Rebecca, thank you. I am glad the written version found you where my spoken one did not, which tells me something about how this practice wants to be handed over and how I am still working through it.
What has changed in me is mostly speed. I used to go outside to get something, and now I go out to be in the company of beings that were already there and did not need me to arrive. It took me a while to move that from something I believed to something I do.
The less flattering part of the answer is in the post itself. I have been teaching this for a while and I still walked past that tree several times without seeing it. What changed is my sense of how much I miss, and that awareness is what invites me to slow down now.
For everyday life, start with whatever is closest to your door. What is nearby that you already pass every day?
Oh, I think I received it today because I was more in the proper head space! I was literally sitting under a tree when I read this and found myself feeling grateful for the shade and way the breeze moved its leaves. I felt comforted -- like I had company, which is something I am seeking more of these days. Your practice teaches me how to find that in the natural world ... when I am receptive to it.
So I guess -- if I were to put a finer point on the question -- what I am wondering is, do you feel more accompanied and comforted and met in your daily life, now that you no longer limit the beings who can co-create those feelings within you to the human kind?
Rebecca, you were sitting under a tree while you read it. That is the whole practice, and you did it without needing me.
What has changed is that I am now noticing how often I am being invited. The shade, the breeze in the leaves, the crow that stays on the branch when I stop walking. Those invitations were always being offered, and for most of my life I walked past them at speed. The practice did not add anything to the world. It made me available to what was already extending itself toward me.
So the answer to your question is that I am met more often, though meetings were never in short supply. What changed is my willingness to accept.
This has not replaced human company, and I would not want anyone to hear that it could or should. What it has done is widen the circle of who counts as company, which is a different thing from filling a gap.
You said you are seeking more of this lately. The tree you sat under is still there. Perhaps you can return to that one rather than look for a better one?
Hi Jeffrey -- I'm not looking for a "better one" 🙂 -- (not sure how you read that out of my comment)? (I actually moved because the tree and I were sharing the space with too many biting bugs – which took me to the limits of my ability to receive!)
If anything I am seeking to tune more into the abundance around me. More, not "better." 🙂 (drawing my own boundaries around my willingness to be consumed by biting insects.)
Plants, like animals, offer sheer presence unmediated by their own ego needs. The needs and barriers of human egos can make it difficult to rest fully in the comfort that fellow humans can offer. I am wondering how the natural world provides a much more vast and limitless context for the sense of connection we all seek.
Rebecca, the "better one" was mine rather than anything you said. It came from something I watch for in myself, which is the search for the ideal connection instead of the actual one standing in front of me. People do this with friends, waiting for the one who will understand everything, and I catch myself doing it with places. The tree that invites you in is rarely the one you would have chosen.
You have found something real about ego. An oak is not managing an impression of itself while you sit with it, and that does remove a layer of work that human company requires.
Where I would hesitate is on the leap from no ego to no needs. The tree you sat under has requirements as fierce as anyone's, for water, for light, for the fungal networks under your feet. It is indifferent to your opinion of it and likely entirely uninterested in whether you stay. The mosquitoes were not an interruption of that encounter. They were the rest of the invitation, and you drew a boundary, which is a relationship rather than a failure.
The vastness you are pointing at is real, though I would locate it differently. What the living world asks for is different. Not flattery, reassurance, or agreement, but presence and some return.
Which is why I think of this as kinship rather than refuge.
Likewise, this exchange is helping me to further develop my thinking and practice in this area, and I really value your deepening into it with me.
Beautiful, Jeffrey. I didn't quite grasp this when you explained it to me but I think I do now. I want to bring this practice into my everyday life.
What I find myself wondering is how has this practice changed you?
Rebecca, thank you. I am glad the written version found you where my spoken one did not, which tells me something about how this practice wants to be handed over and how I am still working through it.
What has changed in me is mostly speed. I used to go outside to get something, and now I go out to be in the company of beings that were already there and did not need me to arrive. It took me a while to move that from something I believed to something I do.
The less flattering part of the answer is in the post itself. I have been teaching this for a while and I still walked past that tree several times without seeing it. What changed is my sense of how much I miss, and that awareness is what invites me to slow down now.
For everyday life, start with whatever is closest to your door. What is nearby that you already pass every day?
Oh, I think I received it today because I was more in the proper head space! I was literally sitting under a tree when I read this and found myself feeling grateful for the shade and way the breeze moved its leaves. I felt comforted -- like I had company, which is something I am seeking more of these days. Your practice teaches me how to find that in the natural world ... when I am receptive to it.
So I guess -- if I were to put a finer point on the question -- what I am wondering is, do you feel more accompanied and comforted and met in your daily life, now that you no longer limit the beings who can co-create those feelings within you to the human kind?
Rebecca, you were sitting under a tree while you read it. That is the whole practice, and you did it without needing me.
What has changed is that I am now noticing how often I am being invited. The shade, the breeze in the leaves, the crow that stays on the branch when I stop walking. Those invitations were always being offered, and for most of my life I walked past them at speed. The practice did not add anything to the world. It made me available to what was already extending itself toward me.
So the answer to your question is that I am met more often, though meetings were never in short supply. What changed is my willingness to accept.
This has not replaced human company, and I would not want anyone to hear that it could or should. What it has done is widen the circle of who counts as company, which is a different thing from filling a gap.
You said you are seeking more of this lately. The tree you sat under is still there. Perhaps you can return to that one rather than look for a better one?
Hi Jeffrey -- I'm not looking for a "better one" 🙂 -- (not sure how you read that out of my comment)? (I actually moved because the tree and I were sharing the space with too many biting bugs – which took me to the limits of my ability to receive!)
If anything I am seeking to tune more into the abundance around me. More, not "better." 🙂 (drawing my own boundaries around my willingness to be consumed by biting insects.)
Plants, like animals, offer sheer presence unmediated by their own ego needs. The needs and barriers of human egos can make it difficult to rest fully in the comfort that fellow humans can offer. I am wondering how the natural world provides a much more vast and limitless context for the sense of connection we all seek.
Rebecca, the "better one" was mine rather than anything you said. It came from something I watch for in myself, which is the search for the ideal connection instead of the actual one standing in front of me. People do this with friends, waiting for the one who will understand everything, and I catch myself doing it with places. The tree that invites you in is rarely the one you would have chosen.
You have found something real about ego. An oak is not managing an impression of itself while you sit with it, and that does remove a layer of work that human company requires.
Where I would hesitate is on the leap from no ego to no needs. The tree you sat under has requirements as fierce as anyone's, for water, for light, for the fungal networks under your feet. It is indifferent to your opinion of it and likely entirely uninterested in whether you stay. The mosquitoes were not an interruption of that encounter. They were the rest of the invitation, and you drew a boundary, which is a relationship rather than a failure.
The vastness you are pointing at is real, though I would locate it differently. What the living world asks for is different. Not flattery, reassurance, or agreement, but presence and some return.
Which is why I think of this as kinship rather than refuge.
Likewise, this exchange is helping me to further develop my thinking and practice in this area, and I really value your deepening into it with me.