Doorway to Oneness

Notes of the flute floated over the water and I imagined them drifting downstream. A pause and the sound of rushing, tumbling, clear water leaping over and swirling around rocks filled the sound space. I closed my eyes and listened, allowing the sound to fill me. Then I played another round of flute music.

I continued in this rhythm–playing and listening, playing and listening–and found myself merging with Nature. For extended moments there was no separation between my consciousness and the consciousness of Nature.

After finishing the round I walked on, open to the next place of play, of communion.

When I visited Ireland I found Nature and I connected in this way when I played Irish whistles with intention to express gratitude either to Nature or the Ancestors. 

I was at the Poulnabrone Dolmen and it started to rain. The few others there ran for their cars. I put my camera in the backpack and pulled out the whistle. I sat down near the entrance to the tomb and began playing. As the sweet notes left the whistle, I sent open-hearted gratitude to the Ancestors buried there. When I opened my eyes a rift in the cloud had formed, the rain had stopped where I was sitting and the clouds parted just over the dolmen. It was as if the spirits of the land had pushed the clouds away and I had only a few drops of rain touch me or my photography gear.

At another location in Ireland, a small development of rather cheap houses where construction debris had simply been pushed over the steep bank at a creek, I went out one snowy morning with my low whistle and began to play for the healing of the land there. I felt an immediate rush of energy focus on me and then felt surrounded by curiosity and something more. It felt like gratitude flowing towards me for noticing, for caring.

I have treasured the intense, wild energies of Nature I felt on both journeys there. I have rarely felt so at one with the elements, with myself, as when I’m in the rugged landscapes of Ireland’s west coast….until recently as I’ve played my native flutes with intention with Nature.

There is no mistaking the sweet feeling of Oneness with Nature. The exquisite melting of the personality self into the landscape and the conscious awareness shared with water, trees, rocks, flowers….it’s the only time I don’t feel like an outsider in this body.

So I walked in contemplation and realized that my breath was key in taking me into this communion. And I thought to times scuba diving when this same feeling came and that was also through relaxed, conscious breathing. Once I was humming and breathing and sending out love for the Ocean and heard music of the Ocean return in the pause of my humming. 

“God is the breath inside the breath.” Kabir

I have wondered why I felt the Oneness with Nature so strongly on the West Coast of Ireland and in places like the wild desert in Bonaire’s national park, or underwater while diving away from crowds of people, or in mind-blowing, heavily decorated underwater caves. Why, I wondered in lonesome grief, was I able to melt into Oneness in some places and found it challenging in others?

Was it the energies of the land or sea? Lack of crowds of humans? Remoteness? What was the connection? How could I repeat that delicious Oneness? Unraveling this mystery has been a quest for many years.

Two things stand out to me from my recent experiences. First, I have to feel safe enough to open myself to the experience, to allow ego to dissolve. That does not happen when other humans, that I don’t know, are present. The other is breathing. Not just breathing but conscious breathing–allowing the breath to take me into a place of surrender.

There is nothing in this life that compares to the embodied experience of Oneness. The ingredients for me include natural beauty of place, intentional breathing, willingness to open and surrender to the place and a laying down of my defenses and opening of my heart and mind. But it’s not simply about individual experiences.

“The Earth needs our presence, our awareness, our relationship. It needs us to recognize its true nature, to hear its song. It needs us to be a part of its living prayer.” Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The doorway is always present. Nature always present. But am I?