I heard someone on a radio show recently talking about the beauty of nature. She went on to explain that if you are “in the moment” and in tune with what is going on around you — let yourself tune in, as it were — there will be moments of pure magic and beauty. A butterfly lands on a nearby flower, for instance, and you suddenly see nature for the incredible and inexorably beautiful and complex thing that it is. You experience a sort of epiphany in a sense that changes the way you see the world. In seeking these moments out, or being available to them, you will feel an incredibly uplifting and sometimes euphoric feeling of being at peace and at one with the world. Anxieties melt away. You feel as an integral part of nature, and not some kind of alien presence within it, immune to its protestations and ignorant of its needs.
In my own experience I have had the pleasure of this state of mind more than once and, however temporary it is before the real world comes crashing in on me, it is a feeling I try to cultivate as often as I can. As I understand it, in essence this is the goal of meditation.
So, I hear people wax on about feeling oneness with nature and how beautiful nature is and how being in tune with nature can balance your feelings of anxiety and all of these other wonderful things. But the irony of all of this is that nature — the real nature — while being a truly intricate and stupefyingly complex thing and thus by some measures beautiful, is by other measures a cruel and unforgiving master. One only need watch a documentary program about the natural world or see a pitiful chick on the pavement having fallen from a nest to gain an inkling of the very real perils that await every animal. To be an animal in the wilderness is to live in fear for your very life. It is to never let your guard down. It is in the most visceral sense a daily struggle for survival. And if you slip up, you die. More precisely, if you slip up you are likely to be murdered, dismembered, and consumed — in that order if you’re lucky.
In looking at the concept in this way it becomes clear that the image of nature as this nurturing, caring, entity whose calming and freeing energy we can tap into if only we listen is, at best, an illusion and at worst utter delusion. Yet, in my opinion, this is delusion that warrants merit.
Does it matter if what we sense is real or not if what we are sensing is pleasurable and thereby conditions us to act or feel in a more constructive way? In a more generous way? In a more sane way? Delusion evoking more sanity — now there is irony. But essentially, delusions that make us better people are a good thing. Consider the following:
- In the Wica tradition, if you commit an evil act, then evil will come back to you three times; if you commit a good act, good will come back to you three times. Hinduism projects a similar idea, called Karma. Imagine if we lived in a world where everyone believed in this precept literally and wholeheartedly. Imagine how much less corruption, greed, and other foul things would happen if everyone knew in their heart of hearts that what they did would come back to them threefold. What a terrific motivation it would it be to perpetrate good and refrain from evil.
- In the Japanese religion of Shintoism, every object has a spirit or soul (Kami). Delusion? Yes, but what a wonderful concept. What kind of a world would this be if everyone believed in it? We would think twice about the disposability of things. We would take more care in everything we did for fear of harming or wronging a Kami. Imagine a world where nothing is taken as a mere resource and everything is granted respect and dignity. A world where our current utilitarian perspectives are extinguished.
My first reaction to the woman on the radio was that she was right and experiencing that oneness with nature truly is a wonderful thing. My second thought was that, you know…. nature’s not actually that nice…. Therefore the feeling she was experiencing must be a creation of her own mind. But thinking further I realized that that does not make it a bad thing. If people walked around believing that nature was beautiful, and that delusion made them happier, more balanced people, less prone to greed and artifice, and more prone to helping their fellow man and protecting the natural environment, then in my view everyone (and everything) wins.