Immersion: walk like a tracker

THE NATURE OF US writings on the earth community, love, body, embodiment, interconnection, our planetary moment, music - and the creativity and possibilities inherent in being human.

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The wetness under our feet facilitates grounding. Walking barefoot on a wet beach is said to be ideal, but any moistness or dew in the morning is good. I find that the earth grid is a magnet for me, drawing my energy whether the ground is wet or dry.

I went down to my nearby beach, reliably isolated on a grey day. The tide was low, beginning to come in, gently rippling in the nearby tide pools. I could feel these ripples continuing through the waters within my body, only the faint outline of myself remaining. Later it dawned on me how easily receptive I am near the water. I love to merge with the vastness of the ocean. Enveloped and nourished, I am soothed in her deep embrace. Relaxing, sinking so deeply, I return to the true nature of myself.

In Becoming Animal, David Abram describes the underlying significance of our absorption in nature:

When we speak of the human animal’s spontaneous interchange with the animate landscape, we acknowledge a felt relation to the mysterious that was active long before any formal or priestly religions. The instinctive rapport with the enigmatic cosmos at once both nourishing and dangerous lies at the ancient heart of all that we have come to call ‘the sacred.’ Temporarily forgotten, paved over yet never eradicated, this old reciprocity with the breathing earth was here long before all our formal religions, and it will likely outlast all our formal religions. For it has always been operative underneath our various religions, nourishing them from below like a subterranean river.

. . . Our greatest hope for the future rests not in the triumph of any single set of beliefs, but in the acknowledgment of a felt mystery that underlies all doctrines . . . the human body’s implicit faith in the steady sustenance of the air and the renewal of light every dawn, its faith in mountains and rivers and the enduring support of the ground, in the silent germinations of the seeds and the cyclical return of the salmon.

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Each of us finds our unique connection to the earth and stars, discovering what draws us closer. Mystery requires total presence, being right here in this moment - body, mind, nature - one intertwined whole. We embody aliveness and wholeness in the here and now. Submerging in natural waters, climbing majestic peaks, walking barefoot in the grass, feeling the sun on our skin, we find our own improvisational way of relating to nature.

Our rapport is ours alone, and yet the quality of our listening, and the depth of our response, can transform the collective texture of the real. Here Abram underlines how our participation with the earth matters. We change the world by entering into it fully, and in turn we feel ourselves more deeply. We directly experience that we are part of a mysterious moving presence. As we deepen in this reciprocity with nature, we forge our own path born of what we love, what touches our heart. Our love for the world grows from our own body knowing, from our instinctual connection to how we feel when we play and move on the earth.

What touches our heart also draws us into the heart of nature, to our unique source connection, bypassing our thinking mind. The mystery is not something to be understood, it is a communion to be felt in the silence. Each of us then expresses our individual nature from what mysteriously arises within us.

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And speaking of communion: in the coastal town of Inverness, there is a tracker, Richard Vacha, who writes a column in the local paper, The Point Reyes Light. An essay entitled I can’t go for a hike anymore intrigued me, as I feel something similar, I no longer want to walk quickly over terrain to attain a goal, or miss everything chatting to a friend - it’s okay occasionally, but then later I realize I didn’t feel the nuances of the earth.

He writes:

As we slow down and pay attention, we increase our ability to become more aware of what is otherwise shuttled into our unconscious memory. It is all there, everything we have experienced. Even things we were not consciously aware of at the time are accessible and searchable much later. With practice, more and more of what our minds were trained to tune out becomes available, and we perceive a much more complex version of what is going on around us. This cannot help but increase our power and well-being.

Another term for this state is immersion. This is how animals feel and relate to the world, and we can experience it, too. Unseparated, highly attuned, prepared to wade through it, to jump in and roll around in it, to let the flood of sensory input wash over us and begin to reveal its mysteries.

In this state of immersion we take in the distant sounds and the tapestries of bird calls and winds blowing, waves drumming, the rise and fall of animal activity in response to our own presence. We slowly become wild and free. Nature around us continues to light up, and tiny details stand out more. There is something distinctly psychedelic about this approach . . . . We are activating a deep part of our brain and connecting with ancient patterns so it can have a feeling of going through time or remembering past lives.

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The earth we walk on today has seen generations come and go. When we sink into her, we enter a timeless space together. She sings through me, gentle hums and lilting high notes, and we go deeper each day. I love that a man who is a tracker can describe much of what I feel, this wild and free part of ourselves we access through encounters with the earth.

The more closely we attend, the more we remember to ground, we create a living relationship with Mother Earth. She nourishes us, up through our feet, legs and spine, to the terrain of our brain. We feel the web of interconnection via the parts of our brain that, as Vacha said above, connect us with the ancient patterns. We know her as a part of us, listen to her song, and follow her signals. She is our mother, and we are intimately entwined with her body and atmosphere. This, of course, is what the indigenous people knew intimately, and what each of us can discover in our own way again: remembering, regenerating, reconnecting.

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With practice, more and more of what our minds were trained to tune out becomes available, and we perceive a much more complex version of what is going on around us. This cannot help but increase our power and well-being.

Walk like a tracker and immerse yourself in the world!

Thanks for reading today. Attentive readers may remember some of this essay in 2024, as I used these words of Richard Vacha in an earlier essay, Song of the earth: nourishing body and brain.

With love,

Sabrina

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Song of the earth: nourishing body and brain

Of Presence and Mystery

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Please support my work:

Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness

You can reach me at sabrinapage@earthlink.net. I assist you in focusing on the deep knowing of your body, aligned with the earth and all life - embodiment - to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. Optimize your self-healing ability and embody presence and love by uncovering the new in yourself.

My background includes having studied meditation, movement, dance, and astrology - with some of the leading individuals in their fields. Sessions are individually tailored to your current needs.

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