Our Spiritual Connection to Nature

 Ancient wisdom describes human beings as having five layers of experience: the environment,
 the physical body, the mind, the intuition and our self or spirit.

Our connection with the environment is our first level of experience, and one of the most important. 

If our environment is clean and positive, it has a positive impact on all the other layers of our existence.

 As a result, they come into balance and we experience a greater sense of peace and connection 

within ourselves and with others around us.

( Ashtanga Yoga Asanas performed by Christina Exarchou )

An intimate relationship with the environment is built into the human psyche. 

Historically, nature, mountains, rivers, trees, the sun, the moon have always been honored

 in ancient cultures. It's only when we start moving away from our connection to nature

 and ourselves that we begin polluting and destroying the environment.

 We need to revive these attitudes that foster our connection with nature.

In ancient times, if a person cut one tree, he planted five in return. The ancient people did not wash clothes

 in holy rivers; only ashes from cremation were submerged in the river so that

 everything dissolved back into nature. 

We need to revive traditional practices of honoring and conserving nature.

Nature has its own means of balance. If you observe nature, you will see that the five elements that form its

 basis are opposed to each other. Water destroys fire, fire destroys air. Then there are so many species in 

nature -- the birds, reptiles, mammals -- and all these different species are hostile towards each other,

 yet nature balances them out. We need to learn from nature how to balance opposing forces, both within 

ourselves and in the world around us.

(Text by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

Q:  But I was born as a body, 

     in a body and shall die with the body, as a body.

M: This is your misconception. Enquire, investigate, doubt yourself and others. 

      To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions;      

         if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate. 

      Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd:

      both logic and experience contradict it. 

Q: All right, I shall not insist that I am the body. 

     You have a point here. But here and now, as I talk to you,

        I am in the body - obviously. The body may not be me, but it's mine. 

M: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence. 

     Hence the entire universe is your body. In that sense - I agree.

  from "I AM THAT"
  Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Here, the land has crows instead of seagulls. 

Everything around smells like birth and decay.

 Everything is in decay : to give life to everything else around.

It seems like nature is in charge here.

People are small - nature immense, powerful. 

The trees grow faster here. 

They eat decayed dog and cow flesh and grow in a night. 

The tree trunks absorb death like straws. 

And then they grow in a night. 

Everything around is so much bigger - we have no control, nature takes over.

We are like little ants, slowly moving, eating, absorbing, wanting, lusting for more and more. 

Always asking for more. 

Always asking for that extra more. 

Land of Magic

Dogs barking, a priest preaching in Hindi, 

water running through pipes and drops falling on the moist soil. 

Crickets chanting on the trees while gigantic bats fly under the moonlight

 leaving their creepy shadows on the ground. 

Horns beeping on the main road.

A trance party traveling through sound waves : sometimes loud and rhythmic ,

 conjoins the priest's voice and then vanishes again with the wind, 

letting the crickets lead the chorus. 

Two energies on my right and left shoulder. 

Each flying on their own plane, inside their own bubble : 

Love and pain, worries and dreams … 

Different worlds and thoughts 

colliding on that same piece of Indian land. 

And so we are here now, pausing "reality" for as long as that can be.
I wonder if we ever do return in this so called "reality",
I wonder if we were even ever there.

Who needs to know how it feels like sitting here
listening to this rhapsody of crickets, priests and barking dogs?
 Who's even going to understand how good this silent party was?

 How colourful the colours were? 

How yellow light rays were?

Words have no power. Experiences can not be transmitted.

Silence.

No one needs to hear.

No one needs to know.

The stars will be the same. The moon will be the same. 

The sun will still rise the day after and the day after that.

Colours will fade.

Skin and cells will fall and new ones will be born.