Back To Your Nature

We often hear people talking about “getting back to nature.” These are usually outdoorsy types, who wear all-weather gear all year round because they find themselves exposed to the elements for extended periods at least every other weekend.

But whether you are a fan of hiking up hills at the weekend, or you prefer to sit in front of Netflix boxsets on your days off, if you wish to own your place in this existence then it’s worth knowing something of nature. Because we are all, each of us, part of it.

Despite our laptops and smartphones, our cars and suits, our shoes and cutlery, we are very much animals. Even with all the pretence and artifice, we still need to eat, give birth, and go to the toilet. We are as much a part of nature as the moths that bump around our lightbulbs. We are as much a part of nature as the midnight slugs that munch on the heritage carrots that we’ve planted in our designer vegetable patches. We are as much a part of nature as the seagulls that circle above us, waiting to swoop down and steal our sandwiches. We as much a part of nature as the sun and the moon, the turning of the tides, and the stars that smile down on us from the heavens above.

Consider the infinite as an unimaginably vast continuum of energy, which varies in thickness. In the places where it thickens things congeal, coalesce, and solidify. Stuff appears. Stars. Galaxies. Matter. Us. We are as much a part of all of this as the Milky Way, as the moon, as the grains of sand on the beach. Yet we are, somehow, strangely determined to differentiate ourselves from it.

What’s even more abstract, bizarre and ridiculous, is that we seek to further differentiate ourselves from ourselves. I come from over here and look like this, but you come from over there and look like that, so fuck you. Such unnatural behaviour, from an animal that pretends to be something very different. And here’s the problem.

The more we attempt to distance ourselves from nature, the more sick we become. Jiddu Krishnamurti famously stated “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

The more we process ourselves and the things we consume, the more our health deteriorates. The more TV dinners, Big Mac meals and artificial colourings and preservatives we put into our bodies, the more cases we see of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Doctors are constantly telling us to eat more fruit and veg. We need to get back to nature.

But it’s not just the food we consume that’s making us sick. Living in artificial environments of towns and cities, under artificial lighting, sitting in rows staring at screens all day long like battery chickens is also pretty unnatural. Ever heard of sick building syndrome? We are not built to watch TV, to sit in boxes, to be glued to our iPhones, to exist in processed environments for extended periods of time. This is why doctors are increasingly telling people to spend more time outdoors, to get more sunlight, to take walks in the countryside. We need to get back to nature.

And it isn’t just the food we eat or the places we live and work that are the problem. It’s also the information we consume and the way it is delivered to us. We are constantly staring into the blue light of our screens. Whether it’s our smartphones, our laptops, or our TVs, our eyeballs and our attention are increasingly locked into an electronic world, when a beautiful, real world is just a glance away. We need to get back to nature.

But there are two types of nature. There’s the natural world, of eating more vegetables, walks in the park, pot plants in our homes and on our desk. A little more green to ease away the grey. And then there’s the other nature. Our nature. Finding out who we really are, and shedding all that we are not.

It is in this relationship, with both nature – and our own true nature – that we really begin to live. As our man Mooji said: 

“Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you. It will only burn what you are not.”

 Similarly, Pema Chodron in her great wisdom advised;

 “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

That which is indestructible – is that the real us?

There is so much that we are not, which we adopt in order to at least get by, at most get ahead, and somewhere in between to be acknowledged and accepted. But the real proof of the pudding is when we let go of all of this and seek out our inner compass for guidance.

When we attempt to tune in to our own frequency, and listen to the message that has been imbued in us since our atoms were first created in the hearts of stars, then we must allow everything else to fall away. Only by being prepared to be seen, to take that first step into the light and say “here I am – naked and raw” that we start to reveal our true selves and live our true lives. 

We live in a framework of norms and conventions dictated and handed to us by people who benefit from us fitting in. Employers, governments, systems, processes, peer groups, tribes, and algorithms, who all need to categorize and regiment and target us in order that they may operate effectively, and profitably.

And so we try to fit ourselves in to one of these formats. We pigeonhole ourselves. We align ourselves with different groups. We ascribe to particular ways of thinking. We tribalize ourselves, seek approval, confirmation, permission, we affect personas, adopt alien schedules and methods, we become things we are not. Are you left or right? Gay or straight? Hipster? Punk? A little bit country?

And in doing so, we bury that within us which is naturally us. That part of us which, as Pema Chodron described, is indestructible. Our true, natural, intrinsic selves.

We force ourselves into frameworks dictated to us by others. Monday to Friday. Nine-to-Five. Clock on, clock off.  Think this, think that. But some days we just want to stay in bed. Some days we would rather go to the seaside. Some days we’d rather just sit quietly. Some days we’d rather just be our weird goddamn selves.

But instead we must process ourselves in this unnatural meatgrinder of society that requires us to be a certain way, think a certain way, behave a certain way, consume a certain way. And just as processed foods make us physically ill, this processed reality causes other problems. We start to suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, paranoia, and a vast spectrum of problems which, we are led to believe, are problems with us. But maybe, just maybe, they are problems caused by living a heavily processed life. What if the problem is not within us at all, but in society itself?

We need to get back to nature. 

We need to find our natural selves. We need to break free of the processed life, and step into the fire of self-discovery. And that means facing total annihilation. When we dare to speak our truth, the false reality falls away and our nature reveals itself. We begin to heal and, to paraphrase a greater thinker that me, eventually we find ourselves “free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, I’m free at last.”

As the Greek philosopher Thucydides said: “Happiness comes from freedom; freedom comes from courage.”

When we find the courage to be ourselves, to speak as ourselves, and to act as and for ourselves, then we begin to align with a life that is truly our own. When we speak our truth, we begin to find meaning in our existence and purpose in our actions. When we shed everything we are not and fan our own internal flames, then our light will finally shine eternal and true.

So shine. Take courage. And shine.