Finding my way in the Natural world has raised the question: what is our role as human in the ecosystem and spiritual community of Nature?

In comparison: animals have their instinctively driven tasks of animal/plant control through feeding on other living things, they fertilize the ground with droppings  and increase the dynamics of any given space by their movements. In doing so, they are a vital caretaker of their habitat.

Plants absorb nutrients from the soil into their own bodies and produce oxygen and cooling shadow as well (talk about amazing!). They also enrich the soil with their waste material – fallen leaves and other dead plant parts, from roots to top.

Nature spirits and elementals have a harmonizing and enlivening effect. Wherever they’re present, there is beauty and magic, vitality and joy. I’m not quite sure how they do it, but they seem to bring enhanced Life energy to wherever they dwell.

And us humans? I’m not going to go into all the things we’re doing wrong at the moment, but instead I want to jump straight into what we could do right.

We, humans, have the wonderful capability of making things. We can form our surroundings – clear space, build a shelter, dig a waterway, plant trees, introduce animals into a habitat and so on.

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My own approach to working with Nature – in my case in the ‘ordinary’ sense: I’m gardening – has been coloured by the permaculture movement: watch Nature, copy Nature and learn from Nature. This was always ‘head-work’ to me, my mind in action.
Now I’ve woken up to realize that there is a deeper level to working with Nature – interspecies communication.

In order to work with Nature effectively, I’ve got to open my senses to the other players in the field – the plants, animals and nature spirits.
Together we can form a Natural space that provides food and shelter for all of us, works as a dynamic ecosystem and is charged with high energy and beauty. A source of health and happiness!

With the human mind, creativity and technical ability, we can create forms and solutions that Nature alone can’t make.
When we listen to the other players in the Nature-game and co-create we can heal the Planet.

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I find it challenging to be the loving gardener of two gardens – when I’m present in one, I’m absent from the other. So I forged ‘a deal’ with the nature spirits of both places: when I’m away, they run the place.

A short time ago I took a look with my spiritual eye at the spiritual life in our place ‘out there’, since the vibration is clearly rising in the garden ‘in here’. To my shock I saw that the nature spirits were sleeping in the earth, in the trees and stones. They weren’t dancing around and being merry as I had seen in a vision about the future. Upon asking how this could be, the answer was a somewhat blunt and matter-of-fact statement: “If you are not active, we are not active. It takes two to tango.”

I’ve been planting trees, bushes and other plants in order to create a foodforest and healing gardens. We’ve been mowing paths and cutting back brambles, moving stones around and building stairs and terraces. But all this shaping and preparing, while it’s positive and useful, is not the same thing as hanging out with your place. Just sitting around, listening to what it is saying, singing, wishing and needing. For a small degree we’ve been listening, as in listening to intuition for where certain plants should go, or how a path might curve. But building up a friendship with your place…is something deeper, more meaningful and in spiritual/energetic terms more powerful.

I’m curious to see what the coming season will bring. I will bring my gifts. And I’m looking forward to lots of sitting and listening to the land, conversations with the local nature spirits and human neighbors :) , taking into account the wishes of the flora and fauna whose home it already is. To be continued.

(I offer interspecies communication as a service, but I also have to remind you that anyone can learn it and use it in their own situation. It’s a bit like the choice between learning a language and hiring a translator. Anyone can learn the language, and it’s useful, but if you don’t think it’s worth the effort for you in your personal situation, you hire someone. As simple as that.)