Building and Living With The Natural World, part 3

Our buildings can be made of real materials - soil, wood, stone, water. Think of building materials as the food we eat:  The more our food lived a healthy life - with no pesticides, hormones, etc.; wasn't processed with chemicals or in-organic additives, etc.; was grown under the sky and fed intrinsically nurturing food - the more it feeds and nurtures us.  Being surrounded by real materials, simply rendered, surrounds us with a vibration or resonance our bodies and minds have always known.

Building forms can be sensual and alive, as our body, not rigid and hard and lifeless (think drywall).  Surfaces can have vitality, hold an intention atuned to the what we want to experience in each room: Be soft, or vibrant, or rough, or glassy/reflective, or…….. 

In the way that our breath is perhaps our most vital aspect of living, our buildings can breathe, drawing in the world around us.   A building can pull in the breezes, gather daylight into most parts of the building. One room can open into a garden while another expands out to a distant view.  At another level, just as we breathe in and out, one space can be expansive, while another space can be inward-focused.  Buildings can provide place for inner, reflective solitude, and outward-reaching gatherings.

Our buildings can be as a wave, which is the meeting of the deep energy of the ocean with the firm soil of the earth.  A wave puts us in one of the most ancient dynamics of the earth.  Our buildings can also put us in-between realms - a building can be just inside the edge of a forest overlooking a meadow, or a bay window in a bedroom looking onto a city street  - opening up reflective chords.

There are many ways our buildings can be interwoven into the natural world. The first and essential step is to awaken our awareness to this possibility.  A simple exploration of this opening:  Go into the woods, find a small, intimate space, and sit.  Be still.  Listen.  As when dropping a pebble into a still pond, soon your mind will be clear of ripples.  You'll be deep in the pond (the place), and the world around you will begin to embrace you.  Animals will resume their goingson, birds will land on branches nearby; you'll slowly become a part of the place.  Then you can begin to consider how the spaces you create and live in can be an extension of the centered place this consciousness was born in.