What if we can draw upon nature's strength by meditating upon it?
Look at the tree, and become the tree
Last time, I started doing a nature meditation. As always, using the Waking up app which I love. It was the first time. 🌱
The meditation was about being grounded. Feeling the ground beneath your feet. Feeling rooted. The purpose was to build on the strength of the earth, on the solidity of the contact, the ever-presence of it below you. A comforting constant in your world.
The meditation guide was using a plethora of words to give you a sense, and the essence, of this earth which you’re drawn to by gravity and from which you can build a sense of rootedness in your life 🌏
I was a bit skeptic at first, but then, it started making sense. I was feeling this groundedness. I was feeling more centered, more solid. The act of putting my attention in my feet, feeling gravity upon my body, feeling the ground pushing back, did have a true comforting effect.
Beyond comfort, it actually had a weird alchemical effect. Like you actually become earth, rock. You actually draw upon their strengths, adopt their characteristics and can use it as an archetypal energy.
Makes me think about Jung’s experiment as a kid. He was pretty mystical from the get-go. And often, he would sit on a rock, and wonder: am I sitting on a rock, or am I a rock being sit upon? Indeed, if you focus your attention on the contact between a rock and yourself, pretty much like the earth meditation, the sense of who you are as a self can blur. It can be reversed. And it’s pretty surprising!
And in doing so, it seems that you can actually take on some characteristics of it. Rock is solidity. Wind can be volatility, fire energy…
No matter what that means objectively, there is a psychological interest in being able to draw from these energies, by simply tuning attention upon them.
And theoretically, there are some schools of thoughts which believe all matter is an expression of spirit. So in a sense, by doing this meditation, you might just be recollecting what part of your consciousness (spirit) is actually rock, fire, or else.
One day that I felt bad, I tried that with a tree. It was a pretty bad day, the one I mention in this article. Doing this meditation felt great. I could feel the strength of the trunk, as well as the flexibility of the branches. I felt the deep rootedness, and weather-proof nature of it. This helped me weather my internal storm that day. Sounds crazy right? but felt good 😀
Just try it out, and see if you can use these primal energies in your day! 🔥