Each of us lives in our own personal fairy tale called “my life.” We all have good things that happen to us, and we all have bad things that happen to us. We create our own personal myths by choosing which things to focus on in our own lives. The good news about the myth of our lives is that we are the author. So if we don’t like the way the story is going, we have the power to do a ‘rewrite’ at any time. We can’t always choose the circumstances of our lives, but we can always choose the story we create about those circumstances. If you go out into the woods and start observing things, you will notice something begin to happen. You will begin to create stories about the events you observe there in the forest. These stories that spring to mind in the woods can tell you a great deal about what is going on in your own unconscious mind, if you know how to pay attention to them.

8.0 What is Ecotherapy?

“Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.”

— Alfred Adler

People live in systems. We all grew up in a family that interconnected, interacted, and interrelated with each other in a systemic fashion. There were rules that our families lived by. Some of these rules were spoken, and some of them were unspoken. These rules were usually made by our parents or other authority figures.

Some of us were raised by both our birth parents, while some of us were raised in blended families with stepparents. Others were raised in single-parent homes, or by grandparents, or by foster parents. In each of these families, there are systemic rules that indicate what the expectations are for surviving and thriving within the family unit.

These family systems exist in the larger circle of the neighborhood. In cities these neighborhoods may be close-knit communities, while in rural areas these neighborhood communities may be more geographically spread out. Each neighborhood has rules that either form a coherent unit or create chaos among the members of the system.

These neighborhoods belong to larger systems of community, and to town or city, and to nation, and ultimately to the entire planet we call home. Each system has rules about interacting with other systems.

Nature is a system as well. How the system of nature chooses to interact with us is at least as important as how we choose to interact with nature. It is a reciprocal relationship; a “seesaw” of give and take. The more we interact in positive ways with nature, the more nature chooses to interact in positive ways with us. And of course, the more we choose to interact in negative ways with nature, the more we reap the consequences when nature responds in kind.

These complex interactions impact our psyche and influence our mental and physical wellbeing. If you’ve ever felt relaxed and invigorated after a walk in the park, or if you’ve ever felt sad after driving down a highway lined with litter, you know this to be true.

Our experiences with and in nature can influence our state of mind. The relatively new science of ecopsychology studies this process. As these interactions become more researched and documented, this knowledge can be used to create experiences in nature that promote wellbeing. The therapeutic use of the knowledge gained through ecopsychology is known as ecotherapy.

Ecotherapy is applied ecopsychology.

 Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy combines the tools of mindfulness and ecopsychology to create a nature-based program of mental health designed to prevent problems before they start by focusing on positive experiences.

One of the skills of mindfulness is the ability to focus on one thing at a time. In Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy, we use this skill in order to be able to focus more on the natural world around us, and on how we change it and how it changes us.

The first step in connecting with nature in this way is to see nature as a metaphor for ourselves and our own inner journeys. By seeing ourselves reflected in nature and nature reflected in ourselves, we are able to open the doors to a wider world of experience. It is an adventure of healing both of ourselves and of nature.

In this session, we will examine ways to do this so we can slow down, take a look around us, and live deliberately and with conscious intent, using nature as our guide and mentor by harnessing the power of nature as metaphor.

Optional Activity: Pilgrimage

Pilgrimages are probably as old as the human race. A pilgrimage is just a journey undertaken for a sacred or spiritual purpose.

A Pilgrimage

If you are participating in a Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy workshop series, or just completing this workbook on your own, you are on a pilgrimage of a sort. Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy can be a spiritual journey to your True Self.

This pilgrimage optional activity is a way to create Second Order Change in your own life. In order to do it, you must have access to some sort of hiking trail. This should be a trail that you can walk comfortably in a single day or less, unless you feel ambitious enough to make it a weekend backpacking and camping trip.

The purpose of this pilgrimage is to spend at least a day journeying in a natural setting while contemplating your own spiritual path. Be sure to take enough food and water for the journey!

If possible, set out at dawn and return at dusk. As you walk the trail, engage in mindful breathing and mindful walking as much as possible while remaining open to everything the trail has to show you and tell you. As you walk, contemplate these questions:

  1. Who am I?
  2. Who do I want to be?
  3. What is my mission or purpose in life?
  4. How am I living that purpose?
  5. How am I not living that purpose?
  6. What would I have to change about myself in order to accomplish my life’s mission?

You may wish to take a journal with you. If any insights come to you as you walk, stop to write them down.

If you find any place that calls to you, stop there and meditate for a while, after asking permission and giving thanks.

Try asking the questions above before you set out on your pilgrimage, and after you return.

Did your answers change? How?

8.1 Second-Order Change

“We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” – Anais Nin

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is about learning a new way of being in the world. If is a paradigm shift to a new way of thinking and feeling about our day-today lives.

In mindfulness, there is a concept called beginner’s mind. The idea of beginner’s mind is to greet each day with a new mind, without assumptions or judgments. It is about cultivating a childlike sense of wonder about the world around us, and about ourselves. Beginner’s mind is about being childlike, but it is not about being childish. The difference between childlike and childish is that in beginner’s mind we are cultivating our mindful awareness skills in order to cast off our preconceived notions about the world around us.

We all make certain assumptions in our lives, and many of those assumptions serve a useful purpose. For example, we assume that when we wake up in the morning and get out of bed, there will be a floor underneath the bed to support us. This is a useful assumption, because if we don’t make that assumption, we might not get out of bed! This assumption is based on years of previous experience with getting out of bed and putting our feet on the floor.

There is, however, another category of assumptions that may not be so useful. Consider a person who has been raised in an abusive family. This person has received negative messages from her primary caretaker all of her life. Some of these messages might be, “You’re not good enough” or “You’re a bad person.” If such a person gets enough of those messages from her primary caretakers (her parents or other guardians), then that person’s assumptions might be that “I’m not good enough” or “I’m a bad person.” This person has made assumptions about herself based on messages she has received in the past. Even though those messages may not have been true, they have become a part of the way she sees herself. In other words, she has assumed them to be true.

Let’s look at another example.

Centuries ago, people assumed that the world was flat. This is because this assumption matched their observations about the world they saw around them. Think for a moment about living with this paradigm. What assumptions would you make about the world if you thought it was flat? If you thought the world was flat, and you were sailing into uncharted waters with Christopher Columbus, how would you feel about the likelihood of returning home safely?

As time went on and scientific knowledge grew, we learned that the world is a sphere. With that new information, our worldview changed. It was a paradigm shift from a flat Earth to a round Earth. Imagine you were a sailor armed with this new knowledge. How would such information change your thoughts and feelings about sailing with Christopher Columbus?

In cybernetic systems theory, we have the concepts of First Order Change and Second Order Change. First Order Change involves playing the same game over and over again by the same rules and expecting different results, while Second Order Change means thinking outside of the box and re-interpreting the rules so the game can be won. In our example above about Christopher Columbus, the ability to make a paradigm shift from the view of the earth as flat, to the view of the earth as a sphere would be an example of such a change.

The ability to achieve Second Order Change is the ability to achieve beginner’s mind and to look at things in a fresh, new way. By seeing things in a new way we are able to escape assumptions that are keeping us from seeing solutions.

8.2 Beginner’s Mind

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is a way of achieving beginner’s mind. It allows us to examine the assumptions we have made about our world and how we exist in it. Some of those assumptions may be useful assumptions, but some of those assumptions may not be. By beginning each day with a blank slate, we erase those assumptions that may lead to results we don’t want.

How do you tell which assumptions are useful and which ones are not? The answer is that we use the mindful skill of focusing on one thing at a time to really pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, and to the thoughts and feelings of those around us. When using mindful awareness to examine our own inner motivations, we are able to discover which assumptions are useful in our daily lives, and which assumptions might need to be modified, or even cast away.

When we are able to set aside these negative assumptions and perceptions and greet each day with a sense of childlike wonder, we have achieved beginner’s mind.

8.3 True Self and the Power of Intention

The ultimate goal of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is to free yourself from the assumptions and barriers to connection that keep you from living fully in your True Self. Refer back to your list of Things that Keep Me from Feeling Connected from Session 7. How many of those barriers to connection have to do with your own assumptions about the way things work in your life? How many of those barriers to connection involve things that you have assumed to be permanent, personal, and pervasive? That is, how many of those barriers to connection have you assumed to be unchanging, inevitable, and centered on your own experience of the world?

Our intention with Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is to be able to live fully in True Self. What paradigm shifts would have to take place in order for that to happen? What moves from a flat earth to a round earth would you have to make in your own way of seeing the world that would allow you to become the person you were born to be? How many assumptions about your life and the way the world works have you made that may not be helpful to living fully in your True Self?

8.4 Nature as Metaphor

Fairy tales were used in the past, and are sometimes still used today, as teaching tools (for a great example of a fairy tale being used as a teaching tool in the modern world, see Robert Bly’s book, Iron John). These stories often contained moral lessons. Another thing most fairy tales contain are archetypal images and elements of nature. Think of your favorite fairy tale. What are the elements of nature in it? Does the fact that it is your favorite fairy tale have anything to do with those elements of nature? Are those elements good like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, or bad, like the Big Bad Wolf, or neutral like the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk? What does your fondness for those particular elements of your fairy tale tell you about yourself?

Are there any archetypal elements to your story?

Each of us lives in our own personal fairy tale called “my life.” We all have good things that happen to us, and we all have bad things that happen to us. We create our own personal myths by choosing which things to focus on in our own lives. The good news about the myth of our lives is that we are the authors. So if we don’t like the way the story is going, we have the power to do a rewrite at any time. We can’t always choose the circumstances of our lives, but we can always choose the story we create about those circumstances.

If you go out into the woods and start observing things, you will notice something begin to happen. You will begin to create stories about the events you observe there in the forest.

I remember once when I watched a flock of crows defending their turf against a hawk. I had created personalities for each of the crows, and for the hawk. Before I knew it, I had created back story for each of the characters, and dialogue for the major players. I had watched this show for about ten minutes before I realized that the story I had created in my mind told me a lot more about what was going on inside my own head than what was happening with the birds.

The next time you are able to observe nature for a time, pay attention to what sort of stories come to mind. What could it be that your unconscious mind is trying to tell you? Can you see nature as a metaphor for your own inner journey?  To practice the art of observing nature as a metaphor for your own life, go on to the next page and complete the exercise, A Closer Look.

A Closer Look

This exercise will help you to gain practice in seeing nature as a metaphor. These skills help us to live more fully in True Self by helping us to observe our own inner dialogs and to describe them to ourselves. In this exercise you will observe and describe an experience in nature.

INSTRUCTIONS

You may wish to purchase a Hula Hoop™ or similar toy before trying this exercise.

Weather permitting, go outside on the lawn in a park, your backyard, or other natural area. If you have a toy hoop, place it on the ground in front of you, and sit down on the grass. If you don’t have a hoop, mark off an area about 3 feet in diameter with a rope, or by drawing a circle, or by just using your imagination. Now imagine that the entire world is contained within that hoop. See yourself as an artist, about to paint or draw everything you see inside that hoop. At first you may see nothing but blades of grass, but as you pay more attention you may begin to notice how no two blades are different. Each is pointing in a different direction, and each is a slightly different color, texture, and shape. You may notice the soil beneath as well. What color is it? Is it fine or grainy? Do you see any insects in the little world you have created? If so, what are they doing? Are there any stories unfolding in your little patch of grass? Pay attention to what you see before you for at least ten minutes. Shift your attention to what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel as you sit on the grass. When your time is up, write your response below.

“Closer Look” exercise, Mountain Light Sanctuary Ecospirituality Retreat, 2012


RESPONSE

Write a description of what you saw in the grass. Think of it as a story, from “Once upon a time” to “…and they all lived happily ever after.” Imagine you are now documenting the story in the section below. What story did you see unfolding in the grass? Use extra paper if necessary to write your story.

8.5 Reflections on a Closer Look

As discussed earlier in this chapter, ecotherapy is the use of nature to facilitate mental wellbeing. One way that Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy does this is by using nature as a metaphor. The story you just created in the Closer Look exercise is a metaphor for your own inner journey.

The idea of Second-Order Change is that it is a lasting paradigm shift created when we are able to expand our vision and see the bigger picture. Such a change of perspective is a way of changing the “rules of the game” so that the game can be won. The Closer Look exercise can help to achieve this by using our observations and descriptions of nature as a window into our own souls.

The first step in achieving such a Second-Order Change is to achieve beginner’s mind. As we discussed previously, beginner’s mind is a way to look at the world anew with a sense of childlike wonder. It is a way of freeing ourselves from the assumptions we have made about the way the world works. If those assumptions are leading us to consequences in our lives that we don’t want to experience, the way to change those consequences is to challenge those assumptions.

What assumptions may you have been making that might be creating a barrier to your intention of living fully in your True Self? How might you re-examine those assumptions, using beginner’s mind, to see the world in a new way? How might your new vision of the world remove those barriers?

Read over the story you created in the Closer Look exercise. Now imagine that story as your observations and descriptions of what is going on inside your own mind. See the story you created as a metaphor for your own inner journey as you complete the Reflections on a Closer Look activity on the next pages.

Reflections on A Closer Look      

After completing the Closer Look exercise, did you notice any common themes in your observations? Read over the questions below, and write your answers in the spaces provided.

Were your observations more about what you saw, or about your own internal state?

If it was more about what you saw, how do these observations relate to your thoughts and feelings?

If it was more about your own internal state, did you discover anything about your assumptions about the workings of your own thoughts and feelings?

Did you engage any of your other senses during the activity?

Did you write anything about what you heard?

Did you write anything about what you smelled?

Did you write anything about what you tasted?

Did you write anything about what you felt (touch, hot, cold, etc.)?

Did you write anything about what you felt emotionally?

Did you write anything about your thoughts?

How do these observations about your own inner experience of the Closer Look exercise relate to what you observed on the ground? In other words, what does your response to the Closer Look exercise tell you about your own inner states?

Did you find yourself inventing stories about what you saw on the ground?     Yes     |     No

If so, what can these stories tell you about how you see your own True Self? If not, what did you write?

How did you feel before this exercise? After?

BEFORE

AFTER

Did you use one sense more than others to record your observations (e.g., seeing more than hearing)?

If your observations relied more on one sense than others, how might this experience change if you relied on another sense (e.g., hearing rather than seeing)?

If you focused primarily on observing the natural world during this experience, how might it change if you paid more attention to your own internal state (thoughts and feelings) instead?

If you focused primarily on your own inner state, how might this experience change if you focused more on the natural world?

What did you learn about your True Self and how it relates to the natural world?

Did you learn anything about your assumptions about how the world works? If so, describe the lesson:

8.6 A Closer Look Inside

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.

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, return to your Things that Keep Me from Feeling Connected list and select the top thing from that list that seems to be keeping you from connecting to your True Self.

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 connecting to your True Self.

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?

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.

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.

A Closer Look Inside

Go back to your list of Things That Keep Me from Feeling Connected from Session 7. Has anything on the list changed as you’ve progressed through the Closer Look exercises? Find the top thing from your list that is currently keeping you from feeling connected to your True Self. Hold that barrier to connection in your mind for a moment. We’re going to take a closer look at it by going inside.

Think about your number one barrier to connecting with your True Self, and answer the following questions:

What is the exact nature of this barrier? Physical or mental? Why?

Is this barrier to connection a permanent barrier, or a temporary one? Why?

Is this barrier to connection a pervasive one, touching all aspects of your life, or is it a situation-specific one, touching only one or a few areas of your life?

Is this barrier to connection a personal one, having something exclusively to do with you, or is it something external to you?

Is this barrier to connection something you can change, or is it something you have to accept?

Is this barrier to connection something you have control over?

Is this barrier to connection something you can re-frame in order to turn it into aid to connection?

Now visualize yourself drawing a circle around this barrier to connection in your own mind.

Allow yourself to move from Doing Mode into Being Mode. Simply observe what’s going on inside of this imaginary circle you’ve drawn around your barrier to connection. Write down any observations about it in the exercise on the next page.

You’ve drawn an imaginary circle around your number one barrier to connection. This is the one thing that most often keeps you from connecting with your True Self. Observe it from Being Mode for a few minutes, and write down any observations you get from your thoughts, feelings, memories or senses about this barrier to connection with your True Self. Prior to doing this, you may wish to ground and center yourself. It may help to engage in a brief mindful meditation before beginning.

Note your observations in your journal or notebook.

8.7 Nature as Archetype

The Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung originated the concept of archetypes. Jung studied cultures from around the world, and began noticing patterns that occurred with great frequency in most mythology and lore. For example, most religions around the world have some sort of Sacred Tree archetype. There’s the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible, the Lotus Tree under which Buddha was said to have achieved Enlightenment, and the Sacred Tree at the center of the world revered by many Native American and Celtic peoples. In each case, the Sacred Tree played a central role in each religion’s story. Jung believed that it was no coincidence that these images kept cropping up from culture to culture. He believed that certain constellations of ideas such as the Sacred Tree, the Mother/Maiden/Crone trilogy, the Warrior/Sage/Golden Child trilogy, the Mandala, etc. were concepts that were inborn into all humans in much the same way that certain birds are born with the knowledge of how to navigate during migration. These archetypes are not something we have to be taught; they are something we are born with.

Jung hypothesized a repository of these archetypes within each human mind. The sum of these archetypes was something he called the collective unconscious. This means that every human being alive today, and every human being who has ever existed, has a repository of these archetypes somewhere in their unconscious minds.

8.8 The Power of the Unconscious Mind

The part of our brains that is responsible for consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. Far more of our brainpower is used for unconscious activities. For example, until you read this sentence, were you consciously aware of your breathing? Or of your heart beating? Or of the thousands of biological processes currently going on in your body, being regulated by your brain? You probably only became conscious of these processes after this paragraph called your attention to them.

Likewise, many of our emotional reactions and memories take place on an unconscious level. If you’ve ever had a strong emotional reaction to a place or situation, without knowing why, you’ve experienced the power of the unconscious mind. The unconscious part of the mind, where emotional memories are stored, has no sense of time. That’s why often a strong grief reaction doesn’t get better with time. Time alone cannot heal a childhood trauma. It only gets better when we learn how to deal with it.

Think back right now to a time in your childhood when a deep spiritual connection in your life may have been severed. Do you still have a strong emotional reaction to it? If so, you’ve again experienced the power of the unconscious mind.

Not everything about the unconscious mind is negative, though. It has been theorized that the unconscious mind is also the seat of creativity. It’s the part of your mind that is activated when you dream. Most creative people report that their best ideas seem to come out of nowhere. This “nowhere” is actually the unconscious mind at work.

Think back to the last time you were inspired by an idea or a flash of insight or a hunch that turned out to be right. Was there a conscious process involved, or did the idea just seem to come to you, fully formed? If you’ve had such a moment of inspiration, you’ve once again experienced the power of the unconscious mind.

8.9 The Golden Road

The problem with trying to tap into the power of the unconscious, is that if we could be consciously aware of its workings, it wouldn’t be unconscious! So how do we get there from here? Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung’s mentor, called dreams the “Golden Road to the unconscious.” He believed that the apparently nonsensical content of our dreams was in reality the unconscious mind’s attempt to communicate to the conscious mind. Jung expanded on this concept, believing that the symbols we see in dreams could tap into the power of the collective unconscious through the archetypes. A dream about an archetypal image was especially powerful to Jung. Such a dream, to him, was a direct message from the collective unconscious.

Later psychotherapists began to expand on this idea, especially in the use of projections from the unconscious. You may have seen a Rorschach ink blot test, in which a subject is shown a blot of ink on a piece of paper and is asked to describe what he sees. Such images are attempts by therapists to tap into the subject’s unconscious, in much the same way that Freud and Jung used dreams to achieve the same end.

Such techniques are used by therapists to try to gain insight into the unconscious minds of those who have mental health issues, but what if we could harness the power of the unconscious mind for creativity and connectedness as well?

8.10 The Green Man

Have you ever looked at the clouds and seen faces or other images in them? Most children, and many adults, have played this game from time to time, but have you ever stopped to think about why you saw a certain image and not another? There is no real image there in the clouds, so any image you see is a projection of your own mind onto the pattern in the sky. The next time you see an image in the clouds, ask yourself what that image means to you, and what might be going on in your life that would cause you to see that particular image.

The Green Man

The ancient Celts had an archetype known as the Green Man. The Green Man was the physical embodiment of nature. They often saw faces in the trees in much the same way that we see faces in the clouds. One Celtic legend has it that when an ancestor dies, his or her soul inhabits a tree. According to this legend, each tree has its own properties and personality. If a Celt saw the face of an ancestor in a tree, they noted the type of tree and its qualities. It was believed that the ancestor whose face they saw in the tree was sending a message through the type of tree they chose to manifest in.

Of course, there was no real face in the tree. What was at work here was the observer’s own unconscious mind, meeting his or her need to hear from an ancestor from beyond the grave.

When you spend time in nature, notice which things attract your attention. Think about what those things mean to you, and ask yourself why this particular thing should capture your attention at this particular time. When you are able to do this effectively, you’ve taken the first step on the Golden Road to the unconscious.

8.11 Wise Mind and the World Tree

Norse mythology believed that a giant tree stood at the center of the earth. This tree was the axis around which the world turned. This World Tree, known as Yggdrasil, had roots that reached into the deepest depths of the Earth. Its branches reached up to the heavens, where the Gods and Goddesses lived. The humans lived between these two realms, in Middle Earth.

The World Tree can also be seen as a metaphor for Wise Mind. Consider the roots of the tree of your Wise Mind as reaching deep into your unconscious mind, where your darkest and most hidden emotions dwell, while its branches reach for the higher consciousness of your waking mind; the center of rational thought. The tree of your Wise Mind unites the realm of the conscious and the unconscious, blending the emotional and the rational.

If you are troubled from time to time by strong emotions that you have difficulty coping with, the roots of these emotions probably lie in your unconscious mind. As noted in Section 8.2 above, you cannot become directly aware of the workings of your unconscious mind. You can, however, tap into the power of your unconscious mind by using symbolism. One method of using this symbolism is by seeing nature as a metaphor and an archetype.

As we discussed in Section 8.10, the Green Man is one way to tap into those unconscious feelings and motivations.

8.12 Connecting through the Green Man

The Green Man is not unique to Celtic folklore. Many cultures throughout the world have some form of Green Man. Because so many cultures recognize this symbol, the Green Man is archetypal. That is, his image is part of the collective unconscious shared by all humans. He is often depicted as a face surrounded by or made of leaves and other greenery. He symbolizes rebirth and the cycle of seasons as the plants return to live in the spring, so the icon of the Green Man is a fitting way to begin your own rebirth to living in True Self.

We touched briefly in Section 8.8 on the Celtic practice of seeing faces and shapes in the leaves of trees. In this section, we will expand on that idea by going into the woods and looking for shapes and symbols in the trees. To do the next exercise you will need to have access to a leafy tree. If you are doing this exercise in the winter months, you will have to use an evergreen tree. If there are no trees in your immediate area, you may use a photograph of a tree, but the exercise works better if you can go outdoors and use a real, living tree.

To begin the Green Man exercise, first perform the Tree of Life meditation, preferably outdoors under a tree. When you have centered yourself by completing the meditation, find the tree you intend to use. It should be a leafy, full tree. Stand or sit near the tree and look at it with soft eyes, relaxing your focus. Observe the tree until a picture forms in it. Picture doing this in the same way you would look for pictures in the clouds in the sky. Don’t stop looking at the tree until you can make out a picture hidden in the leaves. When you have the picture firmly in memory, go on to the next page and sketch what you saw. You don’t have to be an artist about it. Just sketch enough to give a general impression of what you saw.

The Green Man Exercise

Sketch a picture of what you saw when you did the Green Man exercise. It doesn’t have to be too detailed, as long as you can tell what the picture represents:

Reflections on the Green Man

What did you see in the tree? Use what you drew to answer these questions:

What does the picture you saw in the tree symbolize to you? What is the emotional quality of the picture?

What does the picture you saw tell you about your current emotional state?

How does the picture you saw relate to living in your True Self?

What is the overall message your image gives you?

8.13 Tree as Metaphor

Trees can be seen as a metaphor for life. They go through cycles and moods, just as we do. Some are strong, meeting the challenges of the seasons head-on and upright. Some bend and flow with the changing of the wind. Some are evergreen, showing their true colors no matter what the weather, while others ebb and flow with the seasons. Many ancient cultures believed that life could be understood through the trees.

Before the advent of the written word, our ancestors had no books from which to learn; no sacred texts from which to grow their spirituality, and no written history of their peoples. Nature was their sacred text. They studied the forest in the way that we study books today.

Think about applying the mindful skills of observing and describing to your studies of nature. Can you see the day-to-day changes in the trees as they grow through the seasons? What could you learn about the medicinal properties of the trees by paying close attention to them? What can you learn about the qualities of each tree by studying it? Do different trees have different personalities? Can trees be a metaphor for our own lives? If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?

What can you learn about your own personality by studying the trees?

8.14 Animal as Metaphor

Shamanistic cultures throughout the world use animals as metaphors for emotions, or as teaching tools. We even do this in our own culture. People can be “as hungry as a bear” or as “quiet as a mouse” or as “gentle as a lamb.” Animals and their traits are deeply rooted in our psychology.

We tend to separate ourselves from nature, and to forget that people are animals too. We are part of nature, and nature is a part of us. We cannot change that, no matter how much we might try to deny it. We even use animals in our research, from the white rats in the psychology labs to the animal testing labs and their often horrible conditions. If humans don’t have traits in common with our animal brothers and sisters, then why do we consider research on animals to be helpful at all to humans?

As human animals, our psyches are rooted in the natural world. Each of us contains within us archetypes of various animals. We instinctively know that snakes can be dangerous, just as we know we have nothing to fear from the timid rabbit. When using animals as metaphors for our own personal lives, we can draw upon the strength of these archetypes to achieve our own mindful states of being.

8.15 Nature as Metaphor for True Self

The more time we spend in nature, the more we come to realize that we are not separate from nature, and nature is not separate from us. This realization is a type of Second Order Change in itself. It is a paradigm shift of the mind. When we come to see ourselves as a part of everything that exists, and realize that everything that exists is also a part of us, we can never go back to our old ways of thinking that lead us to believe that we are something separate from, and apart from, nature.

This revelation usually comes when we are able to achieve beginner’s mind, setting aside our old assumptions about the way the world works, and about our places in it. The western industrialized world has taught us that we are “civilized” beings separate from the wildness of nature, but in beginner’s mind we can return to that childlike sense of wonder of the natural world and enjoy the beauty of a sunset or the melody of a mountain stream.

From beginner’s mind we are able to ask ourselves what we truly value in this world, and in this life. How much of what I’m worried about today will matter in five years? In ten? How much of what I’m worried about today involves the accumulation of material possessions? How much of it involves my relationship with the natural world? When we are able to determine this for ourselves, we can use our power of intention to move closer to the people we want to be, using nature as our guide.

When we achieve this unity with nature we are able to begin to see nature as a metaphor for our own stories. We are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us. We are on this journey together. When we accept nature into the narrative of our lives, we have moved one step closer to living in True Self.