Walking on the soil of Mother Earth is a way for me to feel a deep connection to myself. Taking this precious moment to really connect to the earth step by step, moment by moment, breath by breath immediately transforms my inner and outer landscape. Walking with full awareness invites in to a whole new and exciting investigation of the core of life.
What is revealed in this both internal and external, exploration, goes beyond words and concepts. Here is a body walking. The body is the most natural place to train our awareness, as it is evidently available. In this human existence there is a body that is sensed, felt, and known. It is in this body we have the capacity to go beyond our relative reality.
In this body I feel the earth, the ground, the form, under my feet step by step, as I slowly lift, move and place my foot with full awareness and diligence. This form I can also sense in the body internally, through my bones, my muscles and flesh. There is a body that moves, that is constantly moving and changing, just like the earth around myself as I slowly move through the air. I sense it as I walk and connect on a deep spiritual level. Me in nature. Nature in me.
There are thoughts coming and going, leading my attention astray like a wild animal, sensing any kind of hunger for entertainment and distraction, as an automatic habit that the mind triggers by itself. And there is the hunger to rest in this pure and blissful moment forever. The attraction and the aversion, it is all here. And it’s perfectly okay. This wandering mind has the potential to come back, over and over again, as I walk with awareness, in and out, with my breath as the anchor spot when the ship is lost at sea.
Waves of feelings on my inner and outer ocean. Waves that easily bring me up and down on a wide scale of states, from sorrow to happiness, from heaviness to lightness, from anxiety to calm, from noise to stillness, from fear to accept, from greediness to generosity, from aversion to loving kindness. All this is sensed as feelings in this body and I can ride on these waves as they come and go like the tide. I allow, observe and open, as I walk in the noble silence, permitting myself to let it be as it is without fixing, closing it down, denying or neglecting, I just allow, accept, relax and bring awareness to the process of inner transformation.
Off course there are times of doubt, as I walk and sit, sometimes for hours in silence on retreat. What am I doing, what does it serve and should I not spend my time in a better, useful way? Does this practice really benefit myself and others? The nagging doubt comes suddenly and sometimes is about to shake my whole faith and trust. In this moment I pause and stand here on this spot, as a mountain, and I look, again and again, inwardly and outwardly, and calm the body-mind. As I breathe, in and out, I might pause a little longer on the out-breath to invite the precious moment of weightlessness and simple sensation of being. I let the breathing open the door again, accessible to me in any given moment. I am here and alive. I feel connected to every living being around me.
The elements of the earth under me, the air of the wind around me, the water of the rain and the ocean, the fire of the sun. All the same four basic elements I myself contain in this living breathing and ever-transforming warm body.
Photo of woman by the sea by OctoNation & shell by MilliDesigns