In many cultures and throughout most of human history, the trees, the birds, and the very land itself spoke.

 

It has been argued that this animism of the land has been replaced by a built world brought alive by screens and network connectivity. When you leave your phone at home, or at least turn it off and put it in your bag, you can reconnect to the animated land. It doesn’t happen instantly. It takes time, but it is possible to reconnect and to start to hear the land again. The following activities can help to make this connection.

 

Forest Meditation

Find a quiet place to sit in the forest (ancient forests are good but a park, garden, mountain, or desert will do). Lie on your back, lean against a tree, or adopt the lotus position if you are flexible – whatever is comfortable for you. Be still and let the natural world be. I could do this all day, but sometimes we only have 15 minutes, so set an alarm for however long you have.*

Try to let the world come to you. You are allowing yourself to adopt the paradoxical position of the decentred observer. Seeing the world as a whole and not just from your narrow human perspective. If you are tied to thinking about the world in words, try to write down what you are seeing, but as a description of the world as it is, not limited by your perspective. Ninth-century Chinese poets were good at this:

EGRETS by Tu Mu

Robes of snow, crests of snow, and beaks of azure jade,

they fish in shadowy streams. Then startled away into

 

flight, they leave emerald mountains for lit distances.

Pear blossoms, a tree-full, tumble in the evening wind.

(credit. David Hinton)

* I find it helpful to have a watch with an alarm that is not connected to my phone. This way, I can set my alarm to give me half an hour to meditate and to release me from worrying about other things.

 

Walking Meditation

This works best in a wild landscape, but I have also used it while walking through crowds in central London.

Take a moment to recognise where you are. Can you use all your senses? What do you see, smell, feel, taste, and hear? Or close your eyes and be still until you have heard 10 different sounds – are there any that you can’t identify? Do a body check, start at the tips of your toes and work up your body, taking note of ever sensation from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head.

Concentrating on your feet, carefully take a step. Now take another, still concentrating on the feel of your foot landing on the ground. Fall into the habit of recognising every step that you take.

Now move your focus from your feet and to the earth that is passing beneath them. Notice that you can adopt the position of the centre, with the globe turning beneath each step.

While the Forest meditation reminds us that we are not the centre, it is important to be able to centre ourselves when we need to, when we choose to move through the world.

 

Dream Connection

Our dreams can be profoundly useful. Listening to them can be the key to aligning our waking minds with the unconscious. I practice the following exercise most days. Even if you think that you don’t dream, you might be surprised what you start to remember if you follow this exercise.  

Before you go to bed, lay out a pad of paper and a pen or pencil in a place where you can write. Set an alarm to wake up before anyone is likely to disturb your day. On waking, go straight to your pad and pen and write down what you dreamt – don’t look at your phone first!

Later in the day, take a few minutes to read through your dream and to try to work out what the symbols represent. There are many resources to call on if you are not sure what any symbols mean. Though, as they have all come from you, you are best qualified to interpret them. Remember that all the characters in your dream have come from you, so they all represent you.

I find it helpful to return to my interpretations again later in the day, or a few days later, and to try and write them down in prose or as a poem. Not only does this allow you to reflect again, but you’ll be amazed at the creativity of your wild unconscious if you give it a chance.

 

Landscape Connection

A few years ago, I was at an academic conference where some anthropologists were discussing what it meant that that people who they had been studying ‘heard the rocks speak’. Implicit in the anthropologists’ conversation was the denial of the rocks’ ability to speak. But what if the rocks could actually speak? The idea that the land, the trees, and the birds and, yes, even the rocks can speak has been standard throughout most of human history. As Joshua Schrei explores, Animism Is Normative Consciousness.

To connect with the land, it can help to have already developed a practice for connecting with your dreams. You can’t force connection with the land, but once you have developed your intuition for symbols in your dreams, you might notice that relevant things appear in the land. A heron might remind you to notice your good fortune. An oak tree to stand firm. And, yes, the rocks might even speak.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you think this is a sign that the land has a soul, or that your unconscious has gotten better at noticing patterns in your mind reflected in the world. Perhaps the answer to that question doesn’t matter. Your ability to recognise that which is other to yourself has established a connection between your mind and the land that makes the question of which one is speaking irrelevant.

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Transcendence and Shamanism

In many cultures the above practices might be labelled as shamanic and this is not a bad description. As I have explored in my academic work into transcendental critical realism, there is no distinction between everyday activities and this form of transcendence. What is happening when you have a conversation, read these words, or recognise a tree, if not a transcendence between yourself and that which is other to you. This form of connection ceased to be recognised at the time of the Enlightenment. However, the science that the Enlightenment gave us relies on this form of transcendentalism that is implicit in any form of recognition. That's why, rather than presenting these as strange and alien "shamanic" exercises, I prefer to see them as ways of extending our existing practice of 'everyday transcendentalism'. It's not that the exercises are specifically shamanic. They are a way of reminding us that we are practicing shamanism all the time! We need to recognise and reinvigorate this fundamental and constant connection if we are to survive and flourish through the ecological, ethical, economic, and existential crises that we all now face. 

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If you have found these exercise helpful, or would like more guidance in them, please read my book and connect with me to arrange a journey into the mindscape.