Communing with Nature David Tuffley “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.” -- Mother Teresa Published by David Tuffley at Smashwords Copyright 2011 David Tuffley Smashwords Edition, License Notes This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author. Table of Contents A. Communing with Nature A.1. Felt-connectedness with all things A.2. Practice mindfulness A.3. Relax and merge A.4. Unconditional love and compassion A.5. Source awareness A.Communing with Nature I have always thought of Nature as the manifestation of the Cosmic Mind on the physical plane. There is a pervasive non-conceptual intelligence that permeates Nature and which finds expression in the billions of life-forms and intricate ecosystems that make up the biosphere of this planet. Anyone who invests the time to know Nature is richly rewarded for their effort. To experience close communion with Nature is one of the greatest pleasures a person can have. All the more so because it is free with no strings attached. Communing with Nature is a pathway to Enlightenment. Nature wants you to commune with it. If you extend your mind into Nature, it will extend its mind into yours, meeting you half way, creating common ground, revealing its astonishing beauty to your Intuition. It is a truly mind expanding experience and one which requires no hallucinogenics to achieve. Here is how you can awaken your Highest Self by merging your mind with the larger mind of Nature. A.1.Felt-connectedness with all things Enlightenment occurs spontaneously when you create the right conditions in your consciousness. The foundation of this mind-set is having a sense of felt connectedness with all things in the Universe. You feel that you are intimately connected with everything else in the Universe, not separate as your egoic mind would lead you to believe. To cultivate this awareness of connectedness, remind yourself that all entities in the Universe are temporary. They arise from the primordial source, exist for a time, and then dissolve back into the source. There are no exceptions. You and I are an expression of this underlying source and share the same destiny along with everything else. A Physicist would say that in the Universe there is constant movement from energy to matter and back to energy. Imagine an animated Yin-Yang symbol with its spiral movement. Think of what a moving fractal looks like. These are representations of this constantly moving cycle. Our challenge is to not resist this movement. It is futile to try. We must make a virtue of necessity and embrace this movement wholeheartedly, surrendering to the flow. Surrendering to the flow means letting go of the mental concepts that form the structures of your sense of identity. Let go of them willingly instead of clinging to them until they are taken away forcibly by the movement of time. These structures were never permanent, and you need not fear losing them. They are not the real you. Consider the Taoist metaphor of being swimmers in the great river of life. We can go with or against the current. The river does not mind either way. Many people swim against the current as they play their various games and become exhausted without making much progress, their lifeless bodies eventually floating out to sea. The wise among us know that we are all destined to flow into the ocean at the end of our lives, so they swim peacefully with the current, enjoying the journey and arrive at the ocean knowing that this was always their destination. You need not worry that by swimming with the current you will arrive at the sea too soon. The river mouth in this metaphor is not a fixed point. You reach the sea when you have exhausted your life force. By swimming with the current you achieve movement while conserving you life force. A.2.Practice mindfulness Mindfulness in a general sense is a heightened consciousness in which you are able to experience the world around you clearly and directly, without delusion or preconceived ideas. Being mindful in Nature allows the subtle complexities of Nature to be revealed to you and for those impressions to be received without being distorted through judgment. It is a common mental habit to receive a sense perception and straight away start processing it into various categories, working on it until the conclusion bears little resemblance to external reality. A.3.Relax and merge Many people in the developed world are tense and stressed. Our preoccupations with the many complications and challenges of daily life create a tension that becomes the baseline of our life. But look around in Nature, most of what you see is tranquil most of the time. Nature gently flows in quietly evolving cycles from one state to its opposite. Violent explosions of energy such as storms are the exception that proves the rule that Nature is mostly tranquil. Communing with Nature is releasing your worries and stress-producing thoughts, and, breathing deeply you synchronise your inner world with the slower, more relaxed rhythms of Nature in the here and now. Past and future do not exist in this mind-set, only the present. You have achieved this state of merged presence when you are experiencing Nature in a fully conscious, non-conceptual way. It is heightened awareness without the mental chatter. You might recall this is the essence of meditation. As you progress with this practice you become aware that in Nature there a vast moving river of intelligent energy all around you. This passage from Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, illustrates the point beautifully: However, amongst the thousands (of travellers wishing to cross the river) there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle. They heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me. The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. A.4.Unconditional love and compassion Aligning your inner nature with the larger Nature outside and establishing this as a habit will bring with it an increasingly powerful feeling of unconditional love for all things. This is the essential quality of Nature as it nourishes all life. As a natural consequence of the experience of unconditional love, you are likely to have an increasing desire to help others in the spirit of compassion. This might take the form of spontaneous acts of kindness, ‘paying it forward’, or other forms of self-less action. All of these are the result of allowing the outer reality of Nature to become your inner reality. You come to realise that the non-conceptual intelligence that pervades Nature manifests itself as Intuition. What could be simpler, or more beautiful, than to build that bridge between outer and inner reality? This is a natural path towards cultivating an awareness of your Highest Self, and creating the right conditions for Enlightenment to happen. A.5.Source awareness As you increasingly dwell in a mindset of unconditional love and compassion, you intuitively sense that you have reached the threshold of a great experience, that of pure Source awareness. No words can adequately describe the blissful immersion of this experience. It feels like an ecstatic home-coming. The Source is experienced as a formless clear light that you know was never born and will never die. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Source is poetically described as the luminous splendour of the colourless light of emptiness. You realise that at your core you are this clear light, this beatific non-conceptual intelligence that permeates the entire universe. You don’t just think it, you experience the knowing at a deep level. The recognition of this deep bond liberates you from the fear of death, changing the way you think forever. By summonsing the courage to leave what is left of your egoic self behind, and stepping across that experiential threshold you will have achieved Enlightenment. Now the challenge will be to maintain Enlightenment, or Source awareness and continue to dwell in an enlightened state despite the mundane world clamouring for attention. The End About the author David Tuffley PhD combines a career as a university lecturer and researcher with his very personal search for spiritual enlightenment over the past 40 years. The Bodhicaryavatara is the fruit of that journey. David's academic interests range across Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Literature, History, Software Engineering and Architecture. He blends his broad academic knowledge with the ancient practice of Buddhism and Taoism to create a truly unique work of timeless value. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tuffley/ Smashwords Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tuffley See these other titles by the same author: Buddhism: The Essence: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26233 The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49330 The Bodhicaryavatara: A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/45368 The Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu’s Timeless Classic for Today: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25703 Zen Koans: Ancient Wisdom for Today: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25961 Satori Now: Awakening your Highest Self: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25629 Cultivating Intuition: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26230 Leadership & the Tao: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28342 What happens when I die? https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26221 Email Etiquette: Netiquette in the Information Age: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49923