Seeing with “fresh eyes” – A deeper nature experience

 Around the time I first learned how to meditate, something amazing happened to me. It happened one day, quite spontaneously. 

I couldn’t explain it but it was as if I was seeing this place for the very first time. I saw bees moving frantically amongst the flowers. The colours were so incredibly vivid. Were these same flowers here yesterday? Had someone come in the middle of the night and changed everything? It felt like that. There were so many details I had never seen before. It was disconcerting and in a way, almost frightening. I was usually a very brisk, purposeful walker but now my pace slowed. I looked around. There was so much life. So much movement. I felt an emotion that wasn’t at all familiar to me in those days…. pure joy. I could feel it intensely in my body. I just wanted to bask in all this beauty. I had been asleep, dead and now, finally I was awake.

It’s not an uncommon experience when someone starts to practice mediation. As we start to slow down and stop living so much in our heads, we can experience a shift in perspective. Sometimes it is more gradual and subtle, but in my case it was quite sudden and dramatic.

In the weeks and months that followed, I came to relish my daily walk down this little lane way. I didn’t listen to my iPod anymore. I listened to the birds signing and the wind moving amongst the trees. Every day I came to the start of the lane way expecting something magical.

Except I was never able to recapture that first moment of pure wonder. Over time walking down the lane way again became a familiar routine. It wasn’t an enchanted place anymore. Gradually, I slipped back into my old way of being. I still enjoyed my walk to work and I still found it nourishing to be outside but the magic was gone – at least for the time being.