by John King, reposted from his Blog Muddy Feet: Meeting Nature on Nature’s Terms ~ A Blog about a Druid living in the Oak woods of Ardnamurchan
So are you, well that’s my belief….whatever your belief, religion or if you have no faith at all the reality is that there is something inside of us that animates us. What do you call it?
Quoting from the website of Aubrey Marcus:
You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix and small enough to be carried by a sperm. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most advanced living thing.
But what makes ‘thing’ move?
What makes it breathe?
It’s this question that I refer to when I say “I am spirit” so how do you perceive this question?
This then begs a further question; If we acknowledge spirit within our selves how far do we extend that thinking process?
My own thinking on this has changed over the years, initially I would have assigned this “consciousness” to humans and animals and at a stretch to the insect world. However in recent years the scientific community have proved that trees communicate through terpenes in the air and also through the root system via the mycelial network that is present and extends through the earth linking their root systems.
So now I have modified my understanding to include the plant kingdom. But what of rocks and water, fire and air? Over the last nine years of living very close to the land in what most would consider a remote location I have come to believe that even that which has at first sight seemed inanimate will communicate with us if we listen attentively enough. This is how my spiritual practice of meeting Nature on Nature’s Terms developed.
“The land itself invited me.”
Where I live is an ancient volcanic area and I find that when there is no wind and the sounds of nature are stilled you can actually hear the earth, its a sort of low hum. My current belief is that the whole of creation is animate from the way in which atoms form and coalesce to form all matter whether it be the ubiquitous fruit fly or a galaxy, there is a consciousness that pervades all. I’m sure that some of you reading this will name it as God, others Atman but for me its enough to know that it exists.
