Natural Spirituality School

I guess you can really see how all sorts of people—whether they actually have a deep background in theology and philosophy or are just figuring it out as they go—end up stumbling upon their own unique truths just by paying attention to the world around them. It’s like, when you sit back and really observe how nature works and how everything connects, you start to wrap your head around things on your own terms. Maybe it's because the patterns in the natural world are so obvious once you stop to look, I don't know. People find their own way to make sense of it all, regardless of what they studied in school.

I figured I’d start this thread to give us all a place to vent about these kinds of situations—you know, when people describe stuff that just doesn't sit right. To get things moving, I think I'll kick things off with a little story from my own life...

I was born and raised basically playing in the ruins of an old city. I spent my early childhood living in houses right next to the remains of ancient Los Angeles, so my playground was basically just nature mixed with stone relics from some massive civilization that used to be there. Later on, I moved into the heart of Miami, but honestly, I always loved heading out to a rural town whenever I could. I’d go back there all the time on weekends or during holidays—it was like my escape. Out there, the forest became my new playground again.

I guess I should probably mention that I was thinking about those birds again. It’s funny how they just sort of exist in your peripheral vision, you know? Like, you're busy doing something important—or at least something that feels important at the moment—and then suddenly there's this flash of color or a weird little chirp that just pulls you right out of your head. Maybe it's just me being distracted, but I feel like people don't pay enough attention to them. They have their own whole little world going on, completely indifferent to whatever drama is happening on our side of the glass. Anyway, just a random thought I had while staring out the window earlier.

So, I was thinking back to when I was just a little kid. I remember being out in this rural town, probably near some old gap in the wall of a garden shed, when I stumbled upon this bird's nest that had somehow fallen out. Honestly, I was so stoked about finding them. I already had this whole vision in my head of me domesticating these little guys—it was pretty cute, I guess. I grabbed them in my hands and just sprinted through those old streets toward my grandma’s house. I was feeling so good about it, too. I kept telling myself it was the right thing to do, like, how could the mother bird possibly fix this on her own? It felt like a mission. I was already mentally planning out the setup—you know, getting some cages ready, making sure there was plenty of water and food. It was such a beautiful, sunny day, and everything felt perfect. Then, my grandma happened to walk in. She had clearly been out running errands all day, and when I ran up to her, all excited, begging for some corn or whatever else I could find to feed them, she wasn't having any of it. She just gave me this cold look and shut me down immediately. She told me there was no food for them, and that they couldn't even eat stuff like that anyway. Apparently, their diet consists strictly of worms or something. Yeah, talk about a buzzkill.

The whole thing went from this beautiful, inspired vision to a total gut punch of disappointment just as fast. Honestly, I had no clue where I was supposed to find worms on a daily basis or how I’d even manage to feed those little chicks, so my mind immediately jumped to them slowly starving to death. It sounds dark, I know, but I ended up heading out behind the house, trekking through the yard, and—with tears in my eyes—just crushed them one by one with my own hands...

In later years, whenever I’d head out to a rural town, I think that one specific moment really started the process of me emotionally checking out from the whole animal kingdom thing. It was like I decided right then that I wasn't going to mess with natural processes I don't fully wrap my head around. Instead of stepping in, I just let things play out—like letting the cats get to the birds before I could even try to do something about it, which I honestly wasn't capable of doing anyway. I guess I just traded those rushed, impulsive decisions for just... watching. Just observing, I suppose.

Growing up in a rural town, things were just different. I mean, there were always situations where my relatives would be slaughtering lambs or pigs, or maybe it was just a dog running itself ragged trying to keep up with a tractor pulling a trailer full of hay while I sat in the back. I guess I had my moments where I actually stepped in, too—like that one time when a dog was being processed alongside the neighbor's livestock, or that heavy feeling you get when a little rabbit you’d managed to tame enough to bring out to the fields dies on you. But honestly, I think I kept a bit more emotional distance than most kids from big cities like Chicago or New York would. You know, those people who call themselves "animal lovers" but then turn around and feed their pets meat from industrial factory farms—places so grim you wouldn't wish them on any living creature. It's a weird disconnect, I suppose.

I’ve spent my whole life wandering through the woods out in some rural town, usually just me and my dog trailing behind. I grew up watching how things work out there, observing all those little cycles of nature, I guess. But then there was this one time when my relatives decided to get two more dogs, and they reached this weird, heavy conclusion that they had to put the third one down because they didn't have enough names for them—or maybe they just couldn't afford to feed three. It sounds crazy, I know. Back then, I just listened to the older folks without pushing back; I was honestly ready to do it myself. When the moment actually came, my uncle headed out into the trees, and I offered to go along and handle it, but he wouldn't even let me step foot out there with him. Then, from deep within the oak forest, I heard a single shot, followed by a few others. It was an animal that, looking back, was probably my favorite creature of all time. I suppose I just never allowed my own feelings to weigh more than what the people close to me thought was right.

It’s funny how things work out, I guess. It wasn't until much later in life that I started connecting all the dots—realizing what those people from my own bloodline actually did to me. When you start linking situations from years ago to things happening in your family today, you realize they weren't exactly looking out for me the way I thought. Even now, I don't think I can ever truly build that emotional wall I tried to put up when I was younger, trying to distance myself from the very people I felt I owed my sense of security and happiness to. Everything just hits you at once. Like, even when I see that old, overgrown vineyard back in that rural town, it brings it all back. I spent most of my life hating anything involving booze, mostly because I saw how wine and the mental toll it takes can really mess someone up. But then, I'll remember being this little kid, feeling so incredibly stoked while helping pull the first concrete posts through the dirt. Now, when I look at the tall weeds growing over those posts, my heart just kind of aches, and I wonder if that feeling will ever actually go away. The folks who used to work that land are gone now, and honestly, a lot of the ones who are still around might as well be. All that's left in me is the time that's passed, the time I'm living right now, and whatever comes next. I suppose I owe the life I have—and even the end I'll eventually face—to the spiritual tools I picked up from people far from home. It's how I learned to manage my thoughts and emotions, to steer them toward doing good instead of letting the bad take over. In a way, those same skills are what's saving the lives of people who were once close to me. And maybe, part of it is just thanks to the beautiful moments from the past that I still carry with me.

I ended up writing this whole holistic piece, I guess, though I was really just trying to pull my entire universe into the present moment as I went along. It’s all connected—plants, animals, people—it's just how nature works, you know? When people lose that sense of goodness, they start looking toward the heavens for answers, watching all those birds circling above and drifting down to earth.

To all the falcons that pierced through both body and soul;

Jeremy Alvarez5
rural town, August 6, 2011

I mean, I guess you could say all art is just a little bit of magic, right? When it actually hits home and connects with your own past, it’s almost like some researcher getting lost in those abstract, astral dimensions they think they see—it becomes this deeply mystical thing. Trying to write about your childhood or that younger version of yourself feels like a collision between who you were back then and who you are today. It's heavy stuff. Since poetry is all about packing a ton of symbolism into a small space, I actually think those little typos or grammar slips can be pretty telling. In a Freudian sense, they sort of reveal these tiny fragments of the subconscious. Because this specific piece is so personal, I’m probably going to leave the errors alone—things like overusing personal pronouns and stuff like that. It just feels more honest that way. 🙂 I guess when our current self finally collides with that massive pile of past experiences—you know, those moments that suddenly start making sense through some weirdly logical, rational math we couldn't wrap our heads around before—something really specific happens. It’s like when you're caught in this tug-of-war between different impulses, and one just surges to the surface, forcing a choice. Some schools of thought, I think, get too hung up on digging through sexual experiences in their psychoanalytic searches. But honestly? I feel like a person is actually shaped by everything they loved first. That's what builds us. And because those early loves are so foundational, it makes it way harder to let them go, or even harder to try and find happiness again using those same old mental pathways. To me, overcoming "evil"—or just getting past those bad vibes we associate with certain people, things, or events—comes from there. It makes me wonder, though... does circling back to childhood memories actually bring us closer to that inner child, or is it just revisiting old trauma? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the actual path to overcoming it? It's hard to say for sure. I suspect that memory might just be the conscious mind trying to take an old experience and face it with a fresh perspective. If we just regress back to the past without adding any new insight or growth to the mix, it probably isn't doing much good for our personality. It feels kind of negative, if I'm being honest. Maybe true maturity is just allowing these two processes—the past and the present—to constantly merge in our consciousness, instead of shoving one side into the subconscious. In that sense, the present moment carries all the messages from our younger selves. It’s all just this big interplay where we question how we’d handle things today if the people around us were actually just versions of ourselves. I feel like we spend our whole lives trying to make sense of why people act the way they do, basically trying to step into every single role in the drama of life. And the beauty of living in the "now" is that it gives us the chance to pivot—to take all that complexity and distill it down into words, symbols, prose, or even a poem.

So, I was thinking about how early spirituality was basically just people staring at the world around them and trying to make sense of it all—you know, those ancient cave paintings and that whole totemism thing where everything in nature felt alive. It’s like, before we had organized religion, we just looked at a storm or an animal and felt that connection. And if you look into the Dictionary Symbol by Chevalier and Gheerbrant, they actually touch on this idea:

I guess if you look back at ancient Egypt, the Falcon was basically treated like the king of all birds because of how powerful and beautiful it was. It was seen as this ultimate symbol of the heavens. It was also the perfect embodiment of Horus, the god of the skies—you know, the one whose eyes were actually the sun and the moon? He’d usually be depicted either as a bird or as a man with a Falcon head. The Egyptians were apparently really fascinated by this little dark mark under the Falcon's eye, which supposedly represented that all-seeing gaze. Because of that, the whole symbolism surrounding the Eye of Horus eventually turned into this massive concept representing total fertility (according to POSD, page 112). Also, the Falcon was an attribute of the god Ra, representing the rising sun. Sometimes he was even shown with a solar disk around his head instead of a crest, wrapped in a cobra to symbolize those intense solar flames. It's pretty wild how much meaning they packed into a single bird, I suppose.

So, I was reading up on this bit of history, and it turns out the Falcon was actually a huge emblem and solar symbol for the Inca people in Peru. According to this chronicler named Sarmiento—who's cited by Means—it seems like every single Inca, starting all the way back with the dynasty's founder, Manco Capac, had this kind of spiritual double or a guardian angel. They apparently manifested as a Falcon that they called Inti, which basically means the Sun. It’s pretty wild to think about, honestly.

So, I was reading this wild bit of folklore from the Yunga people down in Peru, and it’s honestly kind of trippy. In one version of their myth, these legendary heroes don't even start out human—they actually emerge as Falcons from a cluster of five eggs laid high up on some mountain before finally taking on a human shape. It's pretty heavy stuff. Then, there's this other version where a heroine has a child through a relationship with a God, specifically this Falcon-Noe figure. Just a really unique way of looking at how legends begin, I guess.

So, I was reading this old Irish short story about those adventures involving Tuan Mac Cairill, and it’s pretty wild how the Falcon keeps popping up as one of his different states of being. It kind of reminds me of that eagle figure you see in those ancient Welsh myths about the old worlds—you know, where everything feels much more primal? I guess there's a connection there. Also, if you look at those old Welsh legal codes from back in the 10th century, like the laws of Hywel Dda, the whole importance of the Falcon really stems from how big falconry was as a type of hunting back then. It's interesting stuff, I suppose.

Back in the Middle Ages, you’d sometimes see a Falcon depicted tearing apart rabbits. If you go by certain interpretations where rabbits are a symbol for lust, then the Falcon basically represents winning the battle against those primal desires (CIRD, 134).

The Falcon is always such a solar, Uranian, masculine, daytime sort of symbol—it’s upwardly mobile on every level, whether we're talking physical, spiritual, or moral stuff. It stands for dominance or victory, whether that’s something already achieved or just something someone is working toward. When ancient Egyptians, like in the writings of Horapollon, wanted to depict a god, height, diving, status, or a win, they’d go with the image of a Falcon (TER, 162).

Sometimes, a Falcon is shown with a perch. In that context, it symbolizes the hope for light held by someone living in darkness; it's like an image of a prisoner, someone whose spiritual spark is being held back. A lot of Renaissance printers actually loved using the emblem of a Falcon on a perch, often pairing it with the motto: *Post tenebras spero lucem* (TERS, 163).

It’s pretty obvious from that smudge under the Falcon’s eye, all the way down to the rabbits (though anyone who’s ever kept rabbits knows just how fast they multiply!) acting as symbols of lust and such—it means that this kind of spiritual-religious symbolism from ancient times is almost impossible to grasp without a deep dive into animal behavior and how they were portrayed... but it also shows that nature was humanity's very first spiritual teacher, nudging us to face our own inner selves...

Reading these bits about the Falcon, and then hitting a line from an opera like "Ero on Borrowed Time"— "which shines high in the sky; the moon is either a gray Falcon" ... it creates this visualization of birds watching the world from a higher vantage point between humans and the sun. Then you have thoughts about war, and even the names given to defenders during wartime (which, I guess, mirrors my own transition from childhood to puberty), and it all kind of crashes together in the closing words of that first text. Based on those words, and considering how medieval printers used symbolism—likely because their work drove them toward a desire for greater freedoms... that mention of crucifixion is also symbolic of striving to rise above things, aiming for the good, or hoping for something higher... whereas the "crucifixion of the soul" feels like a rejection of reducing spirituality to mere physical suffering or death. At the end of the day, I wonder about the concept of sacrifice in an individual who is upgrading their own consciousness to find ways to belong to the whole; it makes you question if we should even use the symbol of sacrifice at all... So, whether it's Falcons or crucifixion, these symbols live their own independent lives—because when you link someone else to the same terms, or even just slightly less abstract words, you can end up with totally different associations... I suppose the only way out is to exist in the face of reality, acknowledging and listening to every perspective... While nature itself, stripped of all this symbolism, is more like a simple matter of mathematical relationships—much like how our ancestors interpreted things thousands of years ago—our own thoughts are limited by symbolism and a more restricted sense of community as we search for distance from whatever might become a source of evil for us as individuals or as a whole... Ultimately, it's about facing our own names, which we still use today, because we try not to stay stuck in the past but to overcome everything through some new kind of awareness. In this case, that would be the richness of nature as a source, though honestly, as much as it's all around us, I don't know nearly enough about it... To wrap this up, there's this mysterious thing where cats and other animals manage to find their way home to their owners from unbelievable distances. They use basic logic regarding tracks and scents, but it's not something that's easily explained...

Just to add a little more regarding the whole thing about individual perception; besides just naming things, you really have to account for the current space and time we're in. It brings up thoughts about conflict, the general anxiety over the state of the world, and even those Taoist types who learned from nature—historical records show they actually led peasant revolts against emperors and kings. I think there was even one guy back in China who wanted it all to start with him, so he went ahead and had all those rich sources of Chinese culture wiped out...

I mean, if you try to idealize a small town on one hand, or if you spend all your time hunting for the good and bad traits of people who mostly exist in that physical space, you might end up totally overlooking their mental and spiritual existence... so, looking for good and evil in certain individuals eventually leads to questions like whether that whole story about the dog that needed to be put down was just an excuse for me—if I can even say that—to share my own take. Personally, I checked out of having opinions or feelings about stuff like that a long time ago. A shallow conclusion about someone being "tough" or "sensitive" is usually only visible through a pattern of similar experiences. People find it pretty hard to truly pass their experiences onto one another, unless they act as a sort of foundation for spreading those experiences to others... which, at its core, is what wisdom is—filo/sophia...

It’s kind of interesting that despite all the emperors and kings, the Western world today basically measures time by whoever made the ultimate sacrifice. Maybe the idea of God is indirectly tied to this expectation of sacrifice and the constant craving for more space—for ourselves. Then you have the opposite extreme, like how Apollo makes beauty the ideal concept, where both God and man are judged by the beauty they can provide... Both of those extremes feel like a form of total conformism when observing others. And when you mention that the game started maybe 5,000 years ago or so... maybe seeing God as a sacrifice is just the best sign of our collective childishness—this refusal to take personal responsibility and actually take action while waiting for some shared fate or circumstances where we'll finally try to find ourselves in this world...

Rudolf Steiner was apparently so deeply tuned in that, from what I recall during my own deep dives, he’d sometimes just stand perfectly still for long enough to actually watch plants grow,

Nikola Tesla once said something along the lines of how he wasn't really an inventor, but more like someone who just discovers things that already exist in the natural world,

And then you’ve got Leonardo da Vinci who championed the idea of art starting from a personal investigation of nature—you know, totally different from that stuff where artists just end up copying each other...

Man, I actually had a bit of a falling out with a plant recently. I started sketching it last night, but then by morning it had sprouted new flowers, so I basically had to scrap the whole drawing and start over. 😁

Nature moves at its own pace, I guess. Art kind of requires you to adapt to whatever speed is happening within that massive spectrum of everything we can see, hear, or touch.

Out where I live in the countryside, there’s this elderly couple who keeps goats. Honestly, goat farming isn't exactly a walk in the park, so every year around the same time, I hear them telling the exact same story about how they’re finally going to sell them off. They tell the neighbors, they tell everyone around town, and then—surprise, surprise—they end up keeping them anyway. It happens every single year.

It makes me think about how maybe certain traditions, like clearing out grain from the house during a holiday, are kind of similar to how people try to sever family ties. Or even thinking about death as just a way to cut all connections to everything, including worrying about things like natural disasters or revolutions. Anyway, if those folks with the goats didn't create a situation over a few weeks where they could essentially lie to themselves and everyone else, they’d probably find it even harder to hold onto something that shifts from being a burden one day to a blessing the next. Maybe there’s something good about setting things up so that every relationship—whether it's marriage, parenting, or whatever—has an expiration date. It opens up a door that freedom allows: the chance to be unattached. Being unattached means you can actually face challenges head-on and weigh whether certain things, however trivial they seem, actually bring more good or bad to your life and the world around you. I guess you could say spirituality is really just a struggle against the anxiety caused by being too attached to specific types of relationships. Even religious bonds work that way; they often teach from the jump that stepping outside the ritualistic formula is somehow immoral. Maybe getting rid of goats or grain is a way of testing "God," but I think it’s more about testing yourself. Now, if someone wants to jump off a building, that’s a total sin against "wisdom." If wisdom is really about learning through dialogue with others, then true dialogue involves realizing that doing something like that results in injury 100% of the time.

It really just comes down to all that hard work in training...

The number one jumper

Wealth is more about potential than actual knowledge. I guess if you lack that underlying potential, it doesn't matter how much you know; it won't help you.