If we are able to make the paradigm shift from viewing nature as something separate from ourselves, to viewing nature as a part of us, we are better able to re-integrate and to reconnect with the natural world. From this perspective, we are able to gain the knowledge that we are nature, and nature is us. This means that if we find ourselves in Refusal of the Return, we are refusing ourselves by refusing all of nature.
Sometimes those of us who work with ecology and environmentalism like to draw a line between humans and the rest of nature. In doing so we continue to foster the myth that humans and nature are two different things; that humans are not a part of nature.
In the Reflections on a Closer Look exercise on the previous pages, it is hopefully made clear that the line we often draw between nature and ourselves is an imaginary line. No such distinction between humans and nature actually exists. In this exercise we are using a small patch of nature to observe and describe our own inner states. The Closer Look exercise allows us to use nature as a metaphor for our own inner emotional and spiritual states.
But what if this is a two-way street? What if nature herself could use us as a metaphor? Does nature learn from us and communicate with us in the same way that we learn from her and communicate with her? What if a two-way communication with nature were possible? What if we could use the metaphors we have constructed as a way of connecting to nature?
In the Closer Look Inside exercise on the next pages, we will explore communicating with nature through metaphor.
As you complete the Closer Look Inside questions, reflect back on the story you created during the Closer Look exercise, and to your responses to the questions in the Reflections on a Closer Look exercise. Viewing the story you created as a metaphor for your own personal journey to True Self, examine the details of your narrative for clues that might help you to remove your barriers to Crossing the Return Threshold. In other words, look for details in your story that might indicate your own Refusal of the Return. In what ways might you be clinging to the idea of isolating yourself and not teaching what you have learned?
For example, suppose that in your Closer Look story you wrote the following: “I saw an inchworm on a blade of grass, struggling to get to the next blade of grass.”
Could that sentence be a metaphor for something you are struggling with inside of yourself? If so, how might you remove the barriers that you are struggling with so that you are more freely able to connect with nature, with others, and with your True Self? How might this wisdom help you to cross the return threshold?
Sometimes when I do the Closer Look exercises with groups, there are people who don’t create a story. These people usually write things like, “I saw a bunch of green grass with several ants, and a few ladybugs.” Their responses to the exercise are heavy on observing and describing, but short on narrative content. If your responses to the exercise were of a similar nature, it could be that you have learned to see the world just as it is, without assumptions or perception filters.
Sometimes, however, such observational descriptions of the exercise, without any narrative elements, can be a way of avoiding the inner journey. In such a case, the person may be evading the story elements as a defense mechanism to keep from revealing too much to others or to self. This resistance itself might be a metaphor for the Refusal of the Return.
If you think that you may be doing this, just honestly ask yourself if you are doing so to avoid connecting with your True Self. You’re your own best expert on your own inner state, so this is a question that only you can answer. If you are satisfied that the answer to this question is, “no,” then go on to the next section, A Closer Look Inside.
If the answer to the question, “Did I avoid telling a story because I wanted to avoid describing my own inner journey?” is “yes,” then you may wish to go back and try the exercise again.
So what if you truly are not avoiding a narrative in order to avoid connecting with your True Self, but you just wrote a description of your observations with no story elements?
In that case, you may still continue on to the Closer Look Inside exercise. If you did not include any story elements, and you are not trying to avoid connecting to your True Self, then simply writing a description of everything you saw in the Closer Look exercise means that you can see the world in a non-judgmental fashion, without assumptions. You may use these skills to help you to answer the questions in the Closer Look Inside exercise that follows.
