5 Ways Nature Can Inspire Us

We often go into nature to seek calm and relaxation. It can feel like a return to our natural home base because there are no pressures to do, or be anything other that who we are. Observing the natural world, we discover we are not the only creatures consumed in building structures and seeking sustenance.

We just tend to make the process more complicated than it needs to be.

Beyond any actual threat, we often imagine all sorts of challenging scenarios that never really manifest. The mind seems to have been trained from childhood to focus on possible threats to our well-being.

Finding the common thread that drives all of nature might inspire a more peaceful perspective. When we observe how nature cares for the entire organism of life, we realize that we too, are part of its design.

These five inspirational ideas from nature can be observed in everything around you. Each offers insight that can help you to develop a sense of faith in how life unfolds to ensure wellness. Additionally, they can help you keep any challenges you face - in perspective.

Diversity

We are aware of over 8.7 million different species of plants and animals on the earth, but we know there are many more we cannot see. Even within a select group of a particular species, some may look alike and are genetic cousins. However, their shape, color and camouflage techniques make them different.

Nature promotes diversity because biodiversity enhances ecosystem productivity. Even something as small as bacteria and microbes play an important role in the circle of life.

The challenges any one group encounters seem to activate a unique purpose within the whole. The individual is changed and the species is changed, but these changes also influence the entire organism.

Cyanobacteria created oxygen on the early earth, which was deadly to most species. Eventually it transformed the planet into what we see today. Nature knows what it is doing.

Many of the challenges groups of individuals encounter appear to bring about an enormous amount of social and cultural creativity. Limitations are the breeding ground for nature's strengths.

Diversity creates disruption, but competition generates a more complex form of cooperation.

Purpose

Knowing that all things in nature have a distinct purpose is why authenticity is the cornerstone of Taoism. We can only tap our innate design by being fearlessly who we were designed to be.

At all levels of nature’s tapestry, each and every individual plays a role in the wellness of the larger organism.

We tend to think of living things as species with cells, but anything that can move and grow serves a purpose in nature’s design. This includes the sun, which initiates the carbon cycle where plants photosynthesize sunlight into food and energy.

The climate too, in the form of wind, water and clouds, is an organism or pattern of movement that regulates the earth’s temperature.

If you look at the natural world – nothing is left out of nature's design. If something as invisible as a microbe holds a special purpose, wouldn't it make sense that the larger organism needs you to play your unique role?

Your unique path has cultivated something unchanging within you...

Harness whatever it is and allow it to guide you in your blossoming.

Movement

Nothing in nature is stagnant. Plants and trees are moving. They just do so in a different time sense. When blockages occur in nature, the conditions will create the hurricane or floods that will tear away the blockage. Nature is continuously moving fronts from one area to another, and storms return sea temperatures to optimal conditions.

This isn't just physical movement. Nature shifts something within each creature as evolutionary processes. Movement leads to adaptability. It takes the challenge to awaken adaptive responses in each creature. In this way, nature is cultivating the strength of each individual.

We often imagine ourselves arriving at a plateau that can become our safety net. However, nature continuously encourages growth. Nothing can hide from nature’s power to ensure optimal growth and movement in every part of its giant tapestry.

To achieve peace while the tapestry around you changes, simply give up any sense of control. To think you can protect the past from the future is why you experience frustration.

When challenges appear, take the path that will lead to your growth, even if it is unfamiliar.

Transformation

We can observe the seasons as the most visible form of nature’s transformative power. The climate is a complex system within the larger organism. It serves the purpose of transforming stagnation into wellness. Each of nature's organisms are processing and sharing energy.

Over the millennia, nature has transformed reproduction from simple binary fission to sexual reproduction. Each new process unleashes mechanisms, which are better than what existed prior.

Energy is nature’s means of transformation. When any sort of energy begins to gather as stagnation, it can create an imbalance. This leads to a transformative event. We see this in the weather, at the nuclear level or even in our relationships with others.

We may blame the ‘event’ for our emotional outburst, but the energy is something we create. In this way, nature brings diverging imbalances together to achieve wellness. The experience may feel uncomfortable, but nature cares for the entire organism in this way.

Life only meets you halfway because the other half of the journey allows you to tap your greater capabilities. To make the most of nature's transformative power, see life as a question:

Are you ready to move to the next level of your authenticity?

Connection

Beneath the soil, webs of microbes and tree roots are nourishing and communicating with other trees. You may sweat a molecule out into the environment that can be swept up into a storm forming on the other side of the earth.

As far away as the sun, a photon will land within the photosynthesis factory of a plant 93,000 miles away. The connection that exists among nature’s entire tapestry is not limited by distance or species.

Ice at the poles reflect the sunlight, keeping one area of the earth cool. Heat gathers at the equator. These warm and cold fronts attract and pull on each other, to balance temperatures. Differences in temperature will drive the ocean and atmosphere in different motions, creating the optimal temperature that will sustain life.

Whether nature is driving your uniqueness through diversity, defining your purpose through the challenges you face, helping you to let go and grow through movement, or igniting your transformative energy through your interactions with others – it thrives on connection.

Remove the boundaries that separate you from what you are experiencing.

We are aware of 8.7 million different species on the earth, but scientists say 80% of the trillions of species that actually exist are undiscovered.

In the same way, we are only at the tip of our awareness in understanding the truth about our effect on the entire biosphere.

We discuss climate change as if it is a way of protecting the environment – in reality, we realize we need to protect ourselves.

Nature can exist just fine without us, but we cannot exist without nature.

You may be unaware of the propitious way nature brings you together through each encounter. After the encounter, energy is discharged like atoms meeting at the molecular level. The entire tapestry changes. Chaos is the first face of change. When chaos appears, wellness will follow.

Ultimately you stand at a point in space, interacting with whatever appears on your path. If you take responsibility for the inner condition that makes life unfold in the way it has for you – you can enact change and wellness in your immediate environment.

Others are a unique variation of nature's design, and their ideas can sometimes seem foreign. We need only remember that diversity drives change and wellness. Diverging ideas, like weather fronts, drive transformation and wellness.

Without the use of force,
all things are nurtured, but unaware.

When the whole is divided, it has names.
These names come to exist everywhere.
As soon as there are names,
you should know that it is time to stop.
Knowing when to stop,
you can be free of danger.

Tao is to the world,
like the stream to the valley
that always flows back to the sea.

(Tao te Ching Chapter 32)

Don't give names to processes you may not understand. Those who go against 'the Way' are said to be unlucky. Move in flow and danger becomes an opportunity. Free of danger, you can blossom.