Knowing your inner landscape. What does it mean to become intimately familiar with both our inner landscape and our outer landscape? Do we approach each with a sense of mindful care?
“It is a landscape so familiar to me that sometimes I have felt a species before I saw it.” –Terry Tempest Williams
Knowing your inner landscape requires that we treat ourselves with kindness and compassion. It requires relating intimately with ourselves–our body, heart, and mind. It involves a willingness to sit in the stillness or the darkness to be present with whatever arises in the form of sensations, feelings, and thoughts instead of reaching for something, anything, else to avoid feeling pain or discomfort.
Similarly, knowing our outer landscape–the land, water, air, plants, animals–requires that we treat it with compassion and gentleness. Do we treat the Earth with mindful care, honoring that it holds all that sustains us, or do we trample it mindlessly with no acknowledgment for its gifts of life? How does the ways in which we relate to both our inner and outer landscape impact our creative expression?
When we compulsively reach for anything to dull our pain or discomfort, we dampen our creative expression. Imagine the depth of creative expression that we could encounter if we were willing to sit still with ourselves, learn the practice of mindfulness, and develop the capacity to be present with whatever arises. Imagine how intimately knowing your inner landscape and the wholeness of your true nature could be reflected in our creative expression.
Be still. Listen.
Jen Johnson is a mindfulness teacher and ecotherapist teaching mindfulness for healing and creativity. Learn more about working with Jen.