Healing happens in the ecosystem, not alone

Growing up poor on a ranch 6.5 miles outside a town of 7,000 people being a latch-key kid means I spent a lot of time away from humans. My earliest friends were the non-human beings around me, including various plants and trees.

Being unsupervised as a little kid in nature means I got taught how to relate to Nature by Nature itself. Each being I met related in a way that was a) in line with its species and b) often totally individual. Sure, some lizards are just lizards. But some lizards want to interact if you're paying attention. Same with trees and snakes and feral cats and cows and butterflies....

The surprising thing, as I look back now, is the total absence of danger or bad encounters I experienced. I mean with rattlesnakes and alligator lizards and herds of cattle. I mean cliff sides and flash floods and breaking tree limbs. I was never actually hurt. Never.

The world of Nature was always so relational and I was a part of it.

It's why I introduce myself to the non-human beings around me when I move somewhere. Why I give offerings. Why I ask permission. Why I listen.

For so many people these beings being beings, that they communicate, are intelligent, are real, exits in a wished-for or a theoretical place. They don't act like these beings are actual individual beings. They walk around ignoring them except when it suits them. They don't give offerings, or ask permission, or listen for yes and no, need and gift. Their awareness is not attuned to the very many people, the hundreds of people, around them in a real way.

Nature, and I mean this as its individual expressions of place - because every place has it's own way about it - has its own culture. And humans mostly don't acknowledge this, much less respect it. We slather our way on everything and do not adapt to the various Nature cultures we are in. And this means we do not benefit as we could and should from how these various nature cultures might affect us.

Folks, being IN the ecosystem of relationship is where the wisdom and healing you are seeking lies. And these effects will likely not be apparent to you and you may deem them too subtle or non-existent and entirely miss the profundity and depth of their doing.

The Cedar may not speak to you in a way you can understand. But it may be responsive to your presence and direct some of its attention toward you. I can assure you, the attention of this being will not be without impact.

When we live in a non-relational awareness, we haven't got developed "Nature noticing" muscles so we just ignore what is there because we think it isn't (there).

And I feel like, if it's not there, who the hell was talking to me when I was little that I could sit down next to a rattlesnake and it would scoot closer and coil up and we'd both nap under the oak tree?

Let's not make that about me. I'm not special. It's just natural. It really, really, really is. And we are, as a species, really missing out and it's killing us.

Like why do you think you are so lonely? So undernourished? So hollow? Have such hardship? Struggle so much?

When we are unconnected in our awareness and day-to-day doings from this relational space, we also exist outside the reach of the natural abundance inherent in that space. And I don't mean like you love Nature and it's special inside you. I mean you live in an actionable way that daily tends to these relationships.

Let that sink in. Meditate on that. Because I just gave you a massive golden key.