We have been conditioned to think that the wild of nature is a dangerous place.
Perhaps in some ways it is.
However, the wild is also a fantastic place.
The wild is where the magic happens.
There Is No Certainty
Certainty does not exist. We create it in our minds but it is our creation.
We nurture certainty, demand stability and in the end are usually sorely disappointed.
All of our attempts to secure our lives usually do not work.
Many sages have said as much over the centuries, but that does not prevent us from trying.
Why Stability Is A Poor Goal
Stability and order have been a desire and goal of humans for thousands of years.
We have been seeking “shangri-la” like conditions of security from our earliest beginnings.
When you think of the effort and resources put into these desires you would think that we would have been successful by now.
The fact that we are not is worth considering and asking why?
Living For The End
When we seek stability and order we are living from a number of ideas that may not be helpful:
- we treat stability and order as ends to be achieved as if they are reasonable and realistic goals.
- we assume that stability is a more desirable goal than whatever alternative we envisage.
- we assume that stability and order are achievable.
- we assume that our will, for stability and order, is more important and greater a factor than anything else.
- we assume that natural processes are our enemy and must be controlled.
Order and stability, the way we humans have constructed them, are contrary to natural processes. The reality is that nature and natural processes do not care about our desire for order. It is our job to respect them, not their job to cater to our demands.
An excellent example of this is in an article recently on climate change where the author made the point that climate change is about physics. Physics is physics and does not answer to our demands or assumptions.
Nature has always provided us with clues on how to live. To really live in harmony with our world we have to give up the desire for order and the domination of nature and others.
Why?
Because life is a dynamic process. It is not linear, it is not logical, it is a never ending series of ever changing dynamics.
So far we have be unable to accept reality.
Why Order Is Destructive
Order makes demands on our resources and time. It also requires a lot of maintenance.
Anytime we spend our time supporting a structure that is out of touch with reality, we essentially become weaker. We support systems that consume us rather than protect us.
But order can be systematized and nature cannot. As much as we try to dominate it, we are only kidding ourselves.
By walling ourselves off we loss our strength and our resilience.
Unfortunately there is an additional cost to our demand for order and stability: we lose ourselves.
Order And The Loss Of Self
Systematized cultures can be very complex. They can seem very demanding as a result and often are.
However, the demands are the kinds of needs that spring from the system itself, which is often antithetical to nature. In other words, they are not demands that spring for an dynamic living organism. They are demands that spring for a static structure.
The result is that our attention gets directed to noticing “something wrong” or out-of-place. We no longer focus on understanding and working with natural processes. Our energy is directed to maintaining a fixed system that attempts to control any surprises and changes.
Our attention gets corrupted and so we lose our resilience and other adaptive skills that derive from living in tune with the dynamics of nature.
We lose our connection with that which supports our life and begin to treat it like an enemy.
Losing the wild makes us mechanical, fearful, negative, and self-protective rather than creative.
We hate our vulnerability so much that we end up lsing what is precious about ourselves.
It is no wonder that we are often feel that something is missing.
The Gift Of The Wild
The wild of nature offers us many gifts.
It teaches us to bend with changes in weather, learn to find the good in different circumstances, when to give and when not to.
The wild is intelligence in action – which is what we are also.
The wild is necessary for our development, our strength and resilience.
I think it is precious and worth becoming acquainted with, cherishing and loving, in ourselves and the natural world around us.
It takes a dynamic world to create a strong person. In a way you could say that the dynamics of the wild world of nature reflects our own needs for development.
So instead of seeing it as an enemy, we could see it as a gift and be grateful.
The post You Can’t Escape The Wild And Why You Don’t Want To appeared first on HSP Health.