EcoBliss: "Return to Nature" is a Lie

Right in the midst of a busy part of our city,
there is a fair and lovely park.

Listening to right now: Natalie Merchant, Kind and Generous

Today's Bliss Formula: My new set up: I've moved my computer to a window in our wee library. A dormered window, so I sit in a nook. One of my favorite things.

Right this minute, I am not feeling completely blissful, to put it mildly. My internet is wonky today, and I just figured out (thankfully) that my feedburner feed has not been working for some time...and now the (not-bliss)quest of trying to fix that.

To add to this atmosphere of frustration, my sweet grey cat is growling at my sweet white cat. It's one of those days...

It's one of those days when many of us start to think about living in the woods with pen and paper, maybe a manual typewriter, and no other technology. Oh! we think, a composting toilet, solar panels, a wood stove in the winter. Nothing that can break or blow up or can't be fixed without a help line.

I hang out with enough pseudo-hippie types and liberals that I get this a lot. This dream of going "back to nature," a dream I have had myself.

I imagine the different person I would suddenly become. A long braid down my back, I would be calm and centered every minute of every day. (Don't ask -- there's always that braid for some reason -- a braid I could never have because my hair is so very thick that it would snap my neck to grow it that long.)

But this is all an illusion. The illusion begins not where you assume, perhaps. It begins at the beginning of this dream: the part where I think I have to "go back to nature."

I can't go back to something I have never left. I am nature; nature is me.

You can no more separate me from nature than you can separate a fish from water...no, more than that...you can no more separate me from nature than you can separate a fish from its fish-ness.

The separation between us and nature is a mirage.
The perception of separation is the result of ignorance.
It springs from the arrogant belief that a human being
is unlike animal beings and plant beings and rock beings.
It is reinforced by the false teaching that technology
has lifted us above the web of life...We do not seek
a "back to nature" movement; instead, we emphasize
the realization that we can never leave nature.

--From Mother Earth Spirituality by Ed McGaa, Eagle Man

This all goes way back, of course, to the Garden of Eden story and the concept that we are bad and that nature is good and that we had to be kicked out. (Pout.)

So then we romanticize nature as the starting point, the point we can't get back to. We turn nature into an object, the "other." And then the real story making begins.

And these stories only enhance our feelings of separation.

But that is all this is -- a feeling of separation and then we interpret that feeling as fact, rather than seeing it for what it has always been -- an illusion and a lie.

This leads to further disconnect. The kind that propels people out to protest pollution, but they get to the protest by driving their cars. The kind that compels people to play the blame game with a government that is not nearly as powerful as are their own personal, everyday actions.

The consequences of this disconnect are pervasive. Just look around. The companies destroying rain forests. The countries fighting over oil.

And it all starts with a lie.

If we are nature and nature is us, then everything we make is part of that web -- including the technology. When we truly understand this, we will then know how to take responsibility for our actions. But only when we get over this lie.

Only when we realize that our feelings are what lead to actions that reflect the illusion that then reinforce our feelings -- a deadly spiral if ever there was one.

Standing at the edge of the ocean, I feel a certain kind of thrill that includes fear. I am drawn to the beauty but also feel a pull...there is death in that powerful water, death that does not see me as separate.

Nature is beautiful and so we idealize it. Nature is also ugly and mean and strong and deadly. Like us -- because we ARE it.

I used to think the Indians were talking
metaphorically about sister mountains and
brother buffalo, but I have now known
the quest and seen the vision. I am beginning
to understand! If there were no rocks,
my body would have no minerals and I would die.
If there were no sun, the plants would not grow,
and I would die. If there were no water, my cells
would dry up and I would die...They have known
that if we profane the earth, we will corrupt ourselves.
What we do to Mother Earth, we do to ourselves.

--Ed McGaa, Eagle Man

There is no getting back to something we could never leave.

When you are walking on a sidewalk today, do not lament the cement but feel your feet's roots dig down past it, imagine them connected to the earth from which you came. Dust to dust.

When you are downtown, do not lament the buildings but see how they sprang forth from earth and from our beautiful imaginations. See under to the good intentions, the human intentions, the natural intentions that built them -- equal to the intentions of a bird and her nest.

When you think you must move to the mountains to be your true self, find a spot in a park or your backyard and sit like the mountain you already are.

Remember, where you see poison, there will be poison. Where you see negativity, there will be negativity. Where you see lack, there will be lack.

Let these spring winds blow clean your mind and make room for a new and real perception.

Pay attention: in what ways do you feel how you are embedded in this web?