This article was written in 2018 for a fellow writer's blog - Nimue Brown. Enjoy!
The wind in the trees sounds somewhat akin to the waves rushing in against a shoreline. There is a sense of high tide to the strong breeze, following the brief but heavy thunder storm this morning. The rain left as quickly as it started, and the ground is now dry and hard again. A pure white butterfly flits from place to place, alighting first on the blades of meadow grass, and then the blanket I am sitting on. Its wings pulse slowly for a few seconds, open and closed. Then it takes flight once more. Willow fronds are moving in the current, tickling my arm, lifting then falling, like my own consciousness. My thoughts are blessedly silent. I have switched off that irritating inner dialogue that chatters on incessantly. There are no thoughts, no lists, only the details of nature that are present in front of me. I take a deep breath. Somewhere between the flow and the ebb of the branches moving, I receive an idea, fully formed and ready to write. I leap up as if I have been bitten by a bug (because of course I have, it’s just not a live one). I start to write furiously, and do not finish until the download is exhausted. Another chapter has been safely delivered.
Of course this description has been written after the fact, not during the experience. One cannot write during a mystical experience, so any 'descriptions' must be seen for what they are - interpretations. It is a time without words, it is ineffable. And memory is very rarely reliable. And the nature of the knowledge gained may differ from person to person, and between encounters. Sometimes I will choose to employ this technique when writing, other times I will seek to encounter the divine, and simply have an experience. There does not always have to be a purpose, other than to shift consciousness.
One of my heroines, Mary Webb, used to sit in nature for hours on end, apparently deeply absorbed in meditation. Field workers would see her in the morning on their way to work. In the evening when they returned home, she would still be there. But of course this 'evidence' is anecdotal. We don't know for sure that she sat for a whole day without moving, or without taking a comfort break. Whatever the reality, once this stage was complete for Webb, she would return home and write furiously. In this way, her first novel was written in the space of three weeks. She is often referred to as a 'Nature Mystic', a practice I follow myself. But what does this actually mean? If you search the Internet for a definition, not much will come up.
In 1902, William James wrote, 'the words "mysticism" and "mystical" are often used as terms of reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic'. The language employed whilst describing such states of consciousness, and the nature of the states themselves, can be problematic, since it is often used to mis-label other things, according to James, that are very unscientific (‘vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or knowledge’). While James steadfastly uses the word 'mysticism' despite the frequency of its use as a misnomer, more recent academics tend to favour the term 'Altered States of Consciousness' (or ASCs). However, since ASCs can cover anything and everything from sleep to hypnosis to drug-induced states, I prefer to stick to mysticism. What I do does not require peyote or LSD, nor am I completely absent while it is happening. I am not 'out of my mind', I have just stepped aside from it for a few moments. Moving to a more recent definition than James, Revonsuo et al note that 'it is not the contents of consciousness per se that define whether a state is ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘altered’’ but its relation to the world.' This means the shift required in consciousness is an outward-looking shift, as opposed to an inward-looking change. While in a 'normal' state of consciousness, 'mechanisms of representation [i.e. the five senses] carry accurate information from ‘‘world’’ to consciousness'. The normal consciousness, then, allows for accurate representations of the world to be perceived. The recipient of the shift in consciousness must see (as well as hear, taste, smell, or feel) the external world differently. When I make the shift from waking consciousness into a mystical state, the signal that I have shifted is that I see differently. I have to keep my eyes open to engage in Nature Mysticism; otherwise I am just doing a state of self-hypnosis. Hypnosis is about journeying inwards, whereas Mysticism is about looking outwards. Apparent physical reality might appear differently; normal rules of physics do not apply. People's faces change, and morph and change colour. The ground beneath my feet feels different. It looks different.
But how are such states to be achieved? And what exactly is happening when we enter a mystical state? According to Jesse Hollenback, ‘From the moment we wake, until the moment we fall asleep, the vast majority of us spend our time silently talking or thinking to ourselves.' In NLP, this is referred to as the AD - the Auditory Digital representational system. In plain English, we might call this the voice in your head. Hollenback writes that what mystics have learned to do, is switch off the voice in their heads, and simultaneously allow their attention to fix on one thing, to prevent the attention from wandering. For me, this is where the 'nature' part of Nature Mysticism comes in. The one thing that I can fix my attention on will usually be a particular detail in nature. Rhythmical movement helps as it begins to facilitate a state akin to hypnosis. Waves on a shoreline, the way a cloud formation is expanding and contracting across the blue sky, or the way the leaves on a tree are moving in the wind.
However, Mysticism is made up with two parts (according to Hollenback) - the mystical experience itself is the first part, and the second is the mystic's response to it. It is often in this second part that meaning is ascribed according to the mystic's own belief system. For example, in my paragraph at the beginning of this piece, I am describing one particular experience as I remember it. It may seem unremarkable. It may seem illogical. You may be thinking, ‘is that it?’ What it is though, is the recounting of a memory, and memories change over time. This is the mystic's interpretation of the experience. For me, my own belief system is framed against a backdrop of Paganism, but more importantly, and inner life that needs nature in order to keep itself healthy. I need to step back from modern life, to breathe in the natural world, to steady myself and reconnect. But I am also a realist - while I have a very active spiritual life and a strong belief in the divine, I don't expect to see unicorns galloping across the grass towards me, so inevitably, they don't. For a Sufi mystic, this contextual world view would be a grounding in Islam, for a Kabbalist, this might be a framework of Judaism. Also, crucially, the mystic will offer an explanation for the mystical experience which confirms their own belief system. I might suggest that I have encountered the energy of Cernunnos deep in the depths of the forest (although I might be pushing the bounds of my own belief system to suggest I have actually seen him), while a Christian Mystic will more likely encounter the figure of the Christ.
So what does my own framework provide? For that, I must look back to my childhood and my upbringing. 'The trouble is,' I remember my grandfather once saying to me as a teenager, 'this place gets into your blood, and then you can't bear to be away from it.' The 'this place' he was referring to was our home on Dartmoor. My trouble was, it got into my blood, but now I am apart from it, exiled in an urban landscape by my life choices. The landscape where I took my first steps, and developed my first connection to nature is no longer available to me. As a teenager I was so keen to get out and have adventures elsewhere, and now, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, I cannot find my way home. There I could walk the landscape in solitude, crossing the wide hills and valleys, picking my way across fast-running streams and along narrow sheep paths through the gorse and heather. I could sit for hours by my favourite brook, watching the brackish water flowing down from the high moors, until the earth began to undulate in waves. A special place to encounter a shift of consciousness seemed so simple to find when I was surrounded by nature, so wild and untrammelled that it stretched on as far as the eye could see. The landscape was brimming with folklore, and in an atmosphere of such numinosity, it seemed only reasonable that I might make a shift. There were no borders here, no edgelands, and no unsuspecting people to stumble across my solitary practice. The only signs of human industry were the broken shells of an industrial past that was long since gone, and these only added to the atmosphere of other-worldliness.
In an urban landscape, where the population of millions is compacted in over a relatively small piece of the earth, finding this space is more of a challenge. But the wider world has taught me many skills as well. Hypnosis to help me shift consciousness in different ways, magical practices to help me ‘journey’ through time and through space, NLP to help me understand my own mind and it's baggage, and how to work with those limitations. And yet mysticism, though nature, is still my holy grail. I may be able to feel currents of energy running through the artefacts in a museum, swiped from some far off temple, and I might gain stories through the ability to open up my senses to myriad possibilities, but show me a garden or a piece of undiscovered woodland, and I am spiritually complete and at peace with myself.
In an urban setting, then, how does a Nature Mystic find divine communion and peace? How has this intensely rural upbringing coloured my world view, and shaped my outlook? I require solitude, lots of it. While I may join with my coven to celebrate the wheel of the year, my solitary practice must be given space. And as much of that solitude as possible must be spent in nature. Finding a nice park to sit in is lovely, but I also need to escape all signs of human habitation. When I really need to plug in, even a lovely tree in a park is not quite wild enough. Then I seek spaces a little further off the beaten track. As a minimum, whenever possible I build in nature walks, going out of my way to take time in the parks and gardens, to feel my feet more on the earth and less on the tarmac. Quiet time, time to listen to the wind calling, the birds singing, time to shift my thoughts out of this reality and to journey between the worlds. Time to step back from language, to find a place without words, to switch off that inner dialogue and still its voice. But it also means I often feel like an oddball. Not quite at home in the city or in the country, I am destined to never have a sense of true belonging. I am the weird one on the edge of any group, sitting alone under my favourite tree with a notepad and pen, absorbed in the different worlds I am creating.
Recently I was comparing notes with a friend who practices Shamanism. 'I am not a Shaman,' I told her in earnest. 'I don't use drumming, and I don't use chanting (except in a witch's circle), but I do use the natural rhythms of nature to help me to shift consciousness and see things differently. When I do this I often get downloads of information. It might be the next chapter of the story I am working on, or what route I should be taking on the next part of my journey towards my goals'. At this point she smiled, and told me that was her approach to Shamanism as well. Maybe at the end of the day these are all labels that we have created to explain differences in belief systems that are really not all that dissimilar? Perhaps we are not so different after all.