Author Archives: Susan L Hart

Where is Truth?

Path to Well-Being

Daily walking (and especially in nature) is essential for my personal sense of health and well-being. I’m a big believer in the power of nature to nurture us, hence my post to perhaps motivate you to follow suit.

You may think that nature is not what “does it for you”, but have you really given it a chance? We are much too apt to sit in front of our TVs, computers, and phone devices for hours on end. These devices actually lower our vibration, and therefore our ability to stay physically well. I’m not saying to get rid of them, but it is essential to keep our exposure in balance with what is natural and wholesome.

It is a well documented fact that our connection to nature is a very important aspect of our well-being. Time and again, nature will provide us with not just physical health, but we also derive a feeling of inner peace, what is real in life, and proper perspective about what wellness really is.

I urge you to consider adding more time in nature to your health and well-being “to-do” list. As the naturalist and writer John Muir said, “In every walk with Nature, one receives more than he seeks.”

Inspiring nature/life quotes from transcendentalist writer, Henry David Thoreau:

“He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

“Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest – lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, Excursions, Poems and Familiar Letters V2

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Wildness is the preservation of the World.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walking

“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Path to Well-Being © Susan L Hart 2021 | Friendly comments welcome | Photo of the Dolomites courtesy kordi_vahle, Pixabay

Nature’s Medicine

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No Monday blues here. I’m bringing you a dose of nature’s nurturing green to start your week feeling uplifted and rejuvenated. Think of it as a building block, a foundation for your day (and I hope) for your week. Build on it.

Pen onto your calendar, right now, something that will uplift you each and every day. Commit to those goals. Make your well-being in mind-boy-spirit the #1 priority on your calendar this week.

You know the things that bring you personal happiness, that lift your heart. Right now we might be restricted to “the small things”. What you will find out is that the small things are actually the big things…

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” ~ John Muir

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” ~ John Muir

“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.” ~ John Muir

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Nature Medicine © Susan L Hart 2020 | Friendly comments welcome | Photos courtesy Luis del Río Pexels, HoliHo Pexels, KANENORI Pixabay, Pixel2013 Pixabay, SplitShire Pexels

Awakening Humanity

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There is a spiritual revolution quietly brewing in the heart of humanity. A surging, monumental wave undulates persistently around the world. Can you feel it?

Isolation has had a way of removing our normal distractions this past year. Oh, we tried our best to fill up that newly available time with various projects and more social media. But that nagging feeling that our lives weren’t quite right in the first place, “what are we trying to get back to?“, has not gone away.

The curtain has been pulled aside, the yawning void has been revealed, and for some people that is scarier than any virus could ever be.

Questioning how we’ve been living our lives

“I thought my life had meaning, now I’m not so sure. Why was I busting my butt all those mornings, commuting to a job I hated? Why did I put the dream of a big house before the dream of a happy and cohesive family? Why did I sacrifice my own dreams so I could try to measure up to society’s yard stick of success?”

And on it goes. The monologue playing in your head will be different than the next person’s, but you get the idea. We are still in a time of extreme self-examination, as well as opening our eyes to the dysfunctional aspects of our societies.

Much of it is not pretty, so we are inclined to turn our eyes away. But wait! Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for too long now? Losing ourselves in our technological devices? Trusting that everything would be taken care of for us by external authority? Trusting that the formula for life that society insisted we adhere to was a good one? Trusting the message that we shouldn’t trust in ourselves, after all, what could we possibly know?

The big opportunity for change

To say that this time is important is hugely understating it. Humanity is riding the wave on the cusp of a gargantuan shift in consciousness. Change is a scary proposition and we have a tendency to avoid it at all cost. However, this current global situation has thrown down the gauntlet for you, me, and the rest of humanity. The big question hanging in the air, the pink elephant in the room is, will we rise to the occasion and create something better for ourselves?

Take the time to ask questions, and while you’re searching for the answers, listen not only to your head, but also to your heart and your gut. There’s a voice crying to be inside of you. It is your own, but it is also connected to all of humanity. Hear its song and feel its pulse. We are all inextricably connected.

Inspirational Quotes:

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”~ Eckhart Tolle

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.” ~ John O’Donohue

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges

“You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.” ~ Amit Ray

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” ~ John Steinbeck