We are part of nature
“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” – Lao Tzu
I have been reflecting recently on our separation from nature, of our technological arrogance, of this online living and the increasing move towards a virtual reality devoid of connection to nature, as if we can survive without it.
Even some of my friends will ask to meet in nature, as if forgetting that we are nature, not separate from it, so it’s not something we go into, but a part of who we are. Only that many seem to have forgotten this and a whole generation are growing up believing online is best.
Admittedly, there was a time when I was lost and considered myself separate to nature. This to the extent, that when my brother and I bought our first house during my mid-twenties we ripped out the beautiful garden and replaced it with a simple lawn that required very little maintenance. I’ve apologised to the nature angels many times since!
It was when we were living in that house that I discovered yoga and Reiki. The mortgage hung heavily around my neck, so too the job I was doing to pay the mortgage, which pushed me to an edge of questioning what life was all about. There were other factors as many of you know from reading my books, but thank goodness the universe ushered in yoga and Reiki because I don’t know I would be here today if it hadn’t. Life is challenging at times and how anyone manages without a spiritual practice is quite beyond me.
These practices essentially woke me up to the fact that I had choice, that I didn’t need to live a life expected of me, that I had free will, that there is no rule book, no one way to live your life, even though society may tell you otherwise, and that all the physical, mental and emotional discomfort I was experiencing did not need fixing, it was merely highlighting that I was living a life out of balance from my true nature, and that actually what I needed was healing – to come back home to myself again.
And this is the thing; yoga and Reiki (and Ayurveda, albeit that came a few years later), have been extremely abundant in the gifts they have gifted to me, but really the greatest gift has been the opportunity to love and accept myself in a way I never knew was possible, and to come home to a deeper layer of truth – my truer nature – in the process. It is an ongoing journey, there is more to us than we realise and the mind has a tendency to think it knows best, and sometimes we have to lose ourselves to find a deeper level of self again.
When I reflect back, I realise that our greatest harming is not what happens to us externally, but the damage that we inflict on ourselves internally with our separation from our own nature and the negative and self - depreciating inner narrative. I hated myself back then and was always trying to externalise my worth – it’s crazy to me now but these were the days when the number plate on my car seemed important, as if having a 3 or 4 digit number plate proved my worth and status - so it is hardly surprising that I had little respect for nature generally. If you are rejecting yourself, then you are rejecting nature in its entirety, given that you are a part of it.
Fast forward twenty years and life looks and feels incredibly different. One of Yoga Sutras of Patanjali reads:
ahiMsaapratiShThaayaaM tatsannidhou vairatyaagaH (sutra 2.35)
"In the presence of one firmly established in non-violence, all hostilities cease".
What this sutra is telling us that a regular dedicated and committed yoga practice (and this is not just an asana practice) can help us to develop a deeper sense of ahimsa, non-harming, or non-violence. This is the first ethical principle, part of the yamas, mentioned by Patanjali and underpins all the other yamas, this because of its importance as a basis for how we live our life and relate to ourselves and others and this planet.
This is certainly true from my own experience – ahimsa naturally arises the more we practice yoga, this is one of the fruits of practice. Thus not only has yoga gifted me a much more positive and loving relationship with myself and an appreciation of my nature - so that I am not harming myself as I once did with my internal narrative to say nothing of the eating disorder and depressive tendencies - but it has also gifted me a much more positive and loving relationship with all sentient beings and with nature generally, of which we are ALL a part.
Where once I thought nothing of killing an annoying fly or moth, for example, or indeed ripping out a garden, now I wouldn’t dream of taking life so easily, as if my life is more important. Of course this has its issues, I don’t even like pulling up ‘weeds’ because they are living and what right do I have to extinguish life, to cause harm. And I really struggle to witness the destruction of nature, the over development of Guernsey for example is a particular bug bear.
Just the other day a friend of mine was saying how he found a car stuck in his field of daffodils. The driver had wanted to take a photo of the flowers and had thought that driving into the field would make this somehow easier. The person got their photo of daffodils but they made a mess of the field in the process. It makes me question our current levels of sanity, that a photo, one presumes to go on social media, is taken at the cost of destroying nature. But I shouldn’t be surprised, there are plenty more examples on Guernsey of land destruction, just look at the new Equestrian centre, let alone the new golf course.
The thing is though, we have to be careful because the more we believe ourselves to be spectators of nature, the more we destroy it because we think we can live without it, and the more we ignore it, the more nature will bite us back. It’s already happening - our food no longer has enough nutrients in it to support our health and vitality, this to the extent that life expectancy has gone down, meaning our children won’t live as long as our parents, sperm counts are down and children’s hormones are so messed up they don’t even know what sex they are anymore. We don’t see it, but we are essentially killing ourselves with this ongoing separation.
Someone sent me an article a few days ago, here it is, advising that micro plastics have recently been discovered in human blood and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is yet unknown, although there is a sense that this could explain puzzling increases in some health problems including inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer in those under 50, and declining sperm counts. If this carries on then one assumes that we will become extinct as a species and all from our own doing.
I am a great believer that we need to be the change we want to see in the world, that we need to expand our consciousness and become increasingly conscious of the way that we are living and the choices we are individually making which have an impact on the collective. It seems to me that the more we love and accept ourselves as we are, the more we drop into our own nature, the more we appreciate that we are a part of it, not separate to it, not a spectator of it, but nature itself. Maybe then we stand a chance of changing things for our children and their children and generations ahead.
I was inspired a good while ago now by the Mac Macarthy who set up Embercombe in Devon, and introduced me to the concept of the seventh generation principle - the law of Seven Generations advises on the wisdom of considering the impact of any decision on those born seven generations hence. Indigenous cultures made decisions based on this premise, around a fire, from their heart. Mac’s book, The Children’s Fire is really worth a read here.
We have to be careful what we are creating and where the motivation comes from – head or heart, ego or spirit? I have a sense that if looked after ourselves, if we improved our collective relationship with our selves, if we opened ourselves up spiritually, to the reality that we are more than just this body and mind, if we lived more joyfully from our hearts, then we might create a more loving, kind, sustainable and respectful relationship with all life.
Instead we seem stuck in this drive towards more online living, towards more of the “all about me” culture that social media encourages, to seeking happiness through the external and material, to our patriarchal conditioning around power and control, to our obsession with chasing the buck as if money makes it all OK, as if we can buy contentedness and inner harmony.
It feels increasingly that we are lost as a specie, that so many lives are lived on a treadmill that has not end, like hamsters stuck on the wheel, going endlessly round and round and becoming increasingly exhausted in the process, living for retirement that may never come, of being slaves to a system that is increasingly demonstrating its brokenness, education, health care, they’re no longer fit for purpose, life has changed beyond recognition even in my lifetime.
The antidote? Nature. Embracing our own nature. Being kind. Growing our own. Slowly it down. Realising we have choice. Making different choices from the heart. Doing the work to love and accept ourselves. Treading more lightly on this earth. Taking responsibility for our actions. Doing what we can on our small patch to make a positive difference. I don’t have the answers, but I do know that the way we are living is not sustainable and that it has to come back to the individual to affect the collective - that each of us can be the change we want to see in the world if only we choose more consciously and open up to greater love in the process.