Nature is out of control!

This guided meditation, which I offered during the IMS Nature Sangha this past week, was inspired by the mayhem in the news, the chaos of parenting by myself last week while James was away, and the tomfoolery of my own mind.Your help makes a huge difference. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.To be mindful is to see the naturalness of the present moment. To see that it is part of nature, that it has an essential place in the fabric of the universe.What makes it hard to see something’s naturalness? When it threatens us in some way, when we fear it - we view it as something out of place, wrong, bad, that shouldn’t be happening. We judge it, we deny it. In short, we react to it with greed, aversion, and delusion.Everything is nature, but ignorance makes it hard to see the nature in everything. Someone irritates us and we call them an a*****e, because people shouldn’t behave that way. We get sick, maybe seriously ill, and of course this is not how we should be feeling . . . right? Then we read the news and obviously this war, hunger, injustice, pain— none of it should be happening. And perhaps the most insidious of these, and maybe also the root of all of it, is thinking that we ourselves are broken. There’s something wrong with me, I am wrong, I am bad, I’m not equipped to handle this life, I should be different, better. I don’t belong.But imagine if we could look at the news, or even at something terrible that happened to us or a loved one, and see it as something that should be happening. That might be an offensive thing to suggest, especially if we’re talking about the death of a young person or the tragedies of war. It’s not to encourage harm, but just to acknowledge what’s real. It should be happening simply because, well, it is happening. And the sooner we let what’s happening happen, the sooner we become available to be a presence of love and care.We have no idea what should be happening and what shouldn’t. From our limited vantage point, we only have a very small window into the wild world of the infinite universe. How could we possibly understand why things happen the way they do? And besides, it’s not necessary to see all that. All we need to see is that it feels good to allow things to be the way they are, and it feels bad to resist them.Seeing the nature in all things may be one of the most impactful things we can do for the world. Only through seeing naturalness are we able to approach things with love. And it is love that soothes the pain of the world and brings lasting transformation.If you want more on this subject, you can read an article I wrote recently for Lion’s Roar magazine about mindfulness in nature here: https://www.lionsroar.com/mindfulness-and-nature/Your generosity is a Big Deal. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Parenting as the Path meets tomorrowOur online mindfulness class for parents & caregivers, will meet tuesday, October 28th, at 4:30 ET. Thanks to some helpful suggestions in the subscriber chat this past week from a few parents, we’ll be talking about what Ofosu Jones-Quartey (Born I) playfully dubbed the “two wings of parenting”: Guilt and Shame. If you want to make it but can’t, the great news is that we have partnered with IMS, and the recordings of these classes are being made available on the IMS website. You can find the link to the recordings, and the registration for the upcoming class, here:Lama Rod Owens is a powerful human and a kindred spirit in b******t-free awakening. I’m honored to be able to say he officiated our wedding here in Vermont before he got super-famous, back in 2018. He’ll be coming to give a talk for our Sangha, the Burlington Dharma Collective, in Northern Vermont, on November 11th. Please join us!Thanks for reading! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe