Wild Awake in Flow's Afterglow

[Randy Eady]

An Upshot on Forest Bathing: 

Simply dwell in a space the Maya descendants of those much earlier to the region might call a "space apart" — a tuj (tooh) in their ancient expression of wisdom. You would not inhabit the forest. The forest would rehabilitate you. 

You would relinquish and let the forest transport you. And when it shimmered before you in an ecstatic prosody of existence, an immersive enchantment would take you to another realm.

Perhaps a primordial realm. 

Forest bathing seems to provide a fulcrum for tracing the blurred lines of demarcation between body and soul — where primordial appreciation of relinquishing typified consciousness — affords a wider and deeper mindset and weltanschauung (worldview).

 

For ancient forest wanderers what might it have been like to occupy a rich bio niche day upon day? What sensory bounty would be drawn from spending months (often walking about alone) in a forested world carefully smelling, listening, feeling, seeing, tasting and then to immersively sense it all -- engaging your whole body in beginning to tune into nature’s song?

Would you find yourself humming to the vibes of collaborative nature with a much more-than-human naturally orchestrated world as your chorus? 

Where animals were wild and suddenly in forest bathing, we are still wild, too. 

Ancestrally, an intimate interconnect with the animal world was vital for survival. Not merely just for food and furs, but for the interpretation of signs/signals about the environment and seasons. Their migrations, moultings, matings & where and how these fellow beings searched for food, all were doubtless important information for a thriving tribe life. 

Back in the day what might this "space apart" have effectuated?  We can say from experience, evidence and practice in the roots of shamanic healing, people knew it as a form of healing which employed a secluded immersion to a "place apart" within which newfound knowledge and awareness could be discovered and shared.

Another clue to how the benefits of dwelling in this sacred space apart (afforded by forest bathing) may be revealed in the discovery of some tremendously unique, clearly consciousness-shifting awareness in the etching of bat cave art. 

Discovering the 4D projective motif of bats  etched by ancient peoples in Caribbean caves suggests how these blurred lines of body and soul — fed a primordial appreciation for relinquishing typified consciousness — perhaps sensing the presence of a deeper pulse on the planet than their own. 

As perceptual boundaries were enlivened and enriched in immersive nature, complex realities may have been revealed in artistic rendering of the exquisite strangeness of our very human existence.  

In this wondrous “apart space” these Caribbean basin, maya descendant proto-artists were doing inner work as well as outer etchings.

As a prerequisite, ancient paintings were quite likely more than simple drawings about the hunt.

Were these the first cave etchings that these artists crafted perhaps a way to convey deep emotional truths about their world; a world made more mysterious and meaningful by the presence of their commune with the bats they shared extended inhabitation and a sense of comity within the caves?

A key to the true value of forest bathing is to both recognize and reflect on our epistemic humility. In this domain we can achieve neither mastery nor dominion but invite (and are invited to participate) as if -- with the eminent Divine -- in the co-creation of a natural sense of reality. This affords us relief from the optimizing tendency of steering toward what we think we know, while entwining wisdom with ego-restraint.

In the nature encountered in the authentic practice of forest bathing -- it seems like our conscious awareness can finally catch up with those wandering a wilder landscape so long ago.

   

[Randy Eady]

[Randy Eady]

Turning the outside in: where words get dispensed with and what’s left is something attune to an ancient primal rhythm of: breath, sound, tone, vibration, air, movement, proximity and touch. 

 

How does forest bathing expansively take us into a larger realm of healing which evades explanation, yet via direct experience, reorganizes the nervous system?

 

As we erode language's structure (that shapes/skews and filters perception), what manifests when that structure dissolves?

 

Whereas a bath in the forest can unveil our deepest forms of communion and unshroud the entirety of a reality that exists outside of words.