The Experience of Nature

How does Nature feel? You tell me, and I’ll tell you. Like a warm breeze on a February day in Texas. Like sunshine on faces. Like the rumbling of stomachs with hunger. Like sobs welling up from chests and tears rolling down cheeks. Like love, acceptance, and understanding when those gifts are shared. Like hate, rejection, and confusion when those are projected instead.

My conditioned interpretation of the phrase, “the experience of Nature,” is something like, “What kinds of things do I experience when I go outside?” I think of a camping trip, a hike, or a visit to the lake. Another way to interpret the phrase—and the way I am considering it today—is, “What kinds of things is Nature experiencing as me?”

Because one of the amazing things that occurs through the mystery of human consciousness is the phenomenon of Nature perceiving itself—of Nature perceiving Nature. The diverse multiplicity of this phenomenon among its human points of perception alone is staggering. As of this writing there are approximately 8.2 billion people living on earth. That is 8.2 billion possible perspectives, experiences, and understandings of Nature—of what is.

How does Nature feel? You tell me, and I’ll tell you. Or at least, I’ll try. Like looking at yourself in a mirror in front of you with a mirror behind. The infinite replications of your image boggle the mind. Nature knows how you take your coffee and precisely why you like it just so. Nature also likes the way coffee tastes in all the other ways coffee is taken across the globe.

Nature feels pain and pleasure; motion and stillness; silence and speaking. In Nature, forms arise out of emptiness. The void produces objects which can only be recognized and experienced because of the emptiness between them. Because of one, Nature knows the other.

And what about people? We complicated organisms of perception? With thoughts, feelings, sensations, and response? Troubles arise among us since Nature’s forgetting of Nature’s nature in us. Nature’s game of hide and seek within each of its perceiving receptors. If we think we’re it, we’re not. And if we think we’re not, we still are. Separate and isolated, we fight, defend, and protect. “There you are!” we can say with a knowing smile. At one with everything we can be kind. Practicing compassion, compassion becomes all. Knowing we are Nature, means all is well. Because, if I am Nature, you are Nature too. As-salamu alaykum.

It is natural for Nature to fear its demise. Through death and rebirth, Nature survives. In tsunami and hurricane, volcanic eruption and earthquake, wildfire and tornado, Nature is as Nature does. Self-generating. Self-regulating. Responding to stimuli. Correcting imbalance. Cold, heartless, and cruel and at the same time always evolving, loving, and nurturing itself. In the midst of death, life goes on. Nature endures. It will be okay.

Thich Nhat Hanh has written about Nature—about us:

Being rock, being gas, being mist, being Mind,
Being the mesons traveling among the galaxies with the speed of light,
You have come here, my beloved one.
You have manifested yourself as trees, as grass, as butterflies,
As single-celled beings and as chrysanthemums;
But the eyes with which you looked at me this morning
Tell me you have never died.

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The Spiritual Naturalist Society works to spread awareness of spiritual naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and help bring together like-minded practitioners in fellowship.

SNS strives to include diverse voices within the spectrum of naturalistic spirituality. Authors will vary in their opinions, terms, and outlook. The views of no single author therefore necessarily reflect those of all Spiritual Naturalists or of SNS.
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