I’ve long been a disciple of yoga. But a year ago a Tarot card reading told me my what I’d come to suspect – that working with nature was my soul work now. Arriving to this place took years. As yoga brought me back into my body, I began to discover another place within myself. One that was vast but comforting, sometimes dark, sometimes light, but always peaceful and steadying.

As I learned how to more easily ground in this inner space, I began to sense and feel things that could not be put into words, but held my attention, wanting to be named. This I noticed happened most often in nature. When walking outdoors amongst the woodlands and hills, a kind of bubbly sweet sensation would burble in my tummy and rise to my chest. This tingly suffused feeling I realized — was happiness!

I decided to cultivate this ‘good energy’ like prana or qi, and began to breathe mindfully fanning the flame. Then like Alice I would feel myself grow taller and lighter, my senses sharpening. I saw the tiny puddles of sun illuminating the incandescent ferns on the forest floor, the tumbling whirling activity of insects and bees, I could hear in sharp relief the songs of the birds, and the sounds of the wind as it rippled through leaves. And all this beauty filled me further, leading at moments to a kind of ecstasy.

Yoga’s gift was to bring me to this place. Learning to “see” with the eyes of my body, awakened my senses — I began to feel once again. And what I felt in nature was love, a deep reverence for the life that shone in every drop of dew, every blade of grass, and every creature. This was a revelatory experience. An epiphany of a spiritual truth that rung true to my bones. Because without a shadow of doubt, I knew I was in the presence of the sacred.

The divine isn’t only transcendent, it is immanent, alive in every living thing we behold – and it blazed before my eyes.

The holiness of nature was a vital spiritual truth for our ancestors – but Descarte’s division of spirit from matter spelled the final death knell of the old religions. The earth, trees, waters and animals were no longer living embodiments of the divine, but mechanistic processes empty of soul. And it is thus that nature became separate from us, existing outside our house walls and city streets, a resource to be used for the extraction of minerals, the building of houses and cities, capital and wealth.

Today the desecration of old growth forests, the appropriation of indigenous lands and national parks for industry, the chemical poisoning of our fields and the genetic manipulation of foods, the death of bees and extinction of species continue unabated. Clearly we’ve forgotten another ancient truth – we are all one. Whatever we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.

I’ve spent much time pondering why so many of us – me included – can go on with our days as usual when we know the forests are falling all around us. Because if we truly loved nature, with all our heart and soul – would this continue to happen?

Reconnecting with nature is an important tenet of  “deep ecology”—the idea it will take more than environmental laws to achieve true sustainability. We need to re-establish our personal connection with the earth.

And so I see my new path. To awaken to the ways of the old religions and wisdom of nature, to live in harmony with the rhythms of the earth and honor the spirit of the land. It is the age-old practice of bhakti, an offering of my love, devotion and protection, to the divine embodied in nature – and all of us.

I see my work with plants, herbalism and wildcrafting as a methodology for coming into conscious alignment with the numinous cycles of growth, death and regeneration that drive all life on this planet. The ‘force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ flows through me as well. This union with the essential nature of reality – ananda, or divine bliss – gives me the spiritual backbone I need to stand strong.

In my last card reading my work with yoga was shown in a card filled with a large blazing fire and women dancing and leaping. This card I was told, was one of culmination, of joy and celebration. Then the reader drew another card showing a dark cave in a forest grove surrounded by wild animals. A large “shining skull” illuminated the scene.  But she said, your true soul work lies somewhere deep in the mysteries of nature. And she told me to get back to the woods and continue doing whatever I was doing there – and I’m listening.