What can a river bring about your life? Do you perhaps feel like treading on the spot, just spinning around, not getting anywhere? What role might nature connection play here?
Life is motion, and to imagine life as a flowing river is an obvious idea. It is that obvious that this basically appropriate image seems quite worn out. But we miss something out, if we just label it that way and don’t pay further attention to it.
A river is in motion, and this motion brings it alive. On a just cursory glance, a river feeds on clear springs and fresh streams. With each confluence, its waters swell, it becomes a mighty large river and finally pours into the sea.
But this is not the end of the story, for in the ocean, too, the waters are moving, there are waves and swells, currents and undercurrents. And there are vaporization and precipitation, which set everything back to start. So far it’s known.
It gets interesting in the details of how the water flows. It can flow gently or rage wildly. Of course, there is the definite downward tendency, but when it hits an obstacle, it can flow around, or even shoot over it. And then there is a very special phenomenon: eddies.
Eddies
Water responds to an obstacle – boulder, bridge pier, or groyne – by whirling around behind it and flowing back towards it. We have all seen this. The current gets in a circular movement on the backside of the obstacle, instead of flowing downstream. In the middle of the eddy, flotsam and garbage collect. And over is the dream of the great ocean.
Isn’t that how our lives sometimes feel? Stuck, gyrating, decorated with some depreciated junk? Far from bringing us closer to our inherent purpose? We’re stuck, at the time the world is crying out for change. Urging us to make a difference to what we have been and done for the last hundred, thousand, or even ten thousand years. So how to escape from the treadmill, how to break the spell?
Life is motion. Not just any movement, but a striving for meaning. Searching for meaning, finding meaning. Following a calling, a vision, a mission. And maybe fulfillment for once. The waters hold a secret. For an eddy, which superficially appears to be in a circular movement, is actually a three-dimensional spiral, in the center of which the water is dragged down to the bottom. The water leaves the trash behind at the surface. And down at the bottom, purified and in contact with the earth, it finds its way.
This is exactly what my work is about, exactly what I want to invite you to do. To dare to dive down, immerse into nature, jump into soul canyon, change tack. Get out of the ruts of control and enter the freedom of nature.
Nature Connection and Trust
It’s all about connecting with what we – from an artificial distance – call “nature”. Nature is what we have no control over. Nature is where the elements and all life freely reign together. We can, we should join in and participate. This is where life plays out, not in our compartmentalized, air-conditioned closets.
We can trust that we are able to find our way in contact with life, if only we are ready for it. We can trust that the great forces that surround us will guide us safely. We can just let it happen. We can try it out, for example here:
Status: 30 jan 2023
