"What is wrong with our culture is that it offers us an inaccurate conception of the self. It depicts the personal self as existing in competition with and in opposition to nature. [We fail to realise that] if we destroy our environment, we are destroying what is in fact our larger self." - Freya Matthews
Our concept of self! Seeing ourselves as separate entities, being educated about the importance of finding our own way in the world. Yet being forced to conform to a way of life that makes us enmeshed within the system. I look back over my life and the role that religion played in disconnecting so many from the natural world.
How they planted this idea, that God created the world for humans, giving everyone the perfect excuse to treat the earth as they please. When I was a child attending mass, I could never understand why we had to sit in these cold buildings giving thanks to this deity for creating everything, not when we could be outdoors amongst the natural world. It seemed such a contradiction to me, I felt so out of place. Not to mention the catholic churches whole view on females.
Everything felt so out of balance and unreal. The complete opposite of what I felt when I was outside, when I was roaming the land, my fingers at home in the long grass and my mind at ease amongst the trees. Life just made more sense to me when I was outside, it still does.
Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I just take a walk up the mountains, where my mind is clear and my soul is humbled. Where I so easily remember what matters the most in life. Where I do not get caught up in the mundane of the fear propaganda that is being pushed on us right now.
Life becomes so much more complicated when we move away from nature, when we distance ourselves. Severing our life line, the one thing that makes us whole!
We are told that our lives will be easier, if we just give into the system, if we just follow their lead. Handing over our power, so that we no longer take responsibility for how we live, or for our own health. Things are so much more convenient. But we are lost, longing for connection, any sort of connection, so we latch onto the things that come our way. Searching to be belong.
Forgetting, that we belong to the earth, that we have our place in nature. There is no need to experience such longing, when one only needs to get outside into the natural world. Yet so many, are now afraid to venture outside,a fear of the wild. Feeling more at home in their abode's, behind walls and screens. I write a lot about our need to connect with the wild. The need to nurture and feed the wild within.
To enjoy, the most magical and simple pleasures. To walk barefoot on the earth, to forage food as you make your way, connecting with a ancient knowledge that is held within us all. The wild, the most natural of states. Not this image that society has plastered into our minds, of something crazy and unhinged. There is nothing more empowering that engaging with the wild, nothing more wholesome.
It enables us to step out of our fears and into the essence of who we are. Our concept of self, so twisted and manipulated by a system that wishes only to control us, to take us way from who we really are. To disempower us!
Look at the stories you have been told, stories that have been passed down through people in power, look at way our her/history has been twisted, so that we believe we need masters, so that we believe we need, to be told how to live!
Nothing could be further from the truth. We need only to step into the wild! To open our eyes to the deception that surrounds us. The truth is something you feel deep within in, it is not a thought or an idea, it is a intuitive understanding, that you feel, that you inherently know!
When you have trouble understanding something, it is because it is not true. I experienced that from a young age, those many hours I spend sitting in church. An experience that was not true to who I am, that was not my truth! Because I longed to be in the wild, to feel the sun on my skin and the wind on my face. I knew that if I was to give thanks for anything, it was for that. That my thanks is to the earth and that my connection is to nature.
For me, it is that simple!
