I grew up in Europe at the edge of the Alpine forest and the wilderness has always felt my home. I knew the forest, I was part of it, part of the trees, the animals, the creeks. I knew the beautiful secret places where the fairies live. I knew its seasons, I knew its feelings. It was a home.
Later in life I traveled and experienced many different kinds of forests and landscapes. I met many kinds of different animals. I scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef for a few years and that felt like visiting another planet. I felt the immensity of the ocean, the amazing colors and the variety of life. When I first moved to this ancient Australian land, it was a stranger to me. It took me a while to know it, especially the drier outback. It was not like the lush green landscape of my childhood. But slowly I came to know this land and she got to know me. The land that initially felt like Mars to me. I fell in love with its spaces, the fauna, the flora, the blooms, the sounds, the sky that goes on forever. The ancient rocks, the elements and the way the sky plays with the horizon, the clouds and sunsets, the butterflies and birds. So much life, so many details, so many patterns, sounds, feelings and scents. This feeling of eternity is very difficult to describe, one must experience it.
Most of my awakening was spent roaming the land, this vast landscape. This ancient land and everything in it taught me, spoke with me and kept on bringing me to the now moment. I became familiar with just being, with silent communication that hears, understands and feels everything. I became well versed in the language of this land and the beings that live here. Some wanted to interact with me, and some did not, some went about their business not wanting to get to know me. And that was perfectly ok. I danced with the elements, the storms, the winds, the sun and its baking heat. I danced with stars that feel so close in the immense southern sky and the moon. I danced with the trees and plants, talked with them, and got to know them really well. I've learned the language of this land. I feel her breathing. I feel the energies and interact with them. Oftentimes the specific places call to me, I hear them whispering even as I walk the streets of my town, they are irresistible and I heed their call.
It is this land and its wild beings that have helped me to become familiar with my own wild nature. The wild part that for a long time I put in a cage inside of me because it is what I was taught. The society tried to teach me that this part is not safe, that it must be hidden and caged. Because it is unpredictable, un-tamable and therefore unacceptable.
The vast untamed places showed me how to be wild, how to feel wild, how to hear and understand the voice of the wild, to feel its spaces, to play in the freedom that they create. This ancient land knows this feeling well. I have also gotten to know the wild cows and horses, pigs and other beings that have reclaimed and reacquainted themselves with wild. I realised that for most of my previous life, I have not ever met their true self, their free and sovereign self. I thought that their domesticated behaviour was who they really were, that it was normal. I saw how different the wild ones were from the beings who live their lives dealing with ropes, and cages and fences and whips.
And I could relate to them, I was able to step back and look at my own domesticated nature, the nature that compromises its freedom in order to please others. So that it would be considered normal and accepted. So that it would be safe. It has never before occurred to me that I've never really known what I was really like, what my free nature, my wild nature was like.
And so I continued on my journey and I have become familiar and intimate with the wildness in me and other beings. And I allowed the wildness of me to dance. And I allowed this part of me to show me what it means to be free. I experienced the thrilling peace and zest for life that only the wild can feel. The unbound joy of being. The stimulating and wondrous exuberance in being alive. The overwhelming joy of just being ... being so accepted by life and self, and so completely loved. The sweet simplicity of being.
And now I can easily recognise this knowingness in others, in other beings. We greet each other and we know each other without any words. And we know that we know. And we see it in each others eyes and we feel it in each others being. And this knowingness is the same regardless of what the outer looks like. A human, a horse, a fish, a spider, a flower, a tree, the sun, the moon, the wind, the cloud. The form matters not.
Wild, being wild, knowing wild is being able to allow yourself to be, there is no future, there is no worry, there is no past. There is just a thrilling splendid wild you that dances with life, that dances with everything around you, rejoicing in seeing and being seen, being recognised. And the sheer exuberance of being sometimes expresses itself as physical movement and at other times I can be sitting on a rock immersing myself in being one with the sunset I watch. Being a part of everything, belonging here. With life, in life. Being a part of the trees, the sounds and the silences, the smells and scents and a thousands of moments and other unnamed things that are tickling me, dancing with me and playing with me in every way possible. And the absolute feeling of safety, of joy, of presence ... of endless eternity ... moment by moment.
This kind of trust, this level of openness is orgasmic in itself.
And so in this space All Life Is Sacred and All Sacred Is Life.
It used to concern me on my way back to town, to the life that knows itself only in its domesticated controlled form, a life that is made into square shapes, perfect lawns, people behind barred windows and doors, noisy machinery, approved of animals in cages, fenced in and roped up. In the name of safety and yet never finding that illusive state, the state of feeling safe.
I used to wonder how I will be able to reconcile my wild nature, my freedom with residing and visiting the domesticated spaces. And to my surprise ... with time, the domestic me developed trust and the ability to let go of control. To let go of fear. To walk through the doors and fences.
And it enjoys the dance of the fearless and the free. And the wild keeps teaching and playing and inviting the domestic to be open to the multitude of realities, and spaces and dimensions. And to be caressed and touched by eternity. And celebrating all life as sacred. Anywhere. Anytime.