What does it mean to Awaken? Part Four

What does it mean to Awaken? Part Four
 
Awakening to the Natural World
 
I’m yet working with the article "What Does It Mean to “Awaken”?
By Patrick Paul Garlinger via MEDIUM.  Here, again, is a summary from the article.  He writes:
 
Let’s look closer at four key stages of awakening: (1) awakening to the constructed nature of society; (2) awakening to the conditioned nature of the mind; (3) awakening to the unseen universe (what might also be called the realm of the Divine); and (4) and awakening to the natural world. There are no doubt other forms of awakening, but these four are often connected, and each one may inform or lead to another.
 
The natural world.  That is everything that we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.  It is MOTHER NATURE herself. It is creation and the natural order by which it is all organized.
 
Some of us experience a deep connection with a part of creation, be it another person, a pet, or a place, or any “thing” else in all of creation.
 
This stage of awakening, which I would likely deem to be the 3rd, not the 4th, is what has grabbed my soul over the years.  Like many of us, I’ve experienced awe on top of a mountain, or by the ocean... or in the most ordinary of places.

In 1973 I hiked up Mount San Jacinto in California.  It was a trip with three high school students working on their God and Country Aware. Awesome.
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​In 2013 I went up Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Hiked up with our son and his wife and our grandson.  Highest winds on earth have been recorded up there.  Awesome.

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Then there is Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. for many years, which is wide and expansive and visited by Great Whites.  We were all there in August of 2019 and he day after we left, one of the Grey Seals swiming along the shore was taken by a Great White. You can see one below.  Awesome.

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 And then, of course, is our place in Oceana County where deer are ever present and whee I’m busy cleaning up the forest in ways that increase its sustainability.

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In such places it is easy to experience the divine.  And with my incarnational worldview, I am ever more conscious that the energy that is in those four magnificent natural places is the same energy that is in the chair below me and the laptop before me… and everywhere else.
 
In my book I pose the question: Where is God not?
 
I know the answer.  How about you?