Thanks @AndyK! All is as it was, and my recent nightmarish forum interlude is finished 
~ArthurG
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Now that I have have crested the hill in my interaction with COVID-19 and am on the long downhill run to health, I have begun taking morning sunrise walks again. These T’ai Chi and Shinrin Yoku moments (especially the Forest Bathing) have been quite contemplative and have led to some possible realizations.
This morning I stood under the boughs of a spruce tree and let the images around me flow past me as…images. I gave them no form or substance. Then I reached out and touched one of the boughs and realized that it had its own primordial essence which gave it its own form and substance on that level.
I closed my eyes and let all of the images that I had just been observing melt into the open and spacious ground. I let my own form melt as well…and form became formless. For that brief moment, my primordial self merged with the essence of the forest as I flowed through that which flowed through me.
I opened my eyes and formless again became form…but there was a oneness to that new form. For a brief moment the forest and I existed in a true shared reality.
I had a lucid dream the night before last and I knew that the dream character in front of me had no form or substance other than that which I gave her. She had no primordial essence of her own.
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Can you recommend a Shinrin-Yoku book?
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I’m sorry, Barry, but I have not read any books on Shinrin-Yoku. I have read numerous on-line pieces that describe it. When I discovered it as a deep meditation protocol I realized that it meshed perfectly with what I had already been doing for many years.
As an Aikido Sensei I let myself steep in the Japanese meditative forms for many years.
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Books! I remember one of my college professors expounding on the “fact” that Americans are always looking for the book on this or that for this course or for that information. As you show, “that ain’t necessarily so.” This was in an education program requiring students to mostly create their own books. There was also a focus on working in nature with deep meditative awareness. Glad to be reminded of that.
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It gives me great satisfaction to look at the Moon and know there are relics of the Buddha emanating from there.
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There is an underlying essence that runs through everything and it is strongly embodied in the forest. Stand or sit under a tree (evergreens are the strongest for me) and open yourself up, Just that…clear your mind and feel the energy.
There is a balance. In the forest there is darkness and danger and death as well as light and growth and freedom. Flow through it as it flows through you.
That is Shinrin-Yoku as I experience it.
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Hey Barry…what a cool looking movie!
Thanks for the link.
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yes it is great! thanks Barry
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