Whole Life Times: The Wilderness Within

November 2006 | Tune In

The Wilderness Within

by Mark Coleman

Every year, astronomers discover in the distant reaches of space new galaxies containing billions of stars and planets. The Buddha noted that just as the size and origin of the universe are virtually incomprehensible, so too are the depth and range of an awakened mind. Noting these similarities between our inner and outer worlds helps us to see that, like astronomers exploring the greatest reaches of the outer wilderness, we too can come to know our equally vast and mysterious minds through meditative exploration.

One of the crucial steps toward understanding our inner wilderness is to comprehend its relationship with the outer wilderness. While our contemporary way of living separates us more and more from nature (which only exacerbates our mistaken belief that we are independent from the natural world), the truth is that our minds and bodies are as intertwined with the moon and stars as they are with the air we breathe and the water we drink.

While in nature, it’s easier to recognize how deeply we’re touched by both our inner and outer worlds simultaneously. These seemingly separate realms mirror each other. How can we separate the fiery scarlet sunset from the radiant happiness it sparks within us? Where does the sound of a robin singing begin and the vibration in our inner ear end? How does a nightingale’s joyous expression intersect with our own joyous receiving?

Through developing a meditative awareness, we can increasingly understand how to experience these inner and outer worlds as an indivisible unity. And when we start to dissolve the sense of separation we’ve imagined exists between ourselves and the rest of life, we see that we are always interwoven into nature’s vast tapestry.

In many indigenous cultures there was no word for nature, because indigenous people did not experience outer wilderness as some “thing” separate and distinct from themselves; instead, they lived immersed within it. For most of us, however, this reality couldn’t be further from our experience. Trying to undo our conditioning—which has trained us to view nature as something “out there”—is like trying to explain to a fish that it is submerged and held in a vast ocean: the salty water goes unnoticed until the fish is suddenly lifted out of the water and confronted with the different environment of air.

We cannot return to an indigenous way of being, nor can we deny the conditioning that alienates us from the earth and nature. Yet it is exactly this conditioning, this separation, that triggers the need for a meditative journey toward reconnection. It is often only when we have lost something that we can recognize and realize how precious it is. By simultaneously exploring our inner world and the outer, natural world through meditation, we can come to see them not as two distinct entities, but as interlacing threads that are part of a larger cloth.
The more we see ourselves as being integrated with nature, the more we can begin to feel our place in the scheme of things and free ourselves from the painful sense of isolation and alienation so prevalent in our modern-day lives.

Excerpted from Awake in the Wild by Mark Coleman ©2006 (Inner Ocean)

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