I’ve been enjoying the brilliant summer we’ve had in the UK and doing some work in the garden, and it has suddenly struck me that, right before my eyes, I see the evidence of the real nature of Nature. We can learn a lot from some simple observations.
Gifts from the garden
I’m not a experienced gardener as I’m only just learning and trying to do everything without pesticides or artificial fertilisers, but even I have been able to get things to grow. This year we’ve harvested cabbages, tomatoes and mint, and lots of them, just from a few plants. We’ve been making some lovely cabbage soups, making mint tea and we haven’t had to buy any tomatoes from the supermarket for a couple of months now.
This is what struck me one day when I was harvesting some tomatoes from my three tomato plants;
what did I do to deserve these tomatoes and what does Nature want in return?
That’s the sort of thing we often think about when it comes to our relationship with other people, but Nature isn’t like that. Nature just gives.
I didn’t have to do very much to get these tomatoes. A friend gave me three small plants and all I did was plant them in the soil. Sure, I had prepared a garden bed over the last couple of years and I’d put compost on it, but the compost came from grass and shredded plant material from around the garden anyway. When the plants were growing, I had to tie them to a stake to support them and water them. Watering them was probably the hardest thing I had to do, but even the water I was using was rainwater I’d captured in a tank.
Nature had given me everything I needed to look after the tomato plants.
Nature just gives without wanting anything back. In the end we had ample and were able to easily share with out neighbours. The real nature of Nature is giving and loving. Nature doesn’t think badly of us or hate us. Nature realises that we all need each other and cannot live apart.
The real nature of Nature
If the real nature of Nature is to be so loving, kind, generous, peaceful and unassuming, maybe that’s the way we should be too. We’re part of Nature after all. It must be natural for us too, if we don’t just confuse everything with all the other weird thoughts we come up with.
If we’re going to be like Nature, that means we’d just peacefully get on with what we do and we’d give all the time. We’d give without expecting anything from anyone. We’d just be confident that Nature overall will provide us with everything we need and be happy playing our part in the wider magnificence of everything.
The problem is that we think of ourselves as individuals, rather than as a part of a single Nature. None of us can survive without everything else. Our “Life” is represented by the collective life of Nature. We are all one.
Yet, as we think as individuals, we worry about another part of Nature taking advantage of us, stealing from us, or having more than us, and then we act even more as individuals. It is these thoughts and actions that create the bulk of the problems we see in our world.
Nature tells us to be humble and happy. At the same time, we are not special and we’re the most important thing ever. Our part in Nature is wonderful and amazing, as we play our part in the mind-boggling life of Nature.
Imagine how the world would change if we took notice of the real nature of Nature and we all gave all of the time. Peaceful, loving people that give (care, love, food, shelter, etc.) without requirement or recompense. Of course, there are some people who act like this already and, if more of us could do it, that would be a refreshing change and make all the difference in the world!
Related Links – The real nature of Nature
- Nature, Intuition and Oneness in Life – from sharingnature.com
- Only oneness can survive
- A Table and the Universe
I’ve read a few of your articles and I am utterly confused. You call yourself an “unheathrly scientist” but, atleast to me it seems, your articles are filled with unscientific disconnected hippiesque gobbledygook. You talk here of the “Nature of Nature” being of “peace and love” as in another article. In your being struck by the “evidence” within Nature you seem to completely ignore her reality. Surely Nature is not solely peace and love and happiness. Nature is at times frightening and abhorrent and the antithesis of peace not only at a local level here on earth but universally. Unthinkable occurrences of population wide disease and famine have been and still are realities. Death is her endgame and the entities created through Nature’s forces have the potential to wipe clean all that which she seems to so meticulously craft. This is not to ignore the general peace that seems to fill the gaps between abrupt and disastrous events, but still you seem to ignore Nature in her wholeness. She is something to be feared and not underestimated simultaneously admiring loving and cherishing her for all that she is. To think of her in this overly optimistic and positive way is, to me, a great injustice to the reality of her character.
My writings here are not exhaustive for how can anyone attempt to capture the nature of nature in a mere handful of words. To think that even possible is naive at best and narcissistic at worst. Apologies if I come across as biting and hypercritical but alot of your writings strike discordant chords within me and I cannot simply ignore that. I wish you well and hope for a constructive response.
Wow. What a great comment. Thanks for taking the time to challenge me so strongly. I really do appreciate it as it makes me think and question myself.
You’re right that when I think of Nature, I tend to think of peaceful, rolling hills of forests with butterflies, birds, sun and plentiful green growth. I don’t think of earthquakes, floods and animals eating other animals. So you have caught me out on that one.
We live in a world of duality or dichotomy. Things come in pairs. Up-down, left-right, in-out. hot-cold, day-night and there’s also good-bad. So I should have acknowledged that not everything about Nature is good and positive, there has to be bad as well. In fact, you cannot have good without bad because, if you didn’t, how would you know what good was? You can only have good if you also have bad. So, if there is a heaven that doesn’t have any bad, you really can’t have good either. In that heaven, you can’t be good or be bad, you can only be.
I’m sure that last paragraph might seem like more “unscientific disconnected hippiesque gobbledygook” (great phrase, by the way).
Can I be unscientific? Sure. For me, science is used to explain the world that we’re experiencing, but then it often falls short. For example, we can explain the action of gravity, but can anyone explain “why” gravity exists? No. There was a line in the Jodie Foster movie “Contact” where a religious person asked her a question and her answer was that she only believes in things backed up by scientific proof. The other person paused for a moment and then asked “do you love your father?” to which she replied “of course!” and he said “prove it!”. So there’s clearly more to our lives than can be described and defined by science.
Can I be disconnected? Sure. But then I think that, depending on what the vast majority of the population is connected to, sometimes it’s good to be disconnected.
Can I utter “hippiesque gobbledygook”? It may well seem like it. In this blog, my aim is to write what I feel. I’m not writing to please anybody in particular, follow any particular formula or attempt to monetise my blog. I’m simply writing what I feel in the hope that doing so helps me and may help somebody else too. Over the past few years my thoughts have become more and more spiritual and it’s clear that there’s a lot more to the world that we see than meets the eye. Writing about this may often appear to be gobbledygook but you may find, over time, that there’s truth behind some of it too.
So to finish, you are right, that Nature isn’t all peaches and cream. It can be nasty as well. I was bitten by a tick the other day – that was nasty. I planted seven corn plants and only three survived because of birds. And, of course, all the really bad things that happen in the world. At the same time, this does not preclude Nature from having virtuous properties from which we might be able to learn.
Once again, thanks for your comment. I really appreciate it. I’ll try to write less gobbledygook in the future, but I’ll still write just what I feel and stand true to my thoughts.
All the very best,
Peter.