“When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.
This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.”
—JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Irish Mystic and Poet, John O’Donohue gives us this beautiful pathway to finding healing in Nature. If we have the eyes to see and ears to hear, we are indeed surrounded by, and living with, the most powerful force of connection, stability and peace.
The ancient work of Ke Ala Hõkū guides us to the experience of the rhythms, stillness, steadiness, slowness and tranquility of this very same nature, deep inside own system. Our cellular being operates as Life itself — just the same as the ocean waves, forests, stars & ecosystems. Underneath our thoughts and beliefs is the infinite flow of the the Great Mystery of Life.
We are being breathed, moved, illuminated and sustained by the Mystery Itself. Despite our numerous thoughts, emotions, belief systems, revelations and observations, not one of us can ‘operate’ the incredible complexity of blood, bones, hormones, cells, organelles, tissues, organs and nerves (among millions of others) that is our own body. We tend to take for granted that we will take the next breath, and remain fixated on our thoughts (circumstances, emotions, memories, fears etc.). Meanwhile Nature, and the Miracle of Life is in full bloom right below (and in) our nose!
The amazing news of this Ancient work, that I always want to shout from the mountaintops, is that this Life in us is ALIVE! In this Paradigm, and certainly in my reality, it is a conscious being — the same conscious being that moves in all of Life. It is always offering this ‘invitation to friendship’ as John O’Donohue so eloquently states. What would it be like to move through Life in a deep friendship with the Mystery which animates our trillions of cells?
Through the work of Ke Ala Hõkū, we learn to open forgotten channels in the body and mind, and expand our awareness of the Life that exists far below the level of our individual (and collective) conscious mind. As we listen more and more this deep ‘friendship’ restores us to an awareness of our innate communion with Life. We know ourselves to be our personalities, but on a deeper kaona, we are the very same rhythms that John O’Donohue speaks of — the rhythms of Nature — that bring us back to the Ground of our Being.
We are an embodiment of the Mystery. Inside is the stillness, steadiness, slowness and tranquility that we seek in the Nature outside of us. Inside, if we choose to meet it, is a letting go of our conceptual reality, and a new meeting with The Embodied Infinite.
What is your favorite environment in which to find connection?
What is your favorite ‘listening’ practice?