Nature Never Hurries

Insights during a 5-day solo quest

I was on the solo portion of the trip, where I spent a number of days living alone in a designated area, similar to a vision quest.

I had set up a debris shelter on the side of the mountain against this giant Ponderosa I named Brian.

After I had taken care of my essentials — shelter, water, fire, food — there wasn’t much to do but sit.

So I sat.

For days on end I sat under the canopy of the forest watching life emerge before me.

I didn’t meditate. I didn’t strategize. I didn’t try and entertain myself or play games.

I just sat there.

After about three days, a profound shift began to emerge in my Being.

It was as if all past and future thoughts melted away and I entered a state of what I named pristine awareness.

I had spent days mulling over my favourite Lao Tzu quote, “Nature never hurries, yet everything is accomplished.”

I watched the squirrels gather acorns for winter.

The brilliant blue Jay hunt to feed her babies.

The Ponderosas dance in the endless alpine winds.

I thought about the speed at which life moves and evolves out here.

The incomprehensible timelines that nature operates on.

The perfection in her cadence.

The grace with which she subtly pushes life along.

Days and nights would rise and fall.

I had no idea what time or day of the week it was.

There was nowhere to be other than exactly where I sat.

I thought about all the ways I hurry through life.

And the way life hurries through me.

I thought about all of the incredible moments I’ve missed.

Every magical moment I had blown through in my own hurrying.

How much I tried to accomplish from a place of rushing to get it done, or get it over with, or get onto the next thing.

To go where? To accomplish what?

I grieved, and am still grieving, over how much She wants to give us, in every moment.

And how much living I have lost in my own ignorance.

On that mountain, just laying there, I reached states of realization I had never touched before.

I tapped into a level of presence that yogis and sages have been writing about for millennia.

It left a deep signature in my soul.

Presence isn’t something that you practice or do.

It’s a state that naturally emerges when you strip everything else away.

I vowed on that mountainside to never allow myself to hurry again.

To never let the gift of life slip through my fingers in a rush to be somebody.

I vowed to go so fucking slow.

To let Her continue to remind and inform me —

All is perfection.

And everything will be accomplished.