A Wild Encounter

I love wild spaces. Places where there is a light footprint from humankind. Animals get to go about their ways without our interference and the elements are raw and potent.

I did a quiz recently and my top value came up as Naturalist. When I looked at my list 1 - 10, I thought wow another person could have Naturalist last on their list. And that made me ponder just how different we can be. Something that can be so important to me is not as important to another person.

When studying yoga one teaching really stood out to me; it said that it is not the value that makes us different it is the order of our values. Our difference spins my head and brings curiosity and wonder to my heart.

How do we respect difference of view, of opinion and of seeing and all feel heard and taken into account? Can free-will actually exist in a world that controls or pushes out difference? How do we make a world that allows for difference?

Sometimes our perceived difference and how people are with that initiates patterns of self limitation like making oneself smaller, hiding, thinking one is better, more deserving or perhaps feeling one needs to fight to be understood.

I love Wild Encounters. This space where I witness everything having a place, and a role to play. The environmental conditions needed to support life need to be just right, if they are not, migration occurs.

Wild encounters help me be more comfortable with my humanness, the wild nature of body, listening to my soul, engaging in the simplicity, beauty and wisdom of the living world. Everything else seems to wash away.

Tonight I have returned from a Wild Encounters ecological boat tour in Shoalwater. Over the years this place has been my frequent hang out. It is a sanctuary for wild life and perfect for those who want to contact their inner wild soulful nature.

My heart opens widely when I receive magical encounters with wildlife or when I see people caring and protecting our ecological systems and connecting humans to the other creatures and life forms that share this amazing planet with us.

The Wild represents free will to me. Many human beings and animals these days walk around with injured Wills. Having to conform to authority outside of the self first before checking into what is their true feeling.

At this time with all the rising up of people and the controls and rules during COVID it makes me ask questions about freedom and man made structures. How this dynamic is speaking within me and in the world. I don't have an answer but I do have many questions which I give voice to in my own heart. I find questions open me to an understanding that I could not get by analysing, or making something wrong or right. It allows me to feel deeply the discomfort, the anguish, the sadness, the discontent, the peacefulness and the joy in its fullness and look at the events of the world from both the mouse and the eagle perspective.

If you get pushed and pulled by the roar of the changing world, a wild encounter is good medicine. If you can't physically get there then David Attenborough has wonderful sharing available on screen.

Before making our minds up about good and bad or right and wrong, making boxed judgements. Ask questions. Feel the provocation of the current events rising in you and be with that. It is an easy time to get into blaming and pointing fingers, at things or others. Or hiding away, not wanting to know what is going on because it brings us anxiety or emotions that we don't want to feel. But does this allow us to really get in touch with the bigger picture here?

How do we rebirth a world without chaos and disruption of the flow? Perhaps there will come a time where learning does not have to be done through so much conflict and upset. We find ourselves here, in a time of great upheaval, yet here is apparently where we need to be and what is needed to wake us up.

My invitation to you is...

Stay With Your Own Heart. Before stepping onto a wagon or a collective think wave check into you. Where are you at? What do you feel? What sounds true to you? What feels in alignment with you?

It may be different for others. Can we let others be different? Take another route, think a different way? How do we feel about people not doing things how we want them to do them?

My experience is the heart opens through asking questions and brings us answers in unique ways when we really listen. Look after the microcosm and you will aid in the healing and balancing of the macrocosm.

Your heart has so much wisdom to share and this is the true Wild Encounter.