What can we learn from nature?

What can we learn from nature?

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That we are unique in our sense of
‘self importance ‘?

We certainly are fascinated with ourselves, individually and as a species.

But who knows, maybe elephants are equally self-obsessed? Trees? Stones? Quarks? Galaxies?

it’s not just a “fascination”, more like a ’ psychotic’ situation of alienation. Cruelty, torture, greed, sport killing, violence, pollution, fear, misery, poverty, cunning, suffering, etc. I live with trees and stones
I don’t see any of that in them, or in the animals I live with, going about their business. They are territorial and they squabble but it ends there. I would say that you can learn a lot from nature but you must live among it and watch it. Especially trees.

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Yes! We’ve got a powerful dark side, being human is not for the faint of heart.

Trees can be great teachers!

Yes all of nature is. Unfortunately so many humans don’t have the chance to live in it.

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To me, nature is the totality, all-that-is. Everyone/thing is invited to the party.

What can one learn from all-that-is?

Oh beautiful trees, they give us oxygen to breathe, so we can live.
What I have read online is that trees/plants talk with each other, they protect each other. They understand the fact that they are each other’s keeper, unlike many humans who do not get that they are their brother’s/sister’s keeper.
K said that if you sing to trees, their leaves will begin to flutter; so, testing that, I sat in the bushes and began singing. There was no wind, and all the leaves began to flutter. If you walk in nature, and there is danger, the trees fall silent. The small animals sense it too.

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Maybe. Fortunately for us
 trees don’t quote from the bible !

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we can learn
harmony
resilience
cyclical time
self awareness


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We can learn, perhaps, that we are nature. Everything we do, everything about us. From our head to our toes, from our most profound insights to our silliest daydreams. Even what might appear to be outside of nature is 
 nature. There is no need to struggle to become (one with) nature 
 it’s there already. The trick is to realize this, really realize it all the way up and down.

?

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agree with you here
there can probably be ways to achieve the ‘learning’
one would be like an instant realisation
like a switch that comes on
while the other could be creating / becoming more aware of all the different values that nature can teach us


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From the skin, cellular, molecular, and matter level to our consciousness are nature. Nature doesn’t speak words but it speaks thru the Sun, clouds, day and night, rain, wind, thunderstorms, snow etc which we all understand. Nature is speechless yet expressive in these matter. Perhaps it isn’t too late to restore the damage that mankind had created.

Very well said! This is something I’ve recently realized myself, and seems obvious when we are searching for answers
 yet the deeper meaning, which you said so wonderfully, is that there is no need to search in the first place. All searching starts and ends “with” what-we-are, ends as the fact: That-we-are
! And then, the trick to fully living this ‘realization’, if I may “take a stab at it”, is knowing that we-are-aware. I-am-conscious!

Awareness is not an object. We can’t even claim being-conscious as an experience!

Life is so real, that we have trouble “coming to terms with it”. If I was to counter-argue myself, and say “I am here right now, I know my experience of being here.” Even that is being viewed by me. By the ever-present fact: I-am-aware. being-aware can’t even be fully called a fact, because I can never really be an object, like those we are able to sense and perceive.

So, most would then ask: “Why then should I even bother with all this at all?”

My best “answer” currently, is that the miracle of being-aware, appears to be so solid (in place), yet so inexplicable
 that it’s very presence creates a wellspring of peace
!

Sorry, this post got away from the topic a bit! I do find nature to be expressing this same miracle of being-here. Look how stars begin and end
 they come from the same force that set our apparent universe in motion. Stars begin and end due to gravity. They can never really be said to have a boundary
 even after ending, their light eternally continues
 and only seems to end “when someone views its light”.

Welcome emontebon!

I agree, speechless, yet expressive in ways that we can and can’t understand
 I’m scared for us too! This hope (and personal drive) that it isn’t too late to restore order to the world, is probably what drew me to K in the first place.

What we can learn from nature is that our relationship to it is primordial for our understanding of each other and the world because it’s what we are. To negate is to relate to it as an object to be exploited and not to see it as being part of us and therefore to live in harmony with it and not kill the creatures in it or despoil it as so doing we despoil ourselves

Just happened to run into this here:

“At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable.” – Thoreau

Our human brains have the hunger both to know X and to have X be unknowable. We want to have our cake and eat it too. It’s a recipe for disappointment, right? But also energizing. Sisyphus.

Yesterday, I found a good place to sit and observe the people as they were going by, a beautiful summer day, the blue sky, beautiful trees, and the people, observing them - the young so full of life. And the mind/heart piped up, “the planet is dying”. This is the 2nd time, the mind/heart said that, the day before yesterday as well. So, I sat there and this time taking that in, tears came to my eyes. There is nothing I can do about that, but wonder about how the planet may very well have reached a point of no return, the damage that mankind has done to nature is now irreparable
 and that things may just have to run their terrible course.

I wouldn’t bĂ© so cathastrophist! Even if It looks as you say, we can allways consider the strange possibility of learning! What must change is not the society but ourselves. The arrival of the allmighty and mending all our misdeeds is just a fantasy.

In my neck of the woods, British Columbia, Canada, climate change scenarios show that areas of coastline as well as of the rivers (the Fraser River basin) will most likely flood areas with large populations. From what I have read online, very little has been done here in B.C., re: planning - and for that matter, in other areas of the planet.

Climate changes and coastal areas

What I wrote earlier has absolutely nothing to do with “fantasies” or the “arrival of the allmighty”. Climate change is real. Of course, there will be many who will live through this; but the most vulnerable and poor will suffer the most, not to mention some endangered species being wiped out. There is also the problem of soil erosion (due to over-farming the land) which will unfortunately affect the cost of vegetables and other foods, etc. And, then there is the problem of forests in South America being cut down. So, wildfires, flooding, storms, are all increasing globally, etc. There is plastic pollution all over the planet and this pollution has been found to have entered the fish population, and the list goes on.