Diversity and Beauty!

The Power of Sight

I was watching an undersea music video on You Tube a while back with my Alzheimer’s people. We often put one on in the morning before breakfast is served. The array of various schools of fish, the beauty of coral reef life, the colors and graceful ballet precision of underwater creatures was a delight to watch – especially with this amazing group of people who had the calm to sit and watch it together, drinking in all the visual effects of ocean life and its beauty. We moved on to a lovely breakfast after this peaceful morning interlude.

As I sat with them for the few minutes between preparation tasks for breakfast, I had a thought, a wonder, as I watched gorgeous fish and funny looking fish, bright colors and muted grays that flashed together with sunlight from the surface. Schools of fish sometimes appearing confused, yet perfectly orchestrated for their own purposes. Odd looking creatures, eels and octopus, spiny, smooth, fast, slow, big and little. I began to think about the immense diversity of nature and how we love and enjoy it. Trees and flowers, grasses, animals, weather – sun, wind, and storm.

The Power of Nature

As we connect more with nature around us, slipping into experiencing it as part of it in the way of the shaman, there is a subtle undercurrent of delight that awakens in our beings. Appreciation, noticing, responding to the natural world around us – stepping into the spiritual energy of its vibration, cooperation and interactions, the comfort of its cycles, the knowing that everything moves and changes, lives grows and dies casting its seed to the winds and waters for rebirth, wearing away and rebuilding, destroying and forming – becoming. And we begin to appreciate all things, all creatures and plants, respecting their places in this flowing, living natural world. In fact, the beauty of the oceans full of creatures and the diversity of plant and animal life bring us much joy.

The Power of Beauty

Diversity, differentness, unusuality – are all a part of living in this natural world that we savor. Except, and often, when it comes to people. And yet here we are – a diverse group of creatures with different colors, customs, languages, skills and beliefs, all a part of that same living, breathing, everchanging cycle of nature.

The Shaman within calls upon us to waken, listen, respect and be part of nature. Honor our place and the places of all creatures and sentient life within it. Understand and see the beauty of the diversity of life – the gifts and properties of which make life on this planet possible for all. Of course we are often more comfortable within our own schools of fish, but realizing that the true beauty is the combination, the different scenes and dances offered by each group, each species, each genus, while respecting each one’s place in the whole, is essential to flowing with the energies of spirit and life on this planet. It is the secret to abundant living that we all seek.

The Power of You

There is a natural inclination to stay within our own group, to avoid predators, find food, safety, shelter and to prosper. And there is conflict and competition for resources in the natural world around us. Yet when we embrace and accept that ebb and flow, allowing the cycles of life to continue around us, we find great beauty in its rawness, its wildness.

Appreciating the differences in our own species with greater understanding of the beauty we present together in our differentness is essential to loving life on this planet. When we embrace our own place in nature and its diversity, we change the vibration of human interaction with our own love and appreciation. The way of the shaman not only helps us to appreciate our own diversity and beauty, it increases our communal capacity to appreciate and foster the beauty of global diversity.