What Does it Mean to Embody True Nature?
posted by Roman Hanis on May 20th, 2016
The profound immersion into the depths of consciousness and purpose of all life that happens in the Embody True Nature healing retreat at Paititi continues to inspire us. As we travel deeper along our own hero’s journeys of evolutionary healing, our shared hearts awaken to greater extents.
But what does it mean to embody true nature? And why is this powerful process so effective at healing both our consciousness and our organisms?
If you’re attending, considering attending or have already attended one of these retreats, these key points should help you understand or further integrate this process into your life.
Purification & initiation
At the start of the retreat, it quickly becomes evident that the journey of transformation entails a deep commitment to face oneself under the difficult and uncomfortable circumstances often invoked by the acclimatization period. It takes courage adjusting to the container and the main practices of transformation, as well as the purification the first three initiation ceremonies entail. 
It’s not only the physical toxins that get released. Energetic, emotional and mental toxins of negative behavioral patterns, stale concepts and limiting beliefs accumulated over many years are also typically purified in the initial phases of the transformation work.
It’s not always easy. And that necessitates a sufficiently strong desire to get to the truth of one’s being. Without a higher purpose that’s greater than oneself, it’s all too easy to be fooled into giving up by the conditioned ego, desperate to get back inside its comfort zone, not wanting to give up the illusory sense of control it thinks it holds on our realities.
Hence terms such as “Unbending Intent”, “Strong Determination” and “Unwavering Commitment” have all been identified as essential, universal, human qualities within the Native American, Eastern and Western, and many ancient spiritual cultures from other parts of the world. They’re essential to face the purifying nature of the initiation process.
Emergence of natural states
After passing this purification stage in the Sacred Science of evolutionary healing, we start to gain insights and glimpses into profound states of presence and peaceful dynamics of blissful stillness. They emerge as a direct consequence of the practice of Remembrance that underlies the fabric of all of transformational work.
Dreamwork and Breathwork are the conscious practices branching from the Remembrance tree to embody the ancestral intention to help us understand and trust this process. The idea that all situations, circumstances and relationships in one’s life are not mere random occurrences can by itself be inspiring.
But to take that a step further and recognize one’s life as a skillfully crafted by higher intelligence intricate chain of events, created intentionally to help one realize the eternally radiant and indestructible essence of the true nature is life-changing to say the least. That’s the potential we begin to see as we cultivate these practices.
Shedding light on the shadows
We gradually develop more discerning wisdom as we recognize the essential humanity in the source of existence; right from the very beginning when we’re inseparable from the divine intelligence in the Mother’s womb. And from here, we begin to embody these universal qualities and base our life decisions on Love, rather than Fear.
While re-experiencing all of the difficult circumstances of our lives, habitual behavioral patterns, inhibitions and traumas, we release these repressed, subconscious contents from a place of active compassion. This replaces the victim state responsible for the accumulation of that content in the first place. Underneath all the difficult shadow memories, light is shed on the original memories of innocence, openness, receptivity, vulnerability and inner peace. Our true nature comes increasingly closer to the surface of existential awareness.
Although these states of being have little place in our modern society, they’re deeply valued in indigenous and other ancient cultures who see them as being responsible for healing and connection to one’s highest potential. This is how we start to unravel the karmic knots of disturbing emotions and liberate ourselves from the domination cycles of craving, aversion and ignorance, which are the poisons of our existence.
The simple innocent truth of being
Ironically, the pure and innocent truth is too simple for our complicated minds to comprehend. Consciousness in the center of our hearts is the primary healing agent, while all of the skillful means, practices and techniques are merely tools to support consciousness on its journey of self-realization. Not being something or someone, trying to get somewhere or accomplish something, but to simply just be.
After a lifetime of resisting or trying to fix what is, we learn to finally allow consciousness to rest deeply in this eternal moment without changing anything in it, like the sky’s calm, still presence behind the clouds. While doing based on need can never come into being, being naturally inspires creative potential – everything becomes perfect, with infinite room for improvement.
Mirror-like nature
As things progress at the Embodying True Nature healing retreat, we gain vital insight into the mirror-like nature of our collective existence. All beings are striving towards embodying a state of happiness and, more often than not, they can only experience it temporarily; grasping to fleeting pleasant sensations and avoiding the persistent unpleasant ones.
As we recognize this collective ignorance inherent within ourselves as well, we start to unravel the most essential human qualities of Universal Love and Compassion and come into our cosmic shared heart.
What we considered our own personal suffering is no longer our own. Rather it’s an expression of the same collective ignorance we now have an opportunity to experience and transform through our own being.
We begin to see that the only way to liberate ourselves from suffering is to work towards the resolution of suffering in everyone through our own example. We begin to share in the happiness of all beings and recognize the essential qualities of true nature within each other. This has been recognized in wisdom lineages for generations, originating phrases such as “hello me”, “half of you is half of me”, “we all share the same life force”, “love and compassion to all sentient beings” in their respective languages: “Hallpallay Qusunchis”, “Om mani pe me hung”, “In Lakesh”, “Namaste”, “Mitakuye Oyasin” and the list goes on…
The highest view of greatest benefit to all beings
Coming out of the labyrinth of the illusory mental projections based on stories created out of disturbing emotions and entering into our shared heart, we gain insights into the collective stages of evolutionary development of all of humanity.
The invisible structural framework of universal archetypes – primordial symbols of sacred geometry – are always here to support the growth and maturation of consciousness. It guides us through the rites of passage into the many developmental phases of coming back into the original state of direct knowing and deepest joy. We begin to see the objective reality unclouded as the fog of our conditioning dissipates.
The veils of duality and separation dissolve and in a crystal clear way, we see each other and all sentient beings as one cosmic family. The pure realm and enlightened society of ancestors from which it all began has been here all along. All sounds are icaros and mantras; all thoughts are wisdom coming out of pure space of consciousness and returning back into it; and all situations are possibilities to recognize our true indestructible nature. Highest truth is highest joy, but not the other way around.
Integration after the retreat
The work and practice truly starts at the completion of the retreat when we take what we’ve learned and experienced into the world at large, integrating the insights and realizations into the specific circumstances of our individual lives.
While the retreat’s tools and practices are profound, it’s the state of being those tools show us that are are vital to bring into our lives. The inherent wisdom of the organism we’ve been cultivating is here to reflect greater states of peaceful well-being and deeper immersion into the here and now.
While there are many different techniques, practices, disciplines and modalities out there, it’s essential to understand that they’re all just fingers pointing to the essence of being. It’s up to each one of us to continuously invoke this essence.
While it’s helpful to have a daily practice reminding us to maintain the higher level of resonance, it’s also important not to get lost in the technique and always gently bring ourselves back to the essence, both within us, and in a like-hearted community. It’s sometimes easy to forget ourselves in a world of appearances where we’re conditioned to entertain each other rather than to share our hearts.
The world at large is often distracting, so taking baby steps without getting too entangled in such temptations can be very helpful, especially in the tender beginnings after leaving the nurturing container of the retreat. With the wings of perception more widely opened, we may notice certain unhealthy patterns and dynamics in our lives which have yet remained unnoticed until now.
With that said, after the retreat it’s also common to encounter these old patterns in a more amplified way, since that nurturing container of higher resonance we’re all devoted to maintain is not as apparent. Another essential human trait that can be very useful in those situations is a sense of humor and nothing beats a good laugh at oneself in the midst of a drama – stand-up comedy at it’s best 🙂
Bringing the spacious and radiant presence of consciousness discovered within the Spirit of the Apus and the Rainforest into all the situations and circumstances of our lives is really what this is about – the childlike attitude of no wrong, where every step is an unceasing learning experience of greater insight and evolution.
We’re made of Mother Nature and as we remember this more and more we can be her conscious manifestations always and everywhere, continuously learning how to channel greater and greater levels of Universal Love through nurturing and discerning presence while becoming the fusion of wisdom and compassion inseparable, thus, embodying true nature.
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