Being In And Of Nature

The description for this now edited recording of the March 28th 2022 Insight Timer live event “Being In And Of Nature":'Weather and Insight Timer systems permitting I’ll speak to the challenges and benefits of practicing meditation in nature, under a tree and/or just simply being outdoors. Maybe some practice too.' I start off with a three breath arrival meditation then address two short relevant suttas before getting into views, observations, experiences and practice tips for meditating outside

Transcript

Wholeness and welcome.

This is Josh DeBolt from Integrating Presence and today's live event is called Being in and of nature.

And the description I have is whether an insight timer system is permitting,

I'll speak to the challenges and benefits of practicing meditation and nature under a tree or just simply being outdoors,

Maybe some practice too.

Okay,

So I was lucky enough to arrive here today early enough to do my morning practice in nature.

It was interesting getting here.

Actually,

When I arrived here there was a huge cloud of dust from earth movers working in the area.

Right around here,

Not too far away,

Is the Missouri River and this is actually a park.

It looks more like wilderness but it's kind of more of a park.

And so I and then I was so like embroiled in the energy of,

You know,

Got to get things done,

Got to do stuff at all costs and I made like three trips back to my car.

Two trips actually.

I forgot my meditation cushion and blanket and then also forgot my cell phone because I need that for the hot spot.

So I made third times of charm here.

But anyway,

Let's just take like three breaths and arrive in the space that we're in right now.

So if you're comfortable close your eyes and full invite your full attention to follow every moment of the in breath and out breath just for three breaths starting whenever you'd like.

Okay,

When you're ready you can open your eyes bring yourself back to the space you're in.

And you know,

I don't know if you can hear on the microphone but there's birds which are lovely chirping.

You can also hear the roar of the interstate.

I can't,

I don't know if it picks up on the mic and the beeping of the land movers but besides that it's fairly peaceful here.

And for anybody that hasn't joined me before in my style I tend to do this not linearly so some people might find it confusing not to have a linear way of approaching material and presentations.

I go more in a spiral so sometimes I'll come back to a topic sometimes I'll go out on tangents and also I'll kind of chunk topics in little chunks and go through them and then go to another one.

So the biggest thing I notice about practicing in nature is my nervous system just tends to relax and wind a lot easier.

So when we're in nature or when I'm in nature I guess I can't speak for anybody else it's important that you feel safety because there are some areas wilderness especially if there's you know wild animals or you know shady characters things like that where you don't feel safe.

And some people you know they have to be with somebody out in the wilderness to feel safe or even outside and that's totally okay.

So that's the first thing if you don't feel completely safe well then it's gonna have to be a practice of investigation of why that is why you know how that is.

But for me once I'm feel safety out here then I can attune to nature the nervous system just feels safe and natural and so there's no kind of threat wondering what other people are doing everybody else kind of crying out for pain wanting attention mostly unconsciously.

I'll get into some more of this later.

I just wanted to read a really quick little thing from the suttas it's from the N.

Guttara Nikaya book of the fours 4.

262 a wilderness dweller.

And so this is just two paragraphs and you can kind of see what this is talking about.

Endowed with any of four qualities a monk isn't fit to stay in isolated forest and wilderness dwellings which for he's endowed with thoughts of sensuality with thoughts of ill will with thoughts of harmfulness and he is a person of weak discernment dull a drooling idiot endowed with any of these four qualities a monk isn't fit to stay in isolated forest and wilderness dwellings endowed with four qualities a monk is fit to stay in isolated forest and wilderness dwellings which for he is endowed with thoughts of renunciation with thoughts of non ill will with thoughts of harmlessness and he is a discerning person not dull not a drooling idiot endowed with these four qualities a monk is fit to stay in isolated forest and wilderness dwellings.

So yes if you're thinking about where to get the next ice cream cone right it's probably not going to be too concerned with being in the woods because you want to get out of there and get you know some central things done but there's a lot of sensuality in the body and practice too doesn't mean that thoughts of ill will yes if if we have thoughts of ill will well then you know that's when we can get in trouble by animals and stuff but when we when we have thoughts of non ill will then other creatures perceive us not as a threat and there's really not as much to worry about.

Weak discernment so having strong discernment yeah if you really confused out in the woods and stuff then yes that can that can just lead to more unsafety feelings of danger and threat so knowing being discerning of the environment and what potential upsides and downsides there may be easy for me to say.

And then there's this I was going to mention a real briefly this other one and I'll link in the show notes this other sutta about the wilderness it says mendicants when a mendicant has five qualities they're ready to frequent remote lodgings in the wilderness and forests what five and I'll just name these as being ethical the code of conduct that's one they're learned and remembering what they've learned it's good for survival skills I guess they live with energy roused up so energy for absorption states those are the meditative states and I was talking about that the jhanas so the first one's kind of like joy the second ones like rapture some people experience like having low level orgasm that keeps going on for a really long time and then the next one is bliss kind of a blissful state where it's more of in the mind and then the fourth one is peace that's a topic for another time and let's see the other quality here is a freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life an undefiled freedom of heart freedom of wisdom so anyway back to now our regular world here I don't know if it's still being hyped a lot in the media a little while ago we're talking about metaverse right and so I was just wondering if every bit is it if there's a bunch of people on the metaverse and in a virtual reality then I think nature will be kind of less crowded today it's fairly not crowded here there's a few trails here but the weather is a little bit chilly so that has good sides and downsides I guess I think I'm just gonna leave that at that but the one of the first things we kind of obviously notice in nature is there's no sharp angles and buildings no steel and glass there's really no 90 degree angles in nature there's roundness unless you include some minerals like maybe fluorite has some 90 degree angles but that's not that apparent everywhere right there's more ease and support if we tune into it nature's really intent is just cycles of decay and renewal so tuning into the renewal that comes every spring or feel worthy of receiving and growing and renewing and then the decay is that letting things that no longer service kind of erode away and then act to support what's the good things coming our way there's no deadlines for doing this and that in man's world things unfold naturally right what we see too is though men become fearful of nature and by men I mean men and women it seems on an unconscious level more that there's a fear of the power of nature and that it is not really controllable by man they try to control it they'll bulldoze things they'll spray deadly chemicals to to kill things that they don't like they'll try to genetically modify things for convenience and I mean there's other reasons given but the ones that aren't usually given or kind of a dominance over nature that they can control it thinking that they understand nature more than nature understands itself and that they can conquer it I will say though that you know nature will work with us too it will allow us to have our own little section where it is not completely dominating in my experience like you can have a garden you can do things on your property with nature to act in a little bit of control and say okay this is my space carved out everything around that you know people have their space but then leaving nature to nature to in its intelligence and wisdom to do what it does another thing we can notice is noticing itself in nature observation so we can zoom way out and look at kind of a whole ecosystem and how that might support practice this goes into the conditions like today might be a little bit chillier I've got my coat off now and hat but I wore that when I was meditating you know we don't want to do things when it's the temperature is not there or there's maybe something going on around where it's gonna be too distracting or triggering so kind of observing our environment but then we can zoom into the microcosmic level too and notice just like right in front of me I have you know dead leaves right and I'm going to pick one of these pieces of plants right here because there's so many on the ground you can't see more our awareness and concentration improves we can just look at the small details of everything around us like this green plant here it has kind of like a fuzzy you know surface and it's speckled with purple splotches it's got jagged edges in the veins will divert in all kinds of interesting ways like I don't know antlers there's like even a heart shape in this it's got purple edges around the jagged thing too depending on our sphere of awareness I guess and ability for discernment and concentration I mean there's really no end to the kind of observations that can go on in nature right the variety the changes all the different elements that go into the forms too and this goes it with intention span some people would just won't see the fascination and curiosity and looking at something really deeply for a long time and that's okay it takes it can take practice as well and it's okay if it's just not interested in that there's all kinds of benefits to being out in nature and it doesn't have to be like a wilderness area like this I don't know if anybody saw my Beth Upton interview the beginning of that I just did an intro from Francis Park just a regular park I would meditate next to a tree there a lot of times several different trees bring a meditation cushion and a blanket at first it's when people see us there's all kinds of maybe projections maybe they're thinking oh that person wants attention or what are they doing oh it's such a beautiful day why are they sitting there with their eyes closed you know where are their friends all these different things and those are all none of my business really you know what other people think about me is none of my business that was really helpful for me so that's some of the observations we can do now we can look at communication in nature too like the birds it's really interesting to consider how birds do call and response right and some of their the bird song to me sometimes I interpret certain bird songs as like a cluster of different possible words that are being said right nothing really exact but it's interesting to see our interpretation of that you know we've heard these stories how the mycelium in the ground will communicate and how trees will communicate do certain things with little trees compared to the bigger trees like mother trees will sometimes give out nutrients and there's a communication network with the mycelium I'm not really up on all the science of this but I think there's a documentary fantastic fungi that goes into some of this as far as the meditative stuff true joy can really be found for me at least a lot easier but I'm not constantly having to deal with what comes with living around people especially people that are going through challenges being constantly distracted by media obligations things like this and so we can get a truer solitude or just even if it's just for a little bit in nature too okay so now back to some of the practice conditions one of the really challenging things I did especially during kind of more the warmer months is bugs so meditating out in nature with bugs at first it kind of you know it's obvious and natural that I kind of freaks you out if there's a bug lands on you right over time though well first there's this book that really changed my perspective I think it's Anastasia Anastasia it's this it's actually a series of books I think it's this Russian author but I think it's even in the first book I've only done the first two books there's a big series about this gal who pretty much had lived her entire life out in the woods with very little interaction if it just made up or if it's based on a true story I forget she was talking one time about how bugs will tend to go to a place in the body where that it needs special attention and so it's almost like this micro it sounds wild I know micro acupuncture or acupressure sometimes I will just let them crawl depending on what the bug is right well let it crawl in that spot the subtle like peripheral nervous system will light up for me around that area in ways and sensations that I couldn't really get that I know of any other way so it's a really kind of weird feeling at first but it's also if can change kind of perspective and look at the kind of benefits something like as weird as that would have then it it changes the whole thing for me anyway now spiders those are a little bit more usually if you don't harm them they're not gonna harm you and there's only like two kinds of poisonous spiders around my area and so sometimes I will let spiders crawl on me sometimes I will just blow them off of course mosquitoes are a little bit more that doesn't really apply to mosquitoes so I did recently buy a mosquito net so I'm gonna probably be doing that in more the summertime especially in some of the spots that I meditate in that are more challenging with things like that if it's just a few bugs it's not that big a deal but the biggest thing is around bugs though for me is loving kindness and I really noticed a really big difference in this is paying attention to the mind state and then if there are you know more than one just like random bug if you're getting more of them then I start doing loving kindness practice and the more authentic it can be the better so wishing them well I know it sounds a little silly for some people it's totally okay but actually practicing loving kindness for the bugs it seems like after a while more times than not it's wild how they respond and will just kind of go off the skin maybe on the clothes and then down to the ground and you know if we're sitting near we're kind of sitting in some of these bugs is home sometimes if we're out meditating in nature so they some of them get curious and start crawling around other people will not have this happen I mean it's a big rare deal if any kind of bug gets near them and that's really cool I say that's all the greater let me know how you do it or if there's anything like like that some people won't even get bit by mosquitoes so I can to somebody the other day where it's like the mosquitoes don't like them okay so that's plenty on bugs the other thing is I just have a blanket here and a meditation cushion sometimes I'll go without any of that and if it's dry depending on how long I sit it's not that big a deal to not have that with me either but you want to remove obviously the things on the ground so like sticks that will jut into the leg maybe there's rocks and leaves obviously the ground you want to be as level as possible and experiment with what leg goes down first so if there's incline or decline left or right then you kind of want to put a which leg down first that would give the knee the best support compared to the others to kind of play with kind of leveling out if you're on a slight slope that goes forward so that can access a natural meditation cushion so where the rear is up a little bit and the knees are down so if you look for that spot finding a tree is interesting I won't go in meditating by a tree it's that kind of a classic thing I won't go into that now because I don't really feel prepared to talk about the essence and nature of trees and how they relate to meditation practice because they can get a little kind of metaphysical there yes you know it's obvious things like if it's a sunny day then you might want to find some shade if it's a cooler day you might want to sit in the sun sunshine a little longer actually I'm by a tree now that looks more of a hollow hollowed out tree so you might want to look for that so it's probably not a good idea because there could be some critters living in there they don't scare me too much anymore obviously look at bigger trees if they look a little bit dead then you probably don't want to be next to them in case a rare chance that a branch might fall out of course you look at weather conditions things like that and so now this other thing because nature can be so healing at least for me kind of rebalancing the nervous system exchanging of negative ions that's those are the good ones and kind of restoring and and balancing I can easily become dependent on nature ironically enough if I'm running out to nature to just kind of heal and solve everything all the time sometimes I question that it's like well I have to be able to if I don't have that option I have to be okay with other ways of doing this too of healings sometimes it's just staying in bed instead of running off in nature all the time I don't know if anybody's in that situation it really makes such a huge difference for me especially when earthing can get bare feet on the ground it's a great way for me to find Center and balance a lot easier and kind of restore to natural state how I feel I'm meant to live even if you're not doing a formal practice in meditation just being outside even even just walking outside so usually I don't even go with any technology anymore into nature a lot of times unless I have to get a hold of somebody I'm going someplace new that's really off the grid or I want to take pictures of something so sometimes I miss out on the picture of things but when I first started this I kind of had like a withdrawal right like I just felt like I was naked almost without my cell phone walking outside even just for a little bit eventually I would just go on a short walk without it started to attune to how it felt without a cell phone now it's almost like I said a rarity when I will take a cell phone out in nature now depending on certain circumstances and just pay attention to kind of what the emotional reaction is with that if there's any kind of fear and anxiety for not having your cell phone with you and then also notice the benefits of like how freeing it is to kind of cut the cord even just for you know a short walk outside yeah kind of pay attention to the nervous system and the benefits it can have without any kind of technology on you that's one suggestion anyway I've noticed big benefits too and then one of the big things is I just if you don't have to have your cell phone on at night completely at least put it in a different room I mean if you need to hear somebody call you you can still hear it outside the room I turn all my electronics off completely at night because I'm in the spot where I don't have to I'm not a caretaker for anybody in particular yes if there's some kind of emergency during the night they get a couple hours I'll know about it but I wanted to kind of close with this verse from the Dhammapada it's 378 it's really short or actually now there's two three verses here very short verses 99 205 and 378 about forests and whatnot so this is verse 99 of the Dhammapada delightful our forest where the public does not delight there the passion-free delight not seeking sensual pleasure this is 205 tasting the flavor of solitude and peace one becomes free of distress and evil drinking the flavor of Dharma joy and this is 378 peaceful in body peaceful in speech the practitioner peaceful and well-concentrated who has rejected the world's bait is called one at peace all right guys thanks for joining me virtually here near the Missouri River here in st.

Charles and I wish you all an optimal ideal infusion and expression of energy and consciousness

Reviews

Thank you so kindly for this practice✨️❣️ Namaste 🙏🏼✨️❤️🌻🦋🕊