Getting Closer to Nature

Two days ago I emailed Alan Rinzler, an editor with radiant energy who I had the good fortune of working with in the past. He asked what I planned to do next, now that one book was done. He posed that question 35 years ago, after we had completed a project.

Back then, a thought immediately came to mind: I’m looking for truth. I did not want to say it out loud, but I did. His reply: But what do you want to do? That was the beginning of my exploration into the healing arts.

Looking back, as a young person I was seeking ways to be true to myself. Now I would define "truth" by my sense of who I am at the moment.It's an ongoing process. And not always a pretty picture!

Today I came across a definition of truth on The Nature Institute website that expands on my much simpler definition.

“The thought-content that arises within us when we confront the external world is truth. We cannot seek any knowledge other than the insight that we ourselves produce. Those who look behind things for something else that is supposed to explain them have not realized that all questions about the essential nature of things can arise only from our human need to permeate our perceptions with thinking.

"Things speak to us, and our inner nature speaks as we observe them. Both sides of this dialog arise from the same primal being, and we are called on to bring about their mutual understanding. This is what knowledge is all about.

"Those who understand inherent human needs seek this and nothing else. For those who lack such understanding, the things of the outer world remain alien. Such people do not hear the essential nature of things speaking out of their own inner being. Consequently, they presume that it is concealed behind the things. They believe in another external world behind the perceptible one. But things remain external only as long as we merely observe them. When we reflect on them, they are no longer outside us; we merge with their inner aspect.

"The contrast between objective, external percept and subjective, inner world of thought exists for us only as long as we fail to recognize that these worlds belong together. Our inner world is nature’s inner being.”

In other words, don't look for truth or for nature, just be true to your nature.

Note: I created paragraph spaces not in the original text, which prints it as one paragraph.

Excerpt from Being on Earth: Practice In Tending the Appearances, by Georg Maier, Ronald Brady, Stephen Edelglass. Chapter 9 “The World Inside the Human Being is the Inside of Nature”. Available online at The Nature Institute.