Tag: nature

Blue Sky, Bluebirds, Blue Planet

In the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey realizes that his life is wonderful because of the friends and family he has who lovingly support him through difficult as well as good times. In another touching film, Life Is Beautiful, a man imprisoned with his young son in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II creates a beautiful fantasy world of games for his little boy so he won’t be frightened (or killed). Both of these films hold within them timeless wisdom about focusing on the beauty and love in life instead of pain or fear. In essence, the message is that your primary overview of everything comes from what you hold in your awareness and affects how you experience your life.

Perhaps it’s not always as simple or easy as it sounds, but I’ve found that this perspective helps me live day to day with a more positive outlook. For instance, the temperature may fall below freezing outside on a New England winter’s day, but when I gaze up at the blue sky, the sun is shining and light sparkles off every surface. I can feel its warmth on my face. Further, if I remember that the seasons are always changing, each one unique, I am reminded of the beauty that comes from those changes, and I am grateful for the miracle of each day’s seasonal specialness. If I whine and complain about being cold, I am trapped in a negative experience, which then affects my entire day (or week).

In receiving news about a friend’s health challenge or experiencing one myself, I may initially feel fear and sadness, but if I eventually recall that there is always a soul plan to our lives, I feel comforted and less frightened. Life has beginnings and endings, connections and separations, joys and losses. When I can accept all that as the natural flow of life, my heart remains open, and more than anything else I feel the love that holds everything and everyone together. A friend once said to me, “It’s all in how you frame it.” With every year that passes and every experience I have, I come to see the wise truth of that.

We are all here for a relatively short time on this extraordinarily beautiful blue planet spinning in the cosmos (look again at those views of Earth from space), without a playbook or certainty of any kind, so why not choose to experience that beauty in every moment? And why not feel the love that continuously passes between us—family, friends, and strangers alike? We don’t know why we were born or when we will die, but we know that the sun rises each morning and sets each day in magnificent colorful splendor. A visual representation of the love in our hearts and the light in our souls, available for free on a daily basis.

Look at the sky and in the eyes of those around you. The light you see there will open your heart to the love that flows through the smallest details of your life. Listen to the music of the wind in the trees and the bluebirds and robins singing. The very fact that we are not alone on this journey is a miracle in itself. Together, we are connected to something greater than any one single life. Together, we are the spirit of all life, all consciousness. Infinity magically manifesting itself before our very eyes and ears. As you view it, so it is….

What If…?

What if you found out that today was the last day of your life? How would that affect the way you experienced everything? Would you see and hear the world with fresh eyes and ears, the way a newborn baby does, everything new and wondrous? Would you notice the colors of the trees and flowers, the vast expanse of sky, the music of birdsong, the faces and voices of those you love? Would habit and routine fall away, to be replaced by an appreciation of the miracles we live with on a daily basis?

This thought passed through my mind recently as I walked among the autumn-colored trees at Mt. Auburn. I realized that I was a bit distracted, only half-aware of my surroundings, and I consciously made an effort to become fully present. I sat on a wooden bench and closed my eyes for a few minutes, and when I opened them, there was the world before me in full vibrant living color. My heart reminded me of how fleeting each moment is and how extraordinary every detail. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

We have the opportunity each day to remember that, to live it fully. That’s why we came here, to wake each morning and see sunrise, to pass through our days with awe and celebration. We are all strangers on this planet, slowly recognizing that we are actually family. Whether you think of humans as souls, angels, ETs, or just physical organisms, there is a thread of connection among us. A thread that links us to the stars and the galaxies and to all living matter. We are tiny beings in the cosmos, with one life to live here on Planet Earth. One second in universal timelessness. I don’t want to forget that, ever.

As I continued my walk, I found that everything took on a shimmering aliveness, as if I had never seen it before. Gratitude filled my heart. I know I have the opportunity to press this inner “refresh” button each moment of my life. Many of us experience a renewed outlook if we go through a health crisis or lose someone we love. Or if a particular birthday reminds us of aging. Life becomes precious beyond words. We realize at the deepest level how little “time” we have in the greater scheme of things.

In human-created time, today is always the last day of your life because there is really only the present moment. If I am not fully awake and in love with life now, will I ever be? Today I know I am alive with all my heart and soul. May that continue. And may each of us feel the sweet unrepeatable perfection of everything visible and invisible throughout our lives.

Step Outside…

In the past couple of years, as the planet has been experiencing a frightening pandemic, intense political conflict, and extreme weather patterns (among other things), many of us have found ourselves hesitant to leave our apartments or houses. We learned to work at home and avoid crowded public places, which held potential dangers. Even now, as we begin to venture out more, a kind of post-traumatic stress seems to linger in our consciousness. We have to break through a fear barrier just to go outdoors. It takes a real effort to walk to the corner store, let alone take a plane to another city.

We have collectively fallen into the habit of fear-based inertia, believing it is safer and easier to stay put in our living rooms than to go out into the risk-ridden world. We choose the simulated reality of Netflix or social media over the shining, ever-expanding world outside our doors. This scenario is unlike anything we have ever experienced in our lifetimes, and as we look into the future, we can’t foresee it changing. Perhaps it is we who have to change. Choose to open the door instead of lock it.

For example: On a winter’s day in February when cold or snow could trap you indoors, fearful of the icy sidewalks and the frigid wind, go outside anyway, even for ten minutes. Walk around your neighborhood or in a local park. Breathing the fresh air will clear your lungs—and your mind. So many things have kept us indoors recently. How about using a peaceful but invigorating walk as the daily movement challenge to get you beyond your door, whatever the weather? I promise you it will help break the stay-at-home inclination and also make you feel a lot better physically.

I am finding that when I begin to feel tired or depressed and unwilling to move, that is exactly the time when I need most to take a walk outdoors. If I consciously remind myself how much better I feel when I go outside, then I am able to make the extra effort to walk out the door. And every single time I am rewarded with some special moment in the world around me. In spring it is colorful flowers and newly green leaves; in winter, tree silhouettes and wild geese against brilliant blue skies. Always there are bird calls and the smell of fresh air. And the faces of individuals I pass on the street, who smile brightly if I say hello. All of this is a refresher jumpstart for my body and soul, which I would have missed entirely if I had stayed inside.

So next time you feel incapacitated by the gravity that keeps you immobile in your own living room, not fully engaged in life, make an effort to break free. Step outside and breathe in the beauty of the planet you live on. It’s not as scary as it might seem. In fact, it is still the wondrous place it always was, filled with a variety of climates, habitats, and people. We are just going through birthing pains on our beloved Earth. See them as temporary. Look up at the sun and the always changing sky, listen to the birds singing, smile at your neighbors, and you will start to walk with a sparkle in your eyes and spirit in your steps.

Timeless Slow Motion

The experience of calendar- and clock-oriented time has seemed to fade and often dissolve completely over the past two to three years of radical changes in the world. I find that many people I know comment on how they often have no idea what day or month it is until they stop and think about it. Life has given us the opportunity to live the ancient wisdom of present-moment awareness in which time does not exist. Now is timeless. There is only Presence. It may be hard to get used to at first, but gradually there is a letting go into a greater sense of being alive, one that is not constrained by human parameters or mental constructions that explain the world. Being alive and being aware of life is all there is.

In 2018 I moved from Massachusetts to Florida; in 2020 I moved back. Within that span of time, a pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Busy-ness of all kinds subsided. My own life became mainly morning meditation, yoga, writing, and daily walks on a nature trail outside my door. Most other things fell away. In 2021­–2022, as I lived through a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, even my past identity began to dissolve. I let go completely into appreciating each second of my life. Today, as people try to get back their pre-pandemic lives and return to “normal” activities, I find myself reluctant to become “busy” again. My entire being wants to move in slow motion and be fully present with a minimum of activities, such as writing or walking in Nature. I am most at peace then.

There is no time in Nature. When I walk quietly among the trees, listening to the call of the wood thrush or cardinal, I do not count the minutes and keep track of how much time has passed. I am fully in the moment and nothing else exists. The color of the sky and the movement of the clouds engage my heart and soul. I frequently stop and just stare at the beauty around me. A flower, butterfly, or bee is a tiny miracle; if I walk swiftly, I miss them entirely. “Slow” is a gift; “timeless” is a gift. I am grateful for all that happened in my life that brought me to this space of just plain “being.”

Major events, whether personal (like cancer) or global (like COVID), shatter reality and give us the opportunity to see the world and ourselves with fresh eyes and no past frameworks. If we remain in this open space without refilling it with previous mindsets that keep us spinning in place, then limitless possibilities open up all around us. The most powerful of which is just to see the world each morning with clear vision and no preconceptions.

Allow the present to move you; don’t try to control it or force it along a particular mental path. When you accept each moment as it arises, your soul can guide you in living a life that peacefully flows and flowers, even in the midst of illness or extreme changes in the external world. Indeed, maybe this is why crisis comes to humans—to teach them fluidity and gratitude. Perhaps our souls chose these particular lifetimes on Planet Earth to help humanity evolve into full conscious awareness of timeless presence and connection to something greater in the universe. Slow down, smile, and watch time disappear.

Without a Word

I usually arise around 4 or 5 in the morning when there is predominantly silence everywhere. I sit in the darkness and rest in the stillness, soothed by the absence of noise or traffic outside. Soon the birds begin to sing, and the light of the sun fills the world. There are no voices or conversations interrupting the peace I feel at this time. I am absorbing the experience of morning without a word. Through my ears and eyes; through my cells. Presence.

So much of our lives is based in language, spoken or heard, filling our brains with thoughts. What would it be like to experience the world without mentally describing it to ourselves? Can you see a tree or bird without naming it as such? A person without mentally categorizing gender, age, race? Even beyond that, can you see anything without language, just experiencing it without a word? We humans have learned to divide the world with the words we have created to describe it. Often we aren’t even seeing what we see; instead we perceive a mental image of a word designation we have come to associate with something. We all do this. What if we tried to shift our awareness into just experiencing with no perceptual parameters? Life arising and falling away with no attempts on our part to capture it in words. Like the silence at dawn.

I’m a writer so this can seem like quite a challenge to me at times. Yet when I am walking in Nature or sitting in the silence of sunrise, it frees my mind to just experience the world from my heart, wordlessly. I practice seeing without naming as I walk among the trees, bushes, and flowers of the natural world. I can always write about it later, but in the experience itself I prefer to be and receive the full wonder of what is before me. I grew up an only child on five acres in the Illinois countryside, so I spent a lot of time alone during those years.  I had friends at school, but at home I enjoyed the solitude and silence of Nature. Somehow this has carried over to my adult life. I feel most at home in wordless Presence.

A number of years ago, when I was taking part in traditional fire ceremonies with Maya elders in Guatemala, I experienced this same kind of deep Presence. Even though words in the Maya language were spoken within the ceremony, somehow there was a profound silence that pervaded everything. No conversation, just inner quiet and receptivity. The stillness of Spirit linked our hearts and souls and also brought Nature’s magic beyond human language close to us. Bees circled in the air above the fire before the ceremony at Tikal, and birds swooped through the lingering smoke afterward. It was as if they were weaving the energy of the ceremony into the greater world. And none of us spoke at these times; to be wordlessly present was enough.

Of course, it’s not necessary or realistic to live like this all the time. Our friendships, family, and community arise out of communicating verbally and sharing life experiences, thoughts, and feelings with words. Yet, to step back at times and just be silent is deeply soothing. Your breathing slows, and your whole body relaxes. Space opens up within you for the soul to expand into present-moment awareness. Those who meditate or take long quiet walks experience this. I feel it in the stillness before the day begins. If we each found our way to including such experiences in our daily lives, perhaps we would be less busy and stressed. Sometimes the most profound moments of life occur without a word.