Naturality Explained

Naturality can best be defined as living according to one’s unique nature and walking one’s own path. Its Latin derivation, Natura, means innate temperament or constitution - that with which we are born.

Although we are a natural, innate part of the universe, even as infants we begin to move away from awareness of this truth of ourselves as we learn to fit into our family, environment, culture and religion.   Rather than being aware of our unity with the biological universe, we become prisoners of mental time and space.   Distancing ourselves from our bodies we move back and forth between being and becoming, and also develop repetitive patterns of emotion and thought.  We learn to identify primarily with the ego/self/mind, moving further and further from the innate nature with which we were born.  Accompanied by the quality of self-awareness, ego’s borrowed but powerful script takes hold.

This same self-awareness makes humans uniquely conscious of life and death, thus filling them with fear.  Mind or Self is created as a means of protection to cope with death’s terror.  The mind, creator of mental time and space, continues with its divisions, dividing life into past, present and future.  Mind also creates the boundary or division of ‘me’ and ‘not me’. And so the alienation grows –alienation from self, alienation from other humans and then alienation from the rest of nature – thus causing conflict from within and from without.  Such unrelenting conflict cannot but lead to a pervasive discontent.

Not surprisingly, fear, conflict and discontent have all brought a steep decline in human pleasure and well-being.  Not willing or able to endure living in such a state, humans either despair or they seek pleasure and well-being from the consumption of a wide variety of external stimulants such as power, wealth, food, sex, entertainment, chemicals etc.. Increasing consumption leads to addictions.  Because of the habituation of the body and brain, there is an urgent need for increased doses of the stimulant(s) of choice.  Because all resources which living beings consume ultimately come from nature, the net effect of consumption, addiction and habituation is environmental destruction.

Fortunately, even while deeply buried, the individual’s innate nature remains alive and can be accessed at any time. This is the process of naturality, a process of metamorphosis and a path of becoming - discovering and expressing oneself fully in the world. It is also a state of being - natural being - in which stillness roars with energy, peace meets passion, and living and dying are movements of life.

The most beautiful book to study is the book of your life; the most important observation is the universe within.

Naturality Mantra