Villagers in AFrica are interested not in accumulation but in a sense of fullness. Abundance means a sense of fullness, which cannot be measured by the yardstick of the material goods we possess or the amount of money in a bank account. Abundance, in that sense of fullness, has a power that takes us way from worry. It is the kind of feeling you get when you are in communion with the natural, in communion with the source. There is some sense in which the work,, or the love of work, is the love of this kind of abundance. It is the kind of fullness you get by being with other people. Most work done in the village is done collectively. The purpose is not so much the desire to get the job done but to raise enough energy for people to feel nourished by what they do. The nourishment does not come AFTER the job, it comes BEFORE the job and DURING the job. The nation that you should do something so that you get paid so that then you can nourish yourself disappears You are nourished first, and then the work flows out of your fullness.
~ from THE HEALING WISDOM OF AFRICA by Malidoma Some with thanks to Fredi Brown
A walk in nature can help bring about one of the most essential acts a human being can perform: the stilling of the mind. For when the cacophony of disturbances, reactions, and self-talk subsides, like a windswept sea suddenly finding calm, the lens of our lives becomes a still, pure crystalline window for the cosmos to experience itself through... A walk in the natural world, with conscious mindfulness, can help bathe the senses in the implicate ordering of existence. Such a direct and immediate reminder does much to help steer us back to the center of ourselves.