A Miksang Moment

The other day I was sitting on the front steps of my partner's house. She was gardening and I was sitting down because of a back injury. It was sunny and hot and I was relaxing where I was. My mind emptied and I sat there taking in what was happening around me. At first I noticed the small reddish brown ants scurrying back and forth amongst the sidewalk bricks. Then a bird flew overhead. My eyes drifted down to the right and landed on a small patch of bachelors buttons in bloom at the bottom corner of the steps. I noticed their colour first-a cobalt  blue fringe with a white body on each petal and a grape coloured centre. I felt my body soften and my heart began to open in curiosity. As I gazed at the flowers I noticed some small insects hovering around the flowers. Now and then they would dart in and land for a few seconds sipping something from the centre of the flower. Next a few bees came buzzing in moving slowly from one flower to  the other gathering pollen. As I continued to watch a few ants climbed carefully up the stems of the plant inspecting the flowers at the top. Then they would walk back down and go up another stem. By this time I was quite fascinated by what was going in this little patch of flowers. And then to add to my amazement a brown beetle and then a greenish beetle with a triangular shaped body climbed into the bottom of the plants.

I became aware that time had virtually stood still as I sat there engrossed with what was happening near me. Listening quietly to myself I sensed a lightness in my body and heart. I felt a quiet kind of joy in my whole being, my back pain had diminished. Here was something on the surface so mundane, so insignificant and yet so deeply moving. This was a profound moment for me. As I sat there contemplating all of this it moved me to consider how I had opened myself to an experience of nature as part of me, as part of my inner experience. I realized that this was a relationship, that I had opened myself to "be" with nature. Or was it the other way round, or both?

Here was a felt resonance between a human being and nature. It was like a waking dream perhaps foretelling in a way how we might invite nature into our own inner family. Imagine for a moment if we could be in relationship like this always. Could we treat what has touched our core, our heart, our soul in this way as we have before? I can't, not now. To include nature as an important part of our inner family requires us to see in a different way, to open ourselves to experiences that are like dreams yet we are awake.

In my heart I now understand that if we can see and appreciate nature in this way, in the deepest parts of ourselves, the part of ourselves we barely talk to, that we couldn't do what we do to the world, to nature, to ourselves.