When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.
This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.
Images 1-4: Subjects and photographers unknown.
Image 5: Paulo Pascoal. (Photographer: Francisco Martins.)
Image 6: Saulo Sarmiento. (Photographer unknown.)
See also the previous posts:
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• Beauty
• Bel Homme – May 12, 2018
• Bel Homme – June 12, 2017
• Bel Homme – August 22, 2015
• Bel Homme – April 22, 2013
• Bel Homme – September 5, 2012
• Bel Homme – July 5, 2012
• Bel Homme – June 7, 2012
• Bel Homme – June 2, 2011
• Sleep
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