the threads that connect
WORKING TO CREATE THE FOUNDATION FOR A WORLD WHERE WE ALL BELONG
“Much of our lives we contribute to the creation of structure which protects us, but which also separates us from the beauty we may seek, we may need, with nature. ”
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TRANSCRIPT
Many conversations and inquiries these days are being abruptly entered into, participated in, and ended. Subject matters are not being respected, nor are the contributors. Without an initial humbleness to the conversation process, a breakdown occurs and little is gained by the effort. We need to approach our conversations with care, continue this care throughout the exchange, and conclude our conversations in this same way. It is with this manner that conflict can be replaced by a greater understanding and acceptance. The process takes on a beauty of form.
An ecologically conscious relationship with nature must also be approached in a similar manner. We need to develop methods of understanding and sensitize ourselves to the possibility of a deeper connection to the world around us, approaching it with care and acceptance so that we may be able to develop heightened sensory experiences and recognize the power of a greater connection.
So it is also true for our personal conversations with our moving bodies. Fluidity, smoothness, and beauty are found not merely in a specific isolated movement, but in the way the movement is approached, executed, and thereafter completed. The smooth transition elevates the movement to one of art, not merely skill.
As we create beauty, understanding, and form of movement with our bodies, we also create beauty, understanding, and form of connection as we seek to develop a conscious relationship with nature. Both require us to approach with care, respect, and humbleness in order to realize the potential, and then relate the movement or thought into our new created space. The completion, the reflection, are where form is realized and the understanding takes place.
Throughout our lives, we are continually interacting with our environment, probing, responding, making our way in a varied and complex maze of choices and opportunities. Our focus may be outward, inward, and even noncommittal. We have our senses, our minds, our hearts, and our souls to give us a context and a place from which to continue our path forward. At times we are intentional, and at times we are pulled by the forces of others.
With this world of possible connections, our relationships are defined by the manner we choose to use our senses, hearts, minds, and souls. Depth of understanding is enmeshed with this manner of approach. How, then, can I develop a deeper understanding of my place in the world, in nature?
Like the beauty of movement of our bodies, the beauty of a conscious relationship with nature requires us to prepare ourselves to realize this beauty. It is elusive and stubborn if we do not grace it with our respect. If we are to transcend such barriers, we must assess where we are. Much of our lives we contribute to the creation of structure which protects us, but which also separates us from the beauty we may seek, we may need, with nature. The body cannot achieve its true beauty of movement without bringing us to the place and form we seek, with purpose, intention, smoothness, and then returning us thereafter, like the story, a journey, taking us somewhere and bringing us back, not to the same space, but an expanded one with new connections.
Nature asks the same of us: To approach her with care, intention, purpose, humbleness. One’s conversation with the soul of the Earth, the tree, the sparrow, depends upon how we choose to develop a connection with nature. We must accept that we are the same as nature, not separate or above. From a position of equalness, sameness, we can then approach all that nature offers us. A conscious relationship with nature requires us to open ourselves to the idea of something beyond passive interaction, to something intentional, purposeful, to reveal the depth of possibility of experience. If one can overcome the initial hesitancy, reluctance, and embrace the notion of a different way to relate, not as walking through, but as walking amongst the soul of the Earth, the richness of nature’s expressions will be revealed to us.
Our approach to nature begins with humbleness, a recognition of our shared space from which to develop a conscious relationship of depth and connection. We cannot rush this goal, short-circuit its requirements. Attention, detail, and openness are necessary. We must grace this new-found space of knowledge with reflection, thus bringing beauty to the learning, the process.
These are the conversations we must have with ourselves and others, as we build upon our personal relationship with the wider natural world, and as we share our connection with nature and others who also seek out a different way to relate and engage with nature’s extensions of ourselves, the conscious world around us, and learn to be of it, and not apart from it. We shall approach these conversations with care, this shared experience, and reflect upon our thoughts thereafter. The beauty of the movement….the beauty of connecting to nature.