Simply Sitting with Nature...

Nature, like art and music, is a great equalizer it seems, where we can get past the dramas of life and see into the Heart of things as they *truly* are – to what’s underneath it all – the Essence of Life. And Nature provides such wonderful metaphors for this, if we just sit and listen… So I have resolved to spend as much time out in Nature as possible – simply sitting with Nature. Oh and doing some yard work and gardening and puttzing as well, but mainly sitting, watching, and re-connecting.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday I spent several hours out in this chair, just sitting in the alive Stillness - *feeling* Nature – noticing Nature - sometimes morning, sometimes late afternoon. It’s been a very long time since I’ve spent this kind of quiet time just sitting out in Nature. There have been various excuses. But I am committing to “sitting with Nature” again – and reconnecting with my True Nature. It kind of feels like I’m starting all over again: this connecting with Nature, this getting to know Self. She’s been hidden under layers of drama – contracted - and needs to relax and open up – again.

When I first went out into the yard and placed the chair under the tree on Saturday morning there was an awkwardness there, like I was a stranger in my own back yard. I sat with it, looking for connection. And as I sat, it allowed me to connect inwardly, to become aware of the body sensations and the feelings that have accumulated and been trapped there over time through 3 months of family drama – and before. And so I became aware of the little orphans inside me that wanted to be heard. So I listened and felt their pain, their tightness, their constriction, their fear. I noticed that there is a very deep pain that I haven’t allowed to be met, acknowledged and expressed – maybe ever. So I spent some time meeting her, ever so gently, acknowledging her - noticing where in the body she was trapped. It took about an hour of sitting before I took my first deep breath and opened to her. And then the emotions flowed. Am sure it will take a few more meetings with this orphaned one before she’s willing to come home. All in time…

I read about John Daido Loori one time. He was a Zen monk as well as a photographer who took photographs of Nature (amongst other things). I remember in one write-up he talked about approaching and greeting the subject in nature that you want to photograph – be it tree, leaf, flower, bush or bird – and *wait* to be acknowledged, as if creating relationship with the Essence of it first, and waiting for the reply. At least that’s what I remember from the article. I tried to find it again on line, but couldn’t, so those of you who know about him can probably speak to the accuracy of this. So Sunday when I sat, I did so with a different approach, with respect and awareness, and *I* felt greeted, received and welcomed by Nature – especially from the trees; except maybe the Honey Locust. She’s still a bit reserved, not fully open yet. But the Maple that I sat under greeted me with her energy and welcomed me there, as if welcoming an old friend who forgot they knew each other. The two small adolescent conjoined cottonwood twins across the yard acknowledged my presence, (they are only 13 years old), and Grandfather Spruce just stood there – observing it all, like a protective sentinel.

I watched a Robin perched on a low branch in one of the cottonwoods as she sang her song. She hopped down from the branch and zigzagged her way across the lawn. I say zigzagged because there was a pattern: wait, head cock left, then right, look and listen to the ground for movement, dig with her beak, run off in an angle to the next spot; wait, listen/look, dig, run and so on across the yard. Mr. Black Bird flew in to scold Ms. Robin on the lawn. She just stood still, not a move, while Black Bird squawked at her from his lofty perch. Robin just waited until Black Bird was through squawking and flew off, and *then* she resumed her pattern of waiting, listening, hearing/seeing, and acting as she *gradually* made her way across the back yard.

And of course I couldn’t help but see the metaphor in all this about how I move through life. If I sit and wait in stillness, listening, watching, I *see* and *hear* what I need to see and hear. It happens every time. And then I can act accordingly – I know what action to take. And with this inner knowing I can just keep going – undeterred – zigzagging through life. Even when heckled by the so-called “Black Birds” in my life, I could still move (or not move) in such a way that I meet the *Essence* of others. It seems then that drama would turn into Dharma… Nature is a wonderful teacher…

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

there is a field.

I’ll meet you there…"

Rumi

~*~