Meditation begins as a micro experience of self-awareness before expanding toward a higher state of cosmic consciousness. When we are disconnected from nature, however, the expansion of our practice can become stagnant—it is often a struggle just to sit and breathe. The opportunity to marinate in fresh air and pristine surroundings creates a direct line back to the very core of our being—rejuvenating the senses and revitalizing our continuous evolution. On a recent trip to upstate New York, I summoned the healing power of the natural world: a potent memory that exists within each and everyone one of us on the deepest, most cellular level.
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The birds that chirp and sing their song to greet the morning remind me that on this day, I can begin anew. As the fog of last night’s deep, catatonic sleep begins to lift, I become aware that I am disoriented. How quickly I’d been plucked from the bustling city trenches and deposited into this pristine cradle of life; lush for miles in every direction. There is a unique quality here, a primordial stillness as though time has been suspended for all of eternity. Though it is invisible, I can see with my own eyes the wind’s path as it roves its way through the leaves overhead that shade me like a canopy, before swirling onward to the treetops that stretch to an infinite green horizon. It is as though I’ve landed in a rainforest—the sounds and smells of this Northeastern jungle enveloping me like a cocoon, keeping me safe, nurtured and content.
There is nothing else I need now.
How soothing it is to simply do nothing but marvel at the beauty and wonders of Mother Nature in her natural habitat. Hard at work and yet, somehow, she makes it look so effortless—a metaphor for a life well lived. The wisdom of the trees, for instance: a physical manifestation of the creative life force that permeates all living things. The way they sprout from their seed and surge, penetrating the Earth as they shoot themselves skyward to the heavens. They branch off; their extensions like capillaries and veins and autonomic nervous systems. Much of everything that has been granted life functions in this very same way. The arteries that extend from the human heart to maintain life, beating in perfect organic rhythm, is no different than the vegetation that burgeons from the Earth’s soil. The way our planet pulsates as though it were heartbeat of our corner of the universe. And how the cosmos expand toward infinity, branching off and forming webs of life and streams of consciousness: this is creation in action made manifest.
Cosmic energy may not always be visible to the naked eye, but its vast body of work is so boundless that it is impossible not to witness it in some capacity. It is here in a heightened state of pure bliss awareness and oneness with totality, that it becomes possible to remember the interconnectedness of everything.