Chapter 4 – The Natural Mind

All of this I’ve written sounds good to me, but is it really true? My logical brain needs to be convinced, so no better way than use our earth-given tool of dialogue to see the logic of the green way of nature.

“Nature as my guide?” asks the mental skeptic within. “How can nature lead us? I’m not a rose, so what can a rose tell me? I don’t have the power and grandeur of the earth and stars. How can I be like the universe?”

“Your mind is like a monkey,” responds my natural mind. It’s always making fun of you and making you doubt everything by throwing a banana peel to slip up on. The truth is that the universe is whole. All of nature is interconnected and interdependent – a holosphere. Each of us contain the seed essence of the rose and the universe. We are in consciousness a small cosmos. Ancient wisdom and modern science both agree on this. Look at a human DNA molecule, to the human naked eye it’s the same as the DNA of a tree and of a worm.”

My natural mind continues, “The truth is that we cannot know anything outside of our consciousness. To know how a tree grows and we know how it does, then we know ‘treeness’ within ourselves. To know that seasons change is to know that you move through similar cycles in your own life.

And the truth, according to the science of physics, is that we are inseparable in consciousness from that which we view. There is no division between the viewer and the viewed. We are what we see, the stars and even the slugs.

Of course we are not literally a star or a slug, although we have their elements within us. Green Wisdom Cards are a symbolic way of knowing that we are like a star, like a slug. It is through symbols that our mind comprehends and apprehends aspects “outside” of us. The symbolic process opens the way to cognize ourselves. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, ‘We are symbols and inhabit symbols.’ Indeed, we are our own metaphor. We become the symbols that are in our mind and mind’s eye. ‘Symbols R Us.’

As we intellectually understand any phenomenon through the symbol, then we feel it in our heart, sense it in our body, and know it within our consciousness, so that our entire being moves into a state of energetic oneness with it. So, when we open our awareness to the universe, we call in all of its powers. This symbolic process takes us into the wealth of our natural universality.”

“Okay, okay,” retorts my unbelieving inner critic, “but here is another banana peel for you. We live in a world of plastic, computers, and the complexity of human systems. How can nature help me in the stock market? Nature has nothing to do with selling short or buying long.”

“Wrong again,” declares my natural mind. “All human endeavors are subject to the waves of emotions and cyclical nature of all life. The ups and downs of the marketplace show us that we are like the ocean and the seasons. And all our decisions, regardless of how computerized and numerated are ultimately intuitive imperatives, which is how nature works.”

My doubting logical mind responds, “So, you want us to return to nature? That’s not going to happen. Or you want us to think and act like a rock? Isn’t that regressing back to the stone age? What about our human genius, our unique human ability to reason, to self-reflect, to make artificial tools, to…”

“Hold on. Green Wisdom is about remembering our nature as we are an inextricable part of earth nature. In reality, we cannot separate ourselves from nature. Surely, part of our human nature is unlike the natural world around us, and we honor that, but in our nature is also the genius of untold eons and life forms. By ‘thinking’ or acting like a rock, you will find a nugget of information, a gem of an idea, a bedrock of value, a new grounding. In the nature of our human nature lies an infinite supply of inner resources and wealth.

What you, the skeptic, needs to realize is that nature holds the upper hand. Without reconnecting with nature, we cut off our roots of life and we die. We must cooperate and co-create with nature. Get real, we have no choice!

I saw a recent ad by Mazda car company that said, ‘To learn to live in harmony with nature, we must look to nature for the answers. This may be a utopian idea, but like every idea that has advanced the history of civilization, a necessary one.’

Not only can nature provide us with answers, but it guides us in improving the quality of our lives. Take this statement by K-Mart, for example. ‘We believe that plants are like people. They care about their homes. They love space and sunlight. They all need food, water and plenty of room to grow. We’ve even noticed that in nature they favor beautiful surroundings. Maybe people should be more like plants.’ No kidding.”

“All right,” concedes the critic, “I can see where nature has wisdom, but how can nature inspire me as a good model to live by? Who wants to be a donkey? How is compost inspiring?”

“Good question. I suppose we have become so removed from the natural world that we don’t see its beauty. But by exploring how every part of nature corresponds to a facet of our own nature, we see its beauty and even its elegance. Haven’t you ever felt like a donkey, carrying a load? This can either turn you on as a symbol of your strength, perseverance and responsibility, or it can remind you of being treated like an ass, kicked around, abused, over-loaded. In the second case, the donkey symbolically kicks you in the rear and tells you to say, ‘No, no more, I refuse.’ The donkey then becomes a symbol of your dignity, your integrity, your sense of self-honoring and keeping your boundaries. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“And the compost?” asks the still doubtful critic.

“Again, compost represents the beauty of the growth process – recycling, reinventing, regenerating. It symbolizes conserving to create and creating to conserve, both natural sustainability values within us. And, like the donkey, compost can alert us to our being treated like a piece of crap and inspire us to elevate our lives, to get out of the outhouse and into the penthouse.

Nature as our mirror reveals us to be fascinating, prodigious and complete beings. And so we remember who we are and when we remember, we re-member ourselves, put ourselves together and become whole and all of who we are.

Each of us leads a life based upon some symbolic myth, and for the most part, the prevailing linear ‘scientific’ myth of reality brings a certain kind of progress but does not inspire or connect us to all of abundant human resources. Most symbolic models of businesses organizations are full of boxes, lines, circles, arrow – engineering-type constructs that often lack heart, warmth, and realness. Invariably, we become our symbols and myths, and in this case, a linear map of abstractions all leading to artificial living.

The word, symbol, means to ‘throw together.’ So, symbolic thinking is relational and why relate to a box or a number on an organizational chart unless you want to be a square or a number? How can we not want to relate more to the deep ocean blue, the giant redwood, or to the beauty of a pearl?

The great psychologist, Carl Jung, in writing about the power of symbols to trigger change, declared that the ‘psychological mechanism that transforms energy is the symbol.’ Symbolic imagery of nature moves us into a relationship with the earth and with the fullness of universe within ourselves.”

“Okay, I get the picture,” my critic finally concedes.

“Good, if you get the picture, you got it!”

“But where do I begin? How do I follow the wisdoms of nature.”

“Ask yourself how this magnificent earth has evolved and survived. Through sustaining change, diversity, inter-relationships. These are the qualities you want to emulate.

And play with the Green Wisdom Cards.”

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