Teach Children The Distinction Between The World And Nature

Friday, 4 April 2025, 11:42 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Recent windstorms have burnished the air, and the canyon, hillsides and rocks beyond town stand out in sharp relief, accented by big clumps of white clouds that fill half the sky. The beauty is so overwhelming that I can’t string two thoughts together.

To my right, sheer cliffs about a half-mile away press down upon one. A meter away, the gorge plunges about 75 meters to a rushing stream, and the sound pours over the lip as the water rushes around large volcanic rocks. A panorama of hills and precipices stretches for miles before me, and the world seems very far away.

A strange animal passes by at the same level across the narrow gorge, about fifty meters from where I sit. It is gray, with a long, fluffy tail, a small head, and pointy ears. I’ve never seen a creature like it before. It glides more than walks along a line just below the edge of the gorge.

It stops and stares at me. After about ten seconds, I ask, “What are you?” But with the question comes the answer–it’s a fox! (Looking it up when I get back to the house, I discover that it’s a Kit Fox, which is normally a nocturnal animal.)

Usually it takes a while (without having a goal or employing time) for passive observation to completely quiet the mind and allow meditation to ignite. But today, from the moment I sit down, the mind yields, and there are spaces between thoughts.

The beauty obliterates the ‘me’, and at times I’m unable to move. The Greeks had a name for such a state. They called it “aesthetic stasis”–being moved to immobility by the splendor of the earth.

The sun is now low in the western sky behind me. Suddenly one of the cumulus clouds obscures its warm rays. I watch transfixed as the cloud’s shadow falls over the stream and the sheer rock-face on the other side of the gorge, and then lifts as if a curtain was being slowly raised.

After not seeing another soul for an hour, I look over to see a couple standing about fifty meters away. They are staring at me for some reason, and the fellow waves with a friendly, full wave, like you would to an old friend from a distance.

The woman stands in front of him, and doesn’t see him wave, so when I wave back she waves in response. It strikes me as funny, and them too. They remain for a few more minutes looking down at the gorge, and walk away. Can meditative states be unintentionally conveyed between people?

At the beginning of a short hike, as I cross the first of a trio of streamlets that pass through some heavy underbrush (including big bushes of poison oak!), a wild turkey precedes me on the path. It has three chicks in tow, which fly off into the brush as I enter the thicket.

The mother seems unperturbed however, and when I emerge onto the rocks again, she’s close. She stays a short distance ahead of me as I climb the rise, which affords an unobstructed view back down the canyon. As I stand there, the wild turkey, a surprisingly large bird, makes a complete circle around me, at times passing only a couple meters away, before ambling down over a rock.

Perhaps the most important distinction we can teach children, which most adults lose sight of as they grow older, is the difference between nature and the world. The world is the man-made reality, the manifestation of the human mind, whereas obviously humans did not make the Earth. Though this is the simplest, first and most crucial distinction, the relationship between nature and the world is clearly an exceedingly difficult actuality to understand and maintain.

Scientists say that unless humankind changes course, within the lifetimes of today’s children, humans will drive half of the animals on earth into extinction. The very fact that one species has the power to do so raises the fundamental questions.

Is the fragmentary and fragmenting consciousness based on symbolic thought an inherent stage in the evolution of intelligent life on Earth and in the universe? If so, can serious people bring about the transmutation of the brain necessary for the emergence of true Consciousness?

The psychological (as contrasted with Buddhist) meaning of sentience is being conscious of being conscious, which entails awareness of self. But that means humans must first form a self. In that sense, Homo sapiens is undoubtedly the only sentient species on this planet. No other animal thinks, “I think, and therefore I am.”

“Higher thought” gave us the ability to remove ‘things,’ accumulate knowledge and manipulate nature. But it also made the self and ego, which are producing untold fragmentation and chaos.

Even so, more and more people are realizing that we have a responsibility to use the Earth’s resources wisely, leave environments intact for other animals and future generations, and not kill needlessly.

There’s a race in human consciousness between man the savage and the awakening human being. Like a 400-meter sprint coming off the final turn with 100 meters to go, the bear has jumped on man’s back, and the human being is closing fast. Don’t quit.

Martin LeFevre

© Scoop Media

Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail