Ropes to God

EDITOR’S BOOK AND FILM REVIEW

ELIZABETH DENLEY reviews the book, Amphibious Soul, and describes how Craig Foster’s experiences in the natural world, particularly the southern oceans off the tip of South Africa, helped her to understand aspects of her own life that can now be integrated into her soul’s journey.

Recently I read Amphibious Soul by Craig Foster, the creator of the Oscar-winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher. I loved that film, having grown up next to the ocean in Australia and worked as a marine ecologist through my twenties. Foster’s story spoke directly to my own experiences with sea creatures and the beauty of the natural world. Like Foster, I had explored both land and sea ecosystems, loved the wild flow of nature, and felt boxed in by city life and the concrete jungle.

I studied zoology, botany, and marine ecosystems at university, using a very practical experimental approach. I was energized by working in the field and by the scientific process of discovering patterns in the distribution and abundance of plants and animals, until one day that was no longer enough. I felt stuck in a particular worldview and wanted to break free. The scientific approach treated living creatures in a mechanistic way, and I needed to complement that with something more subtle and beautiful to truly satisfy a deep yearning to understand the natural world.

When I turned my back on a career in ecology, little did I realize how important that phase of my life would turn out to be. And Craig Foster’s film and book were catalysts that helped me honor it and tie it all together.

Instead of the focus just being on external knowledge, 
I also found an awareness of insight, direct perception, intuition,
communion, and learning by osmosis.

That is the beauty of non-fiction books and documentaries. The experiences and expression of another person can resonate and inspire, teach and give solace. Foster’s way of experiencing the world resonated so deeply with mine, that it allowed me to understand my younger self and move forward.

But that is not all. My time studying ecosystems was not just about the data I collected in the field for scientific studies. Most days I was out on seashores, in kelp forests, helping associates with their fieldwork in the rainforest, on coral reefs, tracking whale migrations and bird migrations. Sometimes I would look at the animals and plants we were studying and ask, “While we are studying you, what do you think of us?” There was a genuine communion at some level, and that’s when I knew there was something more than statistical data and morphological descriptions. As a child, my favorite trees were dear friends, and dolphins were playmates, and I didn’t want to lose that connection.

Five years later I discovered the spiritual practice known as Heartfulness, and immediately a light went on. Here was a method of discovery that held many missing pieces of the puzzle. Instead of the focus just being on external knowledge, I also found an awareness of insight, direct perception, intuition, communion, and learning by osmosis. It was a lifeline, literally. I felt truly alive for the first time in years, and became hopeful that this would bring the answers I needed so much at that time. It was as if a deep search for meaning was directing my life without my conscious involvement. I also knew from the beginning that spirituality would take me to realms way beyond this visible world, and that is a story more important than this one, but for another day.

Looking back, I realize that all the fieldwork, the rigorous training and discipline of the scientific method, the refining of observational skills, the honing of an inquiring mind, and the mentoring of my teachers were just what I needed to embark on a spiritual journey. I had been very well trained. Not only that, but being in nature all those years allowed me to be at peace with the simplicity and dynamic flow of the natural world. I could love the Deodar tree in our front garden as much as a person or a frog or a colony of fire ants. The sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets were living beings worthy of love and respect, and in the bush our lives often depended upon them. Water was a living being, so was air and fragrance and the lifeforce that rose out of the Earth in the springtime. And they all communicated and listened. They all offered love and rejoiced in receiving it.

When I read Amphibious Soul, another light went on, because Foster’s writing is so in tune with spirituality. At one point he says, “The tame world can distort our priorities, leading us to place too much importance on gratifying our egos. In the wild world, no one individual is more important than any other. When a San hunter brings a big animal home to feed the village, the people tease him: ‘Why did you even bother? Why’d you bring us this old bag of bones?’ They do this because they know the ego is a dangerous thing. They’ve had thousands of years to see how placing some people above others creates envy, jealousy, greed. And when our tame-world egos and desires grow too big, we begin to fight with one another and we devour our own home, our Mother, our sanctuary.”

Spending time in nature keeps us in a state of surrender, because we are part of an ecosystem, we are not separate beings. The survival of each individual is dependent on the whole system. Humility develops naturally because we are such small specks in a vast universe. It is ridiculous to see ourselves as important when life is thriving all around, and when every species has its own specialty that we don’t have. We may have created the illusion of separateness in our glamorous houses, cars, and airplanes, but without the natural world we have no air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, or shelter to protect us.

Spending time in nature keeps us in a
state of surrender, because we are
part of an ecosystem, we are not
separate beings.

Also, our original state is to love the world, to feel her heart in everything. The ancients honored her in small but meaningful ways, like ritual offerings to the sun, with water, with fire, with earth, acknowledging the spirit of the universe. Many villagers still do the same today. We may smile at their quaintness, but deep down many of us feel the reverence of lighting a candle to our ancestors, or to whatever form of Creator we adore, even when our deity is materiality. And most of us feel refreshed in nature, because we feel the connection with the lifeforce all around us.

The tagline to Foster’s book is “Finding the wild in a tame world.” Think of wild as God’s creation and tame as human creation. Which feels correct? The spiritual journey is all about removing our limited human creation to allow God’s creation to shine from within. Foster’s chapter on Love starts with, “Close your eyes and take a deep breath. As you breath in and out, take note of what you hear. Maybe it’s the sound of cars zooming past, your neighbor mowing the lawn, a plane soaring overhead. Reflect, too, on what you saw before you closed your eyes… Reflect for a moment on just how new the tame world is, how different it is from what thousands and thousands of your ancestors would have seen when they looked around them, what they would have heard. Now take a moment to experience the world as they might have. Can you see in your mind’s eye this wild world?”

Nature teaches us about kinship, belonging, listening, taking only what we truly need, accepting discomfort, and respecting the roles of others, because without those things we do not survive in nature. The more we separate ourselves, the less we depend on those qualities and the further we stray from our natural humility and dependency.

Thanks to Craig Foster’s beautiful documentary and book, I now see my childhood and scientific training as a wonderful preparation for the spiritual journey I embarked upon in my early thirties, which continues to sustain me beyond any possible imagining in deeper and greater ways.

A lifetime has taught me that science and spirituality are not at odds. At one point I needed to create a separation in order to let go of paradigms that limited my consciousness and expand my worldview, but eventually the various pieces of the puzzle needed to be integrated. I am truly grateful that life has offered that possibility. Nature and God are complementary and interchangeable aspects of the lifeforce, and my soul is here in joy and gratitude to celebrate both and experience life in its purity.

Nature teaches us about kinship,
belonging, listening, taking only what we truly need, 
accepting discomfort, and respecting the roles of others, 
because without those things we do not survive in nature.
 The more we separate ourselves,
the less we depend on those qualities and
the further we stray from our natural humility and dependency.

Exercise

Foster shares the following San practice called “Ropes to God.”

“You go outside in the morning and a bird lands in a nearby tree. You make a thread to that bird, just a gentle feeling of connection, acknowledging the birds’ presence and its place in the world. Then you see  a small insect climbing a branch. You make a thread to it. ‘I see you insect. I’m grateful for what you do for our world.’

“You do this with all the animals and plants you see, building these spider threads of connection and love. Then one day the threads weave together and form a rope, a conduit to the source of all life.”