soul-drunk
I am sitting in a deliciously bright room, painted all white, with two walls full of windows that face the raging Intag River in Ecuador. The sound of the river is so remarkable it played a key role in my dreams last night when I dreamt, over and over, that I’d left the shower on. If I close my eyes the river sounds like a rainstorm or what I imagine (or remember) it sounds like inside the womb.
This spot on the Earth, in a cloud forest, was a serendipitous find.
The B&B hosts—a mother and daughter (and an aunt visiting from Argentina) who've all travelled extensively and who are Italian-Argentinian—have created an oasis for travelers and locals alike. Meals are offered at a communal table and the conversation is soul-soothing, heart-affirming, connecting and deeply inspired. The kind of conversation I miss dearly—where topics barely have an intermission before transitioning into a new concept. And everyone at the table is joyfully and curiously along for the ride. This type of flow in conversation is never a sure thing so when it happens, especially with strangers, it is magical.
I feel soul-drunk in this place.
We are now about an hour and a half northwest of Otavalo where we spent the month of February. All there is to do here is rest, eat, have great conversations, meditate by the river, write, read, play with dogs, snuggle with a kitten and be instantly transported to the state of joy when the warm breeze blows down the valley to kiss our faces. There are fun things to do nearby, which we will dive into soon—but for now this slice of Heaven seduces us to stay immersed in the quieter ways of being.
This nearly four-month journey has been curious in ways I didn’t anticipate. During our 3-hour lunch yesterday with the owner of this sanctuary, who is my age; her mother; my partner and a French-American women who is also my age, I shared that I am discovering in myself a deep and haunting need for quiet, nature and solitude in my day-to-day and how going days without those things can wreak havoc on my senses and mood. The statement was met with warm and encouraging agreement. Clearly these new friends share a need for quiet, solitude, and nature or we wouldn’t have all come together to savor this delicious moment in such a secluded spot on the Earth.
I’d always appreciated nature’s ability to soothe and restore but I didn’t fully recognize it as one of my pillars of wholeness and wellbeing until now. Just like I now know with certainty, that meaningful human connection is another life-affirming pillar. I suspect, most humans share the same core pillars for wholeness and wellness yet, heartbreakingly, society has programmed most of us to believe we are fed by pillars such as financial success, status, external praise and approval, physical attractiveness, etc. Any struggles I go through, trying to figure out who I am or my place in the world have everything to do with society’s false pillars of happiness and the oppressive social expectations they exude.
Here, where the planet takes a deep breath, I feel clear-headed, clear-hearted, and open. The hypnotic sounds of the river, the lush green, the fluttering critters and their corresponding flowers—it’s all intended to cleanse the soul of the grit and grime that lodges in the human psyche.
For so many of us, we’ve unknowingly designed our personalities so as not to disturb the soot and sorrow we have stuck in the filter through which we see ourselves and the world. We don’t know there is an option other than living with an increasingly clogged filter. So we drag our dis-ease around with us wherever we go—in fact, many of us grow to identify ourselves by whatever it is that ails us.
What would happen to our lives if the things that cause us chronic suffering, ceased?
Instead of getting a good scrubbing regularly, through a meaningful relationship with nature, we accept these elements of suffering as permanent—as essential to our being. We grow around them, fostering a persona that isn’t true to our essence. And we know, on some level, that we’re denying our soul access to co-pilot life with us. This mental/emotional congestion shows up as illnesses of the heart, mind, body… and relationships.
The idea of cleaning out the muck seems impossible, in fact, society tells us it is impossible all the while bankrupting us on not-so-magic pills and promises that keep us striving for relief. We go on about our day, accepting the challenge of building an internally cluttered and noisy life atop society’s false pillars.
Unfortunately, this means that even in a mild breeze of crisis (real or imagined)—will topple us.
It’s been troubling to learn, up close, just how endangered nature is in South America. Nature is endangered globally and has been for a while, but at this moment, the danger is peaking. Governments and the world’s richest people continue to privatize nature—sacred, life-sustaining nature—for greed. Seemingly with little thought, these people and their corporations pollute, toxify, and destroy life. Scoffing at legal and ethical protections because to them, every holy thing is for sale.
Looking at the pillar’s these people hoist themselves onto, it is clear how deep the delusion goes. To see untouched nature as a revenue stream is no different than seeing children as candidates for the sex trade. It may seem a gruesome comparison to you, but for profiteers, there is no difference. It is about removing and discarding the soul of living being and misusing their matter, for personal profit.
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
Nature is the original church. The original synagogue. The original mosque. Undisturbed nature is a cathedral more magnificent than any human can design.
Nature is the original hospital. Medicine and healing elixirs abound in here, including those to shift the psyche from delusion to awareness. Every animal other than human recognizes there is no need for a pharmacy full of man-made chemicals, as nature provides for every ill. In nature, unlike the pharmacy, ills are cured—not milked and masked.
And it goes on … nature as the original restaurant, the original house, the original community gathering space, the original artist’s loft …
As I move through towns, big cities, small villages on busses packed with humans—and then, joyfully, back into nature—the sacredness of nature is undeniable. I can feel my heartbeat mirror the pace of each place we pass through, from frenzied to tranquil, and I recognize how my own survival depends on my being able to regularly access green spaces, because doing so is fast-acting medicine with no harmful side effects.
The good news is, nature as the ultimate healer isn’t a unique experience. We all have a church, a hospital, and a home in nature. The heartbreaking news is that far too many people don’t recognize it or easily have access to it—some valuing nature, not for its divinity and life-saving capacity but rather, for its unsustainable promise of momentary, monetary wealth.
When I reflect on the struggles of humanity, it is clear to me where they stem from ... an addiction to false pillars of ‘happiness’ and a disconnection from one’s own essence—where we are interconnected.
Yesterday, during a thoughtful tangent about the planet, politics, and humanity, one woman at the table said, “I’m not sure humanity deserves to be saved.” I understand what she means. I don’t know if humanity can be saved—or if it should—given that the only threat to humanity is humans. The saving we need is from ourselves.
The concept of deserving to be saved is important to contemplate, and it goes way beyond the manmade confines of religion and a “chosen people.” If there were such a thing as “chosen people” wouldn’t they be the people who revere and protect justice, nature, community, love, wisdom, and the vulnerable? I see grains of truth and wisdom in every religion, and I also see heaping mounds of propaganda in most, distracting followers from fostering their own unfiltered connection with the divine. This is on purpose—it intends to keep people from unifying with their own wise and vast essence.
The only intermediary I’ve ever needed to commune with the divine is nature.
When people are able to dive into themselves without social, cultural, religious, or familial limitations—I suspect they find that thing some people refer to as “God.” There is an essential part of all life that is not limited by time or container and there is plenty of science, to explain the mechanics of energy and mystics to infuse observable evidence with delicious, heart-opening poetry that can humble the human ego enough to spark magic. I find that access to this essential part, is most obviously and easily found in nature’s embrace.
The Earth will rejuvenate once human destruction and chaos is no longer an issue—at least, I am choosing to hope so. The activist in me hopes more humans will wake up soon and snap out of the delusion we’ve all bought into that addicts us to consumerism, convenience, conflict, and cash. My preference would be that we wake up before we hit the tipping point so we can enjoy a vibrant planet and all she has to offer. And the mystic in me recognizes that even if humans must extinct themselves—its all okay, because this reality is just one out of infinitum. And, while I don’t believe in an anthropomorphized “God,” I have an inkling of hope that we don’t get graded as a group when we die. I’d also like to see the ‘life on Earth” script, because sometimes, I miss the punchline.
If this catches a panic in you, just breathe. There is nothing to panic about. Panic is about impending loss—and we have nothing to lose but our delusions. We do, however, have everything to gain by letting go of the stories that keep us in a loop, removed from nature’s wisdom, and constantly negotiating our dis-eases. Stepping into a chatterless place in the bosom of nature for a stretch of time will do more for sparking the spirit than any false promise made about wealth, prestige, or power.
When I look at life with the eyes of the Earth, I see our impermanence and infinince* simultaneously. There is nothing that can provide instant, yet momentary, enlightenment like a love affair with nature can.
The sun is now setting far enough up the valley, that I won’t see its final glow slip into the night. Though, my partner has gone off with his camera in an attempt make one last breathtaking photo of the day. The clouds are rolling in after a beautifully sunny and warm day and soon the dusk will arrive, then the darkness. After another candlelit meal with kindred spirits, I will close my eyes for a long moment and open them to another morning. And another opportunity to see the world of green around me as my soul’s greatest ally … my heart’s original mother.
