matter? If you close your eyes during can you know when the sun will rise above the mountains or drop behind them? Temperature changes to your skin, sounds that change, are there any feelings that you get.
What season is it? There are many signs and signals that indicate the season. What is the phase of the moon? How busy is the strip right now? How busy will it be in the morning? How busy will it be for New Year’s Eve?
Many things affect us as we go through our daily lives. We see a funny bumper sticker, hear a song on the radio, listen to co-workers complain, sit and rub your family pet. Anything and everything has a connection to us. Even things that you may not have thought about can affect you. How can we describe our relationships and be mindful of our actions and reactions?
There are whole sections of science that are seeing the world in a different light. Some of it indigenous people have know for generations. We have learned from them and developed in a whole new direction only to come back to what they have already told us. People have known about medicine, the interaction with the land, the existence of other realities, the effects we have on our communities.
Quantum Mechanics and the relative theories
Co-creational science
Ecological Psychology
Energy Healing
The Natural Medicines
Scientists have noticed how connected we are with the world around us. We can use this to develop our relationships. Most of the physical sciences deal with the large physical world that is around use. We see the large actions and reactions and the doctor treats you for the symptoms. But when it comes to the small and very fast they lack the ability to become relative.
Quantum Mechanics, string theory, and science on the atomic level are showing us that actions, reactions, time, space, and dimension can all change and are changing in any given moment. Our will, our reality, our awareness can be more affecting than we have given credit to. If you throw a ball and bounce it off the wall, you observe and know that it will come back to you. You can do it the same way and you would expect each time it would return. But did you know that there is a possibility that it would go through the wall and keep going as if the wall wasn’t there. On a small scale, the possibility grows even greater. There is also the possibility that not only with the ball bounce back, but it will also keep going. There are experiments in quantum computing that show both can exist at the same time. The potential for future computers to have 3 states and not just 2 that current computing that traditional physics have developed will allow science to do computations that they currently can not do. Quantum Mechanics have changed the understanding of the atom.
Co-creational science is unique in that it uses nature as a partner in the experiment. Most of them are chemist who now sees that in order to create materials that both are solutions to a need, and are in balance with nature. They have made fertilizers and acrylics/plastics that are made of the same hydrocarbons, but are connected differently. They are forced into a form that creates an imbalance with nature. Nature doesn’t want it back and has a difficult time breaking it apart. Take a look at a landfill and you can see it. Many lifetimes will go by before a fix will be able to return it all into elements again. Co-creationist want what they do to take on a form that is in balance, so they consult nature in every aspect of the process. People can commune with the land and figure out what it can grow, where is the best places to plant. What the land needs in order to grow. Farmers have been doing it for a long time, but for scientist, it is something new and it even relieves a burden that they some have felt. Are you evolving, when you are creating something that could destroy the land that you live on? In waste-water treatment, there are active organisms or “bugs” that eat the waste that is being treated. They require a certain amount of waste and oxygen to live. It is a delicate balance. Too much oxygen and they reproduce too rapidly and they overeat and starve with the given amount of food. To little oxygen and they can not reproduce enough to eat the waste. The same goes for different wildlife preserves and forests. We have confined them to a specific space and so that limits the growth and density of the animals and vegetation.
Ecological Psychology studies people and their environment helping them adapt and balance. It looks beyond the standard medication and chemical treatments to balance a person and looks for other things to help or what things can be eliminated to balance a person.
Energy healing constitutes many practices. Basically a practitioner opens up their awareness and lets themselves become a channel for others so that energy and needs that are not being met can be helped. They can sometime sense needs and requirements by using their awareness. Some practices use the practitioner’s will or intent to make changes or remove blockages that are preventing changes from occurring. The brain, the acids in the body, the nervous system and chemical make up can do things that are sometimes unexplainable with our current understandings.
Natural Medicine practitioners are people that try and help by using natural means, herbs, needles, manipulation, etc. to bring about the natural healing processes of the body.
People around us and our connections to them
Do you see how we affect each other? Our moods, our reactions, our life makes an impact on others. It could be direct, it could be subtle. Our car breaking down can change our course as well as those around us and those connected to us. Smiling at someone can change them even if they don’t react right away.
Other things that affect us:
Family traditions
Our community, the physical, the spiritual, the connections
Techniques that can allow us to open our awareness:
Grounding and centering
Meditation
Eyes of a child
We can extract wisdom and knowledge from the nature around us. It is there and serves as a base for us to grow upon. It is a foundation. We all have many different paths and methods to use as tools for our growth, but we can not forget the basics.
