During a recent holiday at a meditation retreat in Phuket, Thailand, I found myself enveloped by nature and pleasantly drowning in its energy. An energy that can’t be easily measured, costs nothing and is infinite. I believe it to be one of the greatest gifts we have been blessed with but also one we mostly take for granted.
I am not sure how it started but this year I have been looking more at plants and have found myself to be quite intrigued. This week I sat amongst the greenery and started to see what it was (if anything) nature could teach me. I must say…I didn’t expect what I was to realize:
- Beauty: We see beauty in its imperfection. You can look at a life filled forest with plants that have a chaotic beauty about it. A fern may have some broken leaves, it may be a little twisted but all we see is beauty. We don’t focus on the imperfections however, when we look at ourselves in the mirror and see a small pimple, a blemish etc we judge and criticize.
- Acceptance: Trees of all shapes, sizes and colours co-inhabit the garden/jungle/forest. It all just ‘works’. They grow around/within one another and we see beauty in the madness…the acceptance. In life, we can’t seem to integrate like this. We don’t love/accept and incorporate each other like nature effortlessly does.
- Death can result in life: You may see a tree or plant that may be half dead but the other half of it is flourishing. Perhaps sometimes in life, we need to let a part of us die in order to come back stronger, better and more beautiful than ever?
- Perfection in trust: When you look closely at a plant or a flower, you notice just how perfectly symmetrical it is. How uniform the growth is. There is no one telling the plant or flower how to grow…how to flower…where to put its leaves and yet…in trusting in the universe/its path/its destiny…perfection results. Perhaps if we got out of our own way and stopped trying to control life…things would turn out better and more beautifully than we had imagined?
Next time you are in nature…take some time to really look at the beauty that is before you and…what it is that you can learn from this priceless gift.
To an exceptional existence,
Louise
Twitter: E_existence
Instragram: Exceptionalexistence
Facebook: FB/aneexistence
