This Slow

By Lian Brook-Tyler

The last few years, and especially the last couple of months, have been an initiation into slowing down to my true nature.

We modern humans have sped up. Magical, creative beings that we are, we have created all kinds of technologies that allow us to step out of the natural patterns of life… A slow trot beginning with farming, lighting and heating, and then hurtling into computers and AI.

We are going at such a pace now that any remaining natural scenery is flashing by in a blur - we can’t even tell how fast we’re going.

And even if we could, we wouldnt know it matters, we’d probably think it’s a cause for celebration that we’ve become a productive chip in the gleaming machine that’s approaching warp speed. What a relief to know we won’t be left behind.

Of course, nature is still unfolding to its own perfect beat, a timing that’s just one part of an infinitely complex design.

And nature includes us, the human animal. Thousands of years of conditioning have taught us to believe we’re immune to this fact, somehow above it or more evolved than it… Until something brings us to our knees…Maybe illness, maybe failure, maybe a story, maybe disillusionment, maybe bereavement, maybe the wisdom of the womb, or maybe becoming conscious of an expression of Spirit.

If those knees are on the earth, the real work can begin, that of learning from the wild world. We begin to reclaim the pace that’s not only natural for humans but is our heritage from our long ago ancestors, riches waiting to be discovered.

Yesterday, I was on a walk and was called by the beauty of buds on a tree, incipient blooms, right on time.

I was with that tree for maybe ten minutes, something that would have been unimaginable to me fifteen years ago, and even five years ago might have brought up thoughts such as “I’m wasting time, I have so much to do.”, the Pavlovian pull back onto the conveyor belt of my productive life.

I learned more from those buds in those ten minutes than I can tell you, what I’m writing here is just a pollen-sized speck of a tree’s worth of wisdom.

Maybe I’ll share more in good time, there’s no hurry.

For now, my wish for all of us is that some day, we meet on the mud, naked as the day we were born, kissing the mother that has held us and loved us through all the adolescent adventures and follies of our species… May we remember we are her children, may we receive our forgotten inheritance, may we treasure it and pass it on.


Art: The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). My favourite painting, a large print of it has blessed my bedroom wall for 14 years but it’s been my North Star for decades, long before I knew it.

Want to become more intimate with us? If YES, click any or all of the buttons below.