The Nature Body

I’m laughing at myself because as I was thinking about the topic of the nature body, I accidentally signed up for a forest bathing event I noticed on MeetUp. It really was an accidental click, but I’m going.

You may have noticed that I sometimes refer to our three inner operating systems. The one that seems to give us the most difficulty is the Survival Operating System because it is unmindful and reactive. We all seem to have lots of stored emotional energy, limiting beliefs, and even trauma stored in this part of our consciousness. These depth charges ignite when triggered by situations or events in our waking lives and catapult us back to childhood coping strategies that can be broadly categorized into fight, flight, or freeze reactions.

The Survival Operating System has solid evolutionary benefits too. It can keep us safe in the presence of actual danger. It is instinctual, so it seems to have some silent wisdom about the world around us.

Our Survival OS instincts arise from our Nature Body. This is the part of us that is most closely connected with the natural world. It is the part of us that communicates with trees, and chipmunks, and clouds in the sky. In its purest state, it engages in rhapsodic communion with the tapestry of life (including those items in our environment that we, in our limited pseudo-wisdom, consider to be inanimate, like rocks, lava, water, and sunlight). It will, without any thinking involved, move us away from peril and toward nourishment.

I love C. S. Lewis’ description of life on the planet Perelandra. The hero lands on a planet covered with water and full of floating islands. Each island has a specialty. One has food trees. One has trees that pour out fresh water for drinking and bathing. One provides comfortable places for rest. Our hero moves about the water world and each type of island comes near just as he becomes aware of the need for it.

Is this how we are meant to live on Earth, our beautiful planet?

For most of us, our Nature Bodies are not in their pure state. They are cluttered, as mentioned above with energies we have stored. Energy naturally flows and moves, so these stored charges are unnatural. Where do they come from?

As we have collectively developed our Success Operating Systems, as we have become enamored with achievement/failure, as we have developed the habit of analyzing everything mentally, we have forgotten how to process energy—especially emotional energy--in real time. We have forgotten to feel our feelings fully, to allow them to run their wave-like courses through our minds, bodies, and energy systems. Instead, we halt the flow of these energy waves and store them in our energy fields for (hopefully) later processing.

This storage strategy makes sense from the Success OS perspective. We can’t slow down enough when we are busy to just feel. There is more to do. We don’t want our emotions to make us feel or seem vulnerable to others who may not have our best interests at heart.

Alas, these stored energies confuse our connection with the Nature Body. We cannot trust our instincts because what we are moved to do may be an impulse coming from a wound rather than from clear input from nature itself. We may feel like running when there is no actual danger. Or we may desperately want to fight, to lash out, even though there is no true enemy in sight.

All the healing work our species has been doing over the past couple of centuries has helped us clear some of these charges and find ways to not add any more of them to an already crowded space. At the University of Santa Monica, our teachers told us that every time one person heals a festering issue, the entire species is uplifted.

So, maybe we are ready to explore what our Nature Bodies are actually for.

Most importantly, the Nature Body is the vehicle through which our higher selves can experience physical life. This is already happening in all of us to some degree, depending upon how junked up our energy field is with stored charges. We just don’t know it’s happening because we are so busily distracted by the constant noise in our local minds.

A friend of mine accused me, many years ago, of being anti-intellectual. I reacted defensively and denied it. But maybe now I can admit it’s true.

For me, I’m finding more value in activating my awareness of my Nature Body and its glorious interactions with the world around me.

I like thinking too. I enjoy synthesizing information and creating new ways to express ideas. Yet, I feel committed to balancing out this type of activity with time quietly walking under the trees or sitting in the garden. Time to learn the language of Nature.

The Nature Body is the bridge between our busy minds and our transcendent selves. The mentally-oriented Success Operating System has no direct way to connect with the transcendent mind. It cannot inform that higher mind, nor can it receive inspiration from it except through the intermediary of the Nature Body and its close connection with nature and its intimacy with the body.

Yes, we want to clear out our stored charges. But we also want to direct our attention to the joyful interaction we are already having with Earth and Life.

Seems like it’s time to go outside. Enjoy!