Naturalness and Honoring Nature

What constitutes naturalness but a sense of physical and mystical belonging? What is naturalness but absolute freedom? It is the recognition that one is animate, animated, and defined by soulfulness. It implies an honoring and integration of both what is instinctual and what is intuitive. To be awake to one’s nature is to be awake to the reality of both worlds. It is to inhabit one’s life unapologetically, without shame: to celebrate the body’s imperfections as well as its grace, to use the body to breath, dance, drum, make love, pray, and sing. Naturalness means drawing in the largeness of the sky and the rough beauty of the ocean and at the same time, one’s own largeness and rough beauty. There is, after all, essence within and all around the body -- in the rivers and trees and in the creatures that surround them.  Today we move thorough the world with our heads down, lost in thoughts, with worries and anxieties. Unaware of the fact that we are held in the gaze and graces of other creatures, we seek connection and substantiation in all the wrong places. 

Together with the spirit of soil, stone, water, and wood, our ancestors lived in a world less lonely than the one we lived in today. They lived in community, close to the earth and the creatures of the earth. Their days were spent preparing their living quarters, hunting for food, cooking and feasting, and telling stories. Life was to be survived, but in a rich and ritualistic manner. Inherently, our ancestors understood that we cannot be truly ourselves in any manner without our companions being found through the earth.  

As Rumi knew, it is evidence of the beloved spark in all things. Our dismissal of nature and of our own sensual belonging has left us lonely and restless. While we seem to have advanced in terms of scientific understanding, our self- understanding is waning. 

Nature is a grand playground in which we adventure, climb, fall, heal, rest, risk, and ultimately, become. Spending time in nature, we grow in self-awareness and self- respect. The wilderness without reflects the wilderness within. There is nothing at all shameful about being corporeal and of the earth. It is an honor to exist in the world, to participate in the play and revelation of divinity. 

Brought up in the fertile atmosphere of the ancient East, Jalaluddin Rumi viewed the dynamic, soulful presence of the desert, forests, mountains, and ocean as a cloak weaved and worn by the Beloved. He offered his poetry as a hymn and prayer to nature and to God. As a true poet, he saw everything in nature as suggestive, symbolic. All things are, according to Rumi, reaching for divinity. More accurately, they are seeking to recover their intrinsic divinity. The earth is a great teacher in this, a master of endurance, patience, renewal, strength, and vision. It is cyclical awareness that defines and ennobles the earth: the cry of entrance and exit, the endless flow and metamorphosis of spirit.