Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)

[0:32] Introduction to Today's Episode

Aloha everybody. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright, and today we'll mark our 25th episode. I'm so excited, it's been so delightful to bring these to you weekly and to start at square one and now be turning a quarter. So we are talking about such a fun topic. today.

We're talking about creating inner harmony through nature. And originally I had called this episode tuning into the frequency of nature. But as I was sitting down really bringing the talking points through, I realized that tuning into the frequency of nature is really about learning to live in harmony with nature.

And the focus that I wanted to bring to today's episode is how that can help us live better, and create more of a sense of inner well being, and really create more harmony inside of ourselves.

So the episode title evolved into creating inner harmony through nature. And I was smiling as I prepared to begin recording this today. It's a beautiful blue day on the Island of Kauai in my office right now, I can see blue skies, and there's this giant, grassy field behind me, it's really thick type guinea grass, so it's not a grassy field that you could run through, you wouldn't get very far it's really tall, taller than I am. But I can also hear birds chirping, and there's trees swaying in the breeze.

And if we're lucky, there won't be any weed whackers or lawn mowers, or any non natural sounds that come into the making of this podcast. But it was such a soothing scene and felt like a blessing from the natural world for what we're talking about today. And earlier today, I was on a hiking trail.

And sometimes I just need to get outside and to go beyond the trails. This is something that we often do after work week. And I always noticed that when I hike, I usually feel more grounded. I feel more settled and myself, I feel more in balance. And it's not always that something amazing happens on the hike. It's not always that it's the best hike ever today was really pretty.

Last week, we were on the same trail and we got poured on. It's not always like this magical thing. But it's really rare that I will have an experience where I'm out and about and doing something in the natural world. And I felt worse afterwards. Usually, I noticed that I feel better and feel more peaceful and have a sense of feeling more centered within myself. And I think many people experience the same thing.

There's been a lot of studies done on the positive effects of nature on mental health and getting outside. And there's a lot of things on wellness about that. And many people have that common experience that we just feel better. And so I thought it would be fun today to look at how do we deconstruct this idea of nature and maybe understand some perspectives on how nature can teach us to live better, and how we might be able to take those and apply them to our day to day life.

We are not always in a beautiful place where we are surrounded by such natural beauty. I have been fortunate to live in for the most part beautiful places, but I am from Alaska and Alaska is undeniably a beautiful place. It's also much more harsh, especially in the wintertime. And it is particularly harsh right around December 21 which is Winter Solstice there when there's not a lot of daylight and sometimes it is below zero. And that can last for quite a while. There was some Real harshness there.

So I don't take for granted that I'm in a place now where I'm able to be a little bit more unarmored and more connected to the natural world and not always having to try so hard to find the beauty, but just being able to receive it. But I acknowledge that we don't always have that. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that we can't find ways to work with the world around us.

Because no matter where we are, there's always sky or sun, or moons, or cloud, or rain or snow or trees or something that we can tune into and tap into that frequency.

[05:42] Self-Reflection on Intuition and Nature

I thought I would begin today with a self reflection. And that self reflection is if somebody were to say to me, you know, I really want to develop my intuition. I want to learn to live more intuitively, I'd like to be more creative. I'd like to be more spiritual, I feel like there's more to life than just kind of staying in my linear pattern. And I'd like to increase my experiences. And I'd like to feel that I can develop my own relationship with spirituality. And I don't know where to start.

I was reflecting today that one of the things that I would probably tell them is spend time in nature. And while I might give some ideas on here, some books you can read from individuals who have learned quite a bit about the art of living and flow or living spiritually. And maybe I would say, if you want to develop your intuition, I highly recommend getting a deck of Oracle or tarot cards, and learning to work with those. And I would definitely give them tools, I would tell them to walk outside their front door, and to find a patch of the natural world, and to began to develop a relationship with it.

And one of the reasons I would say that is back in 2011 2010 2011 2012, which is really when I went through the cracks of my spiritual awakening, and I've had several throughout my timespan. But if you've listened to any of these podcasts, I've talked about how that time in particular really was part of me waking up and making a break with life as I knew it.

And really beginning this journey of the heart and saying, I want to live bigger, I want to live more authentic, I want to live more free. And I had no idea how to do that. I was following these intuitive flows and following where my heart guided me. And at the time, it guided me into being single at that point in my life and guided me into really choosing new space for myself.

And so I made all these external changes in my life. And I felt very lost, at the same time, very in alignment, that I was listening to something real and true inside of me. And I knew I had to follow that. And I already had a relationship with trail running and hiking and being in the mountains. That is one of the wonderful things about living in Alaska, is it's so accessible and easy to get out on the trails. And so that was something that I had a great relationship with.

But what I would often find is that I felt quite lost as I said during that time, and since I had been the one who had left the home that I've been living in, I moved out when I was going through a divorce, and was renting space, this tiny space at the bottom of a townhome and I made the space really cozy. I certainly made it my own, but it was not a space to like go stretch out in.

It was not a space where you could go spend the whole weekend and not even leave the house because you're so cozy and you have everything you need. I definitely found that I would get cabin fever. If I stayed there, I was really only renting a couple of tiny little rooms and then there was like the shared upstairs space. But that's where the main owner lived. And so it wasn't really my space. I was just allowed to use the kitchen but I wasn't comfortable going and hanging out there.

And so I had basically two small bedrooms, and this townhouse little small bathroom and that was my space and it was quite cozy. But it was not something that I wanted to stay in. And the other thing I was struggling with at that time was a lot of anxiety and just feeling unsettled and my own life. I wasn't grounded, nor should I have been if we had been through some kind of really big change And we have gone through big upheaval in our life.

It's very common that we feel dysregulated for a while. And we might be able to find tiny anchors and ways that ground and calm us during the time of upheaval. But our nervous system can so often be used to feeling stressed out, feeling dysregulated like it's lacking the things that it once had that helped it ground in orient itself, and things that I had kind of use to stabilize myself. Were not in fact, at that time, I made so many changes in my life.

[10:40] Learning to Tune Into Nature

And so what I would find myself doing sometimes is just driving to a local park, or a local Trailhead with maybe some benches or something, buy it, there is a lot of nice community spaces in Alaska, and in Anchorage where I used to live. And I would take my little old dog puppy for a walk, and allow him to kind of wander about a little bit sweet little gremlin dog, who was pretty cantankerous when he was younger, and was just the sweetest little old man, my little buddy as he got older.

And the other half of the dynamic duo is I once called us and I would sit on the park bench there and I would think about my life. And something that I noticed over a period of time, is that I was really starting to tune into the natural world around me and I might watch the clouds drift in the sky. And I might think about how my life was like the clouds, and how it was going through this process of forming and then unfolding and reforming again.

Or maybe I would notice that the trees just have this way of standing so vigilantly and so calmly and so strongly, and it seems like no matter what happens, no matter what the weather is, no matter who comes and walks through those trails, they still stand, there's still this very peaceful, wise energy around them.

And slowly over a period of time, I really started adopting some of the philosophies that nature was teaching me and integrating them as these ways for how to live better, and how to live more mindfully, how to live with more of a sense of being in rhythm with the natural cycles, I became much more aware of a sense of sentience from nature, something about going to the same little plots of land, time and time again, really helped me began to develop a relationship with the land.

And I would really began to notice things like what was happening with the ground. And if it was springtime, was the ice thawing, where flowers beginning to bloom actually, in Alaska flowers don't quite bloom in spring. That's definitely summer season. But we're like any little shots of green starting to bud anything like that.

I would notice when the leaves fell, I would notice the different colors that the sky was, I noticed all the small things. And in that noticing, I began to have a sense of belonging and that space. And this interesting thing would happen that no matter how lost, I felt, and those were really hard years for me very beautiful, very profound lessons, but not easy lessons.

I was really learning how to embody myself, I was learning after being in a relationship, a primary relationship for over a decade, I was learning how to be single and how to stand strong and love myself and just be for me. I was learning what I wanted at that life stage. I was in my early 30s At the time, and everything I thought I knew had been turned on its head. I was learning how to date Oh, my gosh, that was a thing.

And I had a lot of difficult encounters as an empath. You know, I really struggled in the dating world. And you actually don't have to be an empath to struggle in the dating world. It gets hard on a lot of people's hearts to be out there. And it can also be incredible with the people that you meet.

But I had this very naive part of myself that just kind of believe that people were who they said they were and I had no idea that sometimes who somebody says they are and who they really are, aren't necessarily the same thing. And that sometimes people when they say who they are, they are telling you who they'd like to be or that their best version of self. It's not necessarily how they're always acting and they're not always in coherence with that. I'm not always in coherence with that. can hold true for any of us.

But I was really learning this, I got my heart pretty beat up. And so I used to go to there was a few spaces that I went to all the time. And I would just really think about my life. And I would wonder what was next I used to wonder what I ever be with somebody again. Would it just be me? What would my life look like? I was a psychologist, I had my practice.

So that part felt stable, but everything else was up for grabs. And I wondered what I live in Alaska forever, you know, who would I be? What would I evolve into my life look like in 10 years. These are questions that many of us have, regardless of where we're at in life, and the kinds of changes that we've gone through.

[15:45] Learning To Belong To Myself

And so I would find that no matter how lost I was, I would go to the spots my little bench with my dog Pepe, and I'd watch the clouds, I'd be by my groups of trees, I would go to this duck pond that I loved and watch the ducks. And I had the sense that I belonged in these spaces.

And I really think and reflection that not only was I intuitively tuning into the frequency of nature, and sort of tuning my nervous system into where the natural world was, which does move slower, and it does move more cyclically. And it does move in a more creative and wiser and grounded ways.

I think I was also intuitively tuning into nature's messages for me, and picking up on these beautiful, intuitive messages, where the spirit of a tree perhaps was just giving me very calming wisdom of just stay with yourself or stand your ground. And maybe the tree itself wasn't exactly speaking it and that language. But everything in nature has a vibration, it has a medicine, it has a frequency, it has an energy.

So when we put something into language, it's our best attempt at translating that essence. And that energy, and my understanding of nature's language, just kind of based on my understanding of English and my understanding of language. But I really felt like the trees were giving me an essence and energy, here's the medicine, that medicine is vigilance and standing strong within yourself. It's perseverance, its determination, its grounding, that there was these medicines that I was receiving.

And this is really reflected in my earliest writings. Because when I started publishing, a lot of it was poetry at first. And so many of my poems are all about the natural world. And I remember one time, gifting one of my books to the woman who used to do my Akashic readings, way back in the day.

And I remember she looked at it, and she, you know, said, you know, these are channeled writings, right? And I was like, wait, what? No, I had no idea. And she says, like, you might not know that you're doing it. But you're channeling nature. These are spiritual writings, they're channeled writings.

And I had this hang up at the time that channeled writing meant, like a divine being like an angel basically comes down and I have a conversation somehow, and they say, write this down, and you transcribe that, I had this very limited idea of what that look like. And I didn't even realize that I was channeling these energies and these essences, and just because it wasn't coming from, like a particular divine being in it didn't match my preconceived notion of what that might look like, did not mean that I wasn't receiving like mad intuitive information from the natural world because my heart was wide open.

And that is the gift when we feel lost, or we are in heartbreak, or we are struggling, and we are out sitting in a park, or sitting inside by a group of plants, or some flowers or anything that evokes those energies sitting by a window staring at the sky.

When we are lost, we are more open, we are more likely to receive, we are in a space of investigation and curiosity. And we might be emotionally struggling, but there's so much space there. And in all this space in my life, I was having this wisdom poured into me. And so looping back to what I began with, if somebody said, How do I develop, learning to live a more kind of wild, creative, Intuitive Life? How do I learn to listen to spirit? I would say, go spend time in nature.

Go spend time and observe and become a friend to the natural world. Release your expectations of what it should look like and pay attention to how you change over time and How you might take those lessons into your heart, and how you might apply them to begin to live better.

So that is my plug for your time in nature. And I want to psychologically deconstruct some of that a little bit, and kind of break it down into talking points that are sort of these takeaways of what we can learn.

[20:24] Nature Teaches Us How to Belong

So something that I think nature teaches us to do is how to belong. And if you go out in the natural world, you will notice that everything has a place, everything has a purpose, everything has some sort of synergy to it. And if you are hanging out, or you're hiking on a trail, I guarantee you that if you're walking by the trees, the trees aren't sitting there thinking about, I really wish I was a cloud, it must be so cool to be a cloud and to be up in the sky.

But instead, I'm just a stupid tree down here on the ground. And the flower that you pass by is not thinking that it wants to be a tree, because being a flower is just somehow not significant enough. And it should be a tree like all the other trees, because trees are so much better. You understand my metaphor here, like nature just has a space, everything has a part it belongs.

And I think when we are out in the natural world, and when we are tuning into the frequency of nature, we are reminded that we are part of this world, too, we belong, we have a place here. And I think that when we learn to belong to ourselves, learn to belong to our bodies, learn to belong to the land that we're on, when we learn to belong to this world around us.

Even if it's just in the natural world, that gives us a sense of security, it gives us a sense of stability, and it gives us a sense of stabilization. The example that I gave when I was really developing my I'm gonna call it my mindful relationship with the natural world. Because if you're alive on the planet, I guess, unless you're living in sight all the time, and you're really, really tuned out. But for the purposes of this podcast, I'm assuming people listening, spend some time in nature, and get outside some, you smell fresh air.

You know, I think that I was learning how to belong to myself during that time. And I was learning that I can ground through just being part of this bigger world. And something that I really saw was the shift from working with this more multi or one dimensional identity where I had a sense of belonging, because in my old life, I belong because I'm married, I belong because I'm a psychologist, I belong because I live here, I belong, because these are our friend groups I belong because of like all these things on paper, that kind of comprise My Life, a lot of that was no longer on that piece of paper, some of those things held true.

Some of those things that didn't. And the things that did hold true had been completely rearranged. So they didn't look the same that they did before. You can make a huge change in one area in your life and not have it ripple effect into everything else. And I did know I no longer had some of the trappings of success, if you want to call it that, that kind of met this very like linear model of at least at that time in my life, what the world was defining as success. And it still does, to some extent.

But I at the time, I was just really learning how to belong to myself, I was learning to find my security and my stability, and authenticity. And being the best version of BethAnne that I knew to be, I was learning to know that I always have a friend and nature no matter where I go.

And that there's always kind energies there. If I come with an open heart, and I come with a humble heart and come with the ability to tune in. And so that idea of learning to belong to something that transcends a job role that transcends an identity that we might have previously created per self that transcends marital status, or job status or financial status or anything like that. That is so powerful. And we can find that connection as well spiritually, and we can find that connection to higher energies.

[24:44] Connecting To Creation As A Doorway To Spirit

But one of the best ways to connect with those energies is to start with connecting to the creative world around us because that is a reflection of many of those higher energies. That is a reflection of whether you want to think of it as gone Our Creator are the mysteries, that is reflection. And there are so many messages that come through and nature that are coming through from the spirit world and coming through from the angels and the Akashic records and our loved ones.

So there's such a beautiful synergy. And when we can find a belonging, and that we can go almost anywhere, and still have a sense of affiliation with nature with the world around us, we can still have that sense of belonging. So it creates this really deep rooted sense of security. And usually, one of the first things that I do when I travel somewhere, and go somewhere new is just take a little bit of time and feel into the land around me.

And just get a sense of who might the ancestors of this land be? Who are the people who live here now? What are some of the natural elements and the area? What are the essences that I'm picking up on, I don't always do this in a conscious way. Or like I'm channeling that psychic information from the land, it's more like being mindful and being grateful.

And sometimes I'll just say, put a prayer out there and say, Thank you so much for having me, like thank you for allowing me on you. And that's something that I sometimes do as part of my spiritual practice as well, is just thank the earth that she's holding me up. Thank her for grounding me, thank her for supporting me think so much of the natural world for bringing me joy just through their presence, just through being here for the lessons they have.

Gratitude goes a long way with developing a relationship. And remember, one of the things we talk about a lot on here is that we are in relationship with the world around us. So if you want to grow your relationship with anything, if you want to grow it with your heart, if you want to grow it with people in your life, if you want to grow up with spirit, if you want to grow with nature, if you want to grow with your intuition, if you want to grow it with the light, spend time with it, do you think that develop that relationship, and it is harder to develop a relationship if we don't acknowledge we're in relationship in the first place.

So something that you can do is to really think about nature, sentient if you're not already doing that, and to just really say thank you. And thank the nature spirits and the nature energies and the nature beings that are there, whether or not you specifically know who and what that is, there is an awareness of the land, and you will see gifts that began to come from that which I think is so incredibly beautiful.

[27:38] Learning to Live Cyclically

Something else that nature teaches us about being in harmony with ourselves is this idea of living more cyclically, and finding acceptance for life seasons, and life's ups and downs. And I was thinking this week, that life would just be so much easier, if so many of us would just stop fighting it, and would just be able to say, well, this is the direction things are flowing. And I'm just going to flow with it. And that is maybe a little bit of an oversimplification, because there's times that we're not meant to flow, there are times that we are meant to like be like the koi fish and swim upstream and do something that goes against the grain of the flow.

So there is discernment that comes in on when we're in flow energy, and when we are actively really using more of like a masculine, active Sun type energy to create. But I think that one thing that many of us probably struggle with more is we're a little bit better at that masculine energy, because that is the way society tends to be oriented is towards productivity and efforting.
 
So for many of us, it's harder to accept what is and to consciously work with that. And I think that nature is so beautiful at teaching us that there are rhythms and cycles, ups and downs. I mentioned here all the time ideas around how the moon shows us it's okay to be the new moon and to have our light face kind of turned and words. It's okay to be the half moon or the crescent moon and to not fully be on our light. It's okay to be the full moon and to like light up the sky. It's okay to be water that sometimes is free flowing.

Sometimes it's stagnant. Sometimes it is not knowing what direction it's going, but water always finds a way. That's the beautiful thing about water. It always finds a way to flow or to evaporate or work into the ground and find a greater flow.
And I think that when we are frustrated or stuck, or we're having a hard time accepting what is because it's not what we want it To be that being able to tune into a greater sense of the external cycles is such a profound teacher, that helps us remember life moves cyclically.

And something that I do. And in my poetry, I sometimes will still do it now for myself, if I'm feeling really stuck, or maybe I'm feeling frustrated, or some sort of feeling state that prompts me to do this, I might ask myself, what would the ocean have to say about this?

Or what would a tree have to say about this? These were my writing prompts for the older poetry that I wrote. And sometimes I don't write those poems anymore. But I still like to use that imagination and visualization to just kind of say, what would the ocean say.

And for me, a lot of times the ocean would be like, just let it go, or let it flow, or trust, that it will be moving somewhere, you know, trust the process, trust the tides trust something.

It's such an incredible way to offer our frustrations with the cycles we see in our own lives to the greater cycle that we see and the natural world. And to tune into that rhythm to help us be more in rhythm with ourselves, instead of fighting it and saying it shouldn't be going this way, it should be going this way.

Nature is not always kind. And there are many things sometimes I see a nature that I'm like, This is not a Disney movie where all the animals get along. And yet there is still some form of acceptance for that process.

And nature is the great recycler, everything is composted. Nothing's ever wasted. And there's such a profound teacher that no matter what happens in our life, no matter the wreckage, no matter the hurt, or the pain, or what we thought was going to work out, and it didn't, and it totally fell apart. And we feel like it was wasted effort, we are reminded through the greater natural cycles, that that's not a wasted effort.

 Everything can be wrapped around and rebirthed into new form, sometimes in ways that we never thought could happen. Spontaneous evolution exist, there is a wisdom and this kind of wild heartbeat that's running through the earth that that alchemize is so much of what comprises the earth, and has this way of evolving things and unexpected and beautiful ways. And those principles hold true for our life.

We are here on this creative planet, we are subject to the same rules and laws that the natural world is no matter how much we try and tame it. Those principles of chaos and creation and Life and Birth and death and rebirth, all of it applies to us.


So instead of trying to make life fit our timetable, when we're able to tune in to that greater rhythm, so much more peace and flow and a deeper sense of mental g can come from that.

[33:17] Life Will Always Find A Way: Nature's Resilience

Nature also teaches us how to find our resilience. And it really teaches us to find the hidden beauty that is sometimes buried, and life's darkness or in the soil of life. I think that if you've ever seen a flower blooming somewhere that it no other flowers were sometimes you see dandelions pushing through the concrete cracks in concrete or something like that.
 
Sometimes we see something growing where it shouldn't be, sometimes that's a weed, or something that we don't want there. And it's in our personal space. So it's not always welcome. But a major is nature is a really hard thing to tame. It can be done.
But I think there's sort of this resilient lesson that life will always find a way. And I love the idea that no matter how lost or confused or out of sorts we are, no matter how much we say I have no idea where this is going.

And I don't know what to do with this. And I feel like everything fell apart. Just to remember life will always find a way. And some of the circumstances in our life that feels impossible. Life we'll find a way in some of the circumstances in our world that feel unsolvable. And we say I feel so hopeless when I look at the state of affairs with this and what will happen. Life will find a way.

And I think that resilient idea, and again, remembering that one of the natural principles of this world is this really like as I said, Well wild, untamed energy that has this divine intelligence to it and this incredible sentience, it finds a way. And so knowing that, that innate resilience is also in us, if so affirming to me, and so encouraging.

And again, I think there's inspiration that we can take from tuning into the natural world around us. If you're feeling down in the dumps about life, go look at some flowers, look at some plants trying to grow, you know, look at the light changing, look at the sunrise, look at something that reminds you, life will always find a way, it always finds a way to grow, it always finds a way to evolve. And there is this real beautiful alchemy that can come from that if we can develop an eye to appreciate it.

[35:57] Life in The Black Hole (aka An Alaskan Winter)

I remember in Alaska, it was challenging sometimes, in those winter months where the sun really didn't come up, I lived in Anchorage, it's a little bit more of a southern part of the state. So the northern part of the state, they will have the experience where like the sun just doesn't come up. i

There's a day and like that's it for daylight, and they will not be getting any kind of daylight for like the next month or something like that. But I was in the southern part. And it's a really, really big state. And in the south of Alaska, we still had a little bit of daylight, but it wasn't a lot. So it wasn't uncommon for the sun to come up at like 1030 in the morning, that's really the time and December and then it starts to set more like three o'clock, maybe even a little bit sooner. And it never quite makes it all the way up in the sky. That's the other thing that's kind of a trip living there.

So when we talk about the sun coming up, it's not like all the way up shining bright in the sky. It's more like it makes it like halfway up. So it's light. But it feels more like late afternoon Winter Light or something like that, that somebody might experience where it's going to set soon.

So you get light, but it's not full light. And in those months, it was hard sometimes to find the beauty. And I remember when I first moved back to Alaska, in 2003, I was really struggling. I hadn't been there for winter in a while and I lived in Minnesota. That's where I went to graduate school. And that gets pretty dark and cold too. But there is more light. And I was had forgotten how extreme the winters were.

And I remember this one woman saying to me, Oh, I just love it in December. It's so peaceful. I feel like I'm in this velvet jewelry box, just sprinkled with diamonds when I look up in the sky, and I see the stars, or I see the snow and how the stars or the moonlight might reflect on the snow.

Or she phrased it so beautifully. And it really helped me began to appreciate what are the gifts, something else that I learned is that no matter how bad it is, if you can at least get out in it, you will feel better. So as a runner, I still got out I still ran it was hard sometimes but I still did it. And I had to work harder to see the beauty much harder than I do on kawaii I had to work harder to look outside.

And it may be it's pitch black and I drove to work at 10am Because I had clients and it was still dark. So I drove to work in the dark. And let's say I finished work that day at five or six, it's still dark. And maybe I saw a little bit of sunlight come through my office window. But I was in session that day, and didn't really get to get outside in it.

So I drove to work in the dark. I came home in the dark. And now it's my evening and it's still dark you can understand how claustrophobic that might feel and how you feel you're living in a box after a while.

But as I was writing poetry, I would be like well, what color is the sky? Is it black? Is it Onyx? Is it obsidian? Is it midnight blue? Is it more of a navy? Is it sodalite Navy Blue? What color is it? And how does it look before it turns that inky black? Like what's that deep, deep purple. And a lot of those descriptions are in poetry that I wrote.

And I really played with creativity and really search for like these pristine gifts and they are there if you look for them. And for me the act of writing nature poetry helped enhance and practice gratitude and joyful appreciation and take something that could have been a not so beautiful moment and it made it beautiful. Sometimes we have to look for the beauty in our lives.

Sometimes we have To learn to see something through the eyes of the soul, and transcend the ugliness of a moment, and see the hidden light, see the possible poetry of that moment, see the creativity of that moment, see the growth, the resilience, the beauty of how maybe in that moment, some part of us is still pushing through the concrete.

And it's still reaching for the light and trying to grow. And we learn that from the creative natural world around us, it reflects that innate ability with ourselves to find that, and to find that strength of character and strength of heart.

[40:46] Learning To Appreciate Our Wholeness of Being

The last point that I wanted to bring up today, and this is kind of the take home for this idea of creating inner harmony through nature is that nature teaches us a deeper appreciation of the whole.

And to me, that is one of the crux cruxes one of the core concepts of finding a semblance of inner peace and inner harmony inside of ourselves. So often, we struggle as humans, with what feels in conflict and cognitive dissonance inside of ourselves, we struggle to accept parts of ourselves that we might not like, we struggle to accept feeling states that feel discordant, or that feel unpleasant, or that maybe we judge, that's a very easy one to do when we feel hard things like rage, or bitterness, or resentment, or jealousy, or hatred, or some of the stuff that most of us try to transcend, and not have that be our daily setpoint.

If we feel something really negative, or we're really struggling, or it brings us a lot of pain or heartache, we can struggle to make sense of those things for ourself, we can struggle to process them.

So often, we just want to come back to a space of equilibrium, and feel a greater sense of harmony and peace inside of ourselves. And when we're not able to do that, it's really easy to reject those parts of ourselves, to feel in conflict, to attach to them, and make a judgement about our character about who we are, it is easy if we're not doing the inner work.

And in general, if people are not doing their inner work, it's not uncommon where they project shadow parts of themselves on to somebody else, or just own them or see them in the world around them because they cannot recognize and work with them within themselves.

So there's many things that when we think about our inner ecosystem, and our inner family, and whatever metaphor we want to use to conceptualize this universe inside of us, that comprises our psyche, our experiences, our roots, our cognitive templates, our emotional set points, our emotional understanding of ourselves, our identity, our spirituality, the deeper voice of our soul.

I always see this as like a beautiful map and kind of cosmic map in some ways of these massive lands of our internal world that comprise the infinite being that is us. And so many of us have barely begun to tap into the potential there. But so often, in the human journey, we have conflict, and we have inner conflict and part of wellness is coming to a sense of harmony, and a sense of balance inside of ourselves.

And when we look at nature, that is exactly what we see reflected back to us is this beautiful template for how to live in harmony, how to take discordant experiences, and somehow continue to grow, life will always find a way and continue to evolve and continue to recycle and upcycle and transmute and transform and grow despite those things. And sometimes because of those things. The beautiful thing about nature is there is a place for everything and her ecosystems.

And if you study ecosystems, and you just take a step back and really observe the natural world and observe the trees and the soil and the bugs and the birds and flowers and it Really think about the purpose that each of those particular essences might hold.

There is this symbiotic relationship where it's all working together, nothing is greater than or less than, there's an interdependence there. And there's room for all of those things. And so sometimes from our human perspective, we'll look at something that we might not exactly like in the natural world, maybe it's kind of gross or achy to us, many people might feel this with bugs.

And yet they serve a really vital purpose. And if you really study some of the science behind how does this contribute to the ecosystem, you might see that they carry an important role, or that there's something that they do and that maybe another species or being or something is dependent on them.

There's so many ways that all of this links up and it connects. And that reflection, that holds this potential to help us kind of gaze into the mirror of nature and say, Well, what I find the same if I am here on this creative planet, and I am part of creation, and I have that same light within me, what if that is reflecting back, like what I need to know to live? Well, I believe that it is.

[46:19] How Nature Teaches Us Self-Acceptance

And I think that being able to come to this really grounded perspective, when we are struggling and at odds with ourself, and maybe we're struggling with the struggle. And we don't like the feeling of the struggle, being able to just have a sense of taking a deep breath, and saying this too, has purpose in my life.

And it's not the definition of who I am right now. It's just a part of me. And it's part of my ecosystem. It's part of the whole of my experiences. It's part of my psyche, and my soul cosmology, and my energetic blueprint and my human experience as a soul in this world right now. It's part of all of those things.

And it's one speck at this greater hole that comprises who I am, there is just so much beautiful perspective that can come from that where we are able to just step outside of ourselves, and see things from a more transcendent perspective from a higher perspective. And so I think the beauty in that is incredibly powerful to me.

And again, the potential that it holds to remind us when we lose perspective, and we get caught up in our little self centric world, where we're going through emotional angst or something. And we feel like we're always going to feel this way. And there's nothing wrong with that, I'm kind of laughing, saying that, because we all do this. It's just part of the journey. We can't skip this, it's not bad to feel those things.

But if we can really take a step back, sometimes we can laugh at ourselves and laugh at oh my gosh, every other person right now might be going through something similar. And when you put all of us together, we do comprise this greater hole. And we do comprise this greater ecosystem of humanity and the collective here on the planet at this time.

So finding that appreciation is so vital, and so important. And I think it really oriented us to a sense of wholeness. And one of the greatest principles of creating harmony, it's just through acceptance, and accepting Well, if I'm having this experience or this feeling, then there must be a reason. Nature doesn't create anything, that's a waste. Everything has a purpose. And so maybe this has a purpose as well. And if we can adopt that perspective, and see, what purpose does this have, or just choose to ascribe meaning to it, I don't know what purpose this has been to the best of my ability. I think this is what I'm learning right now.

And I can see the symbolism or the creativity or the meaning this might hold for me, that teaches us how to live so much better. And with such a deeper sense of wellness, and feeling grounded and gratitude and appreciation. And what a difference that makes in a moment where we might be struggling, and we're able just to relax and breathe and kind of savor the struggle. It takes the struggle out of it when we can do that. And just say this, too, is just part of the greater whole of who I am. I thought I would finish today with a poem. I mentioned that I wrote a lot of nature poetry.

When I was first getting started as a writer and it will always be really near and dear to my heart. I have not been called to continue writing those same kinds of things right now. Maybe that will come in time. But I am so appreciate ative of some of the things that I wrote, and each poem has a special meaning to me, because so often I remember where I was when I wrote it.

Sometimes very specifically, like, I will remember sitting on the beach. And I'll know what I was going through. And I'll remember how this poem came through. Sometimes it's a little bit more general, where I will just remember this season in life, and be like, oh, yeah, I wrote that. And like the summer of 2017. Or, you know, I wrote that sitting on my red couch in Alaska, in December that year when it was frigid, cold, and it was Solstice, and I was trying to find the beauty. That is a real poem that I wrote, it's not the one I'm going to read today.

[50:44] The Nature of Nature: A Poem

And the one that I'm going to read actually was written during my time on Kauai and it's called the nature of nature:

A tree doesn't run around shouting, I am a tree for all to see.
Instead, he simply he simply stands his grounds
receives the seasons
and knows his place in the world.

A river doesn't go against her own flow
or fight the current of where her streams go.
Instead, a river leans and bends allowing herself
the freedom to change direction.

Flowers don't feel they need to be a sea, or a cloud
or a crescent moon breeze.
Instead, they realize themselves for exactly what they are,
and open, when rife, and splendid symphony.

We can string ourselves out into thousands of pieces.
Always busy doing. Live in fear and
believe security equals and amassment of stuff,
spin ourselves dizzy with tired circles of worry.

And yet nature would teach us
the art of being remembering--
We are always complete, and already enough.

Ah, that feels like such a beautiful note to end on today. I hope whatever you do, when you're listening to this with the rest of your day, or sometime this week, I hope you can spend some time in nature, even if it's just taking a walk or staring out a window. And if you can't get to nature, I hope you can bring nature to you and find a plant or buy yourself some flowers or visualize and just close your eyes and be like water for a while or take a bath or do something that evokes that imagery and helps you connect with the elements and nature beings in some shape or form.

[52:53] Coming Up Next Week

With that, I will wrap up for this week. Next week we are talking about the topic trusting and the wild unknown. And we are going to be looking at things like taking leaps of faith. times in life where we might go through a period of not knowing or uncertainty, we've maybe left something behind. 

We don't quite know what we're stepping into. And we're really in the void. And we will be looking at how do we trust that? How do we navigate it? How do we keep our inner peace when we're going through those kinds of psychological and life changes. 

So that is coming up next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. And until next time, be well. Be Love, be you and be magic