This year I’ve been teaching a class at Ananda’s Living Wisdom Highshool entitled, “Sharing Nature Leadership Training.” The Sharing Nature with Children book series was written by Ananda Village member Joseph (Bharat) Cornell and is used in virtually every part of the world. Joseph wrote the Sharing Nature activities to give inspiring nature experiences and to bring participants (both young and old) to a place of stillness within themselves. For as Henry David Thoreau said, “one cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.”

The most challenging and ultimately most rewarding part of working with these students is learning how to work with their energy and enthusiasm, or lack thereof. No matter how well prepared I am going into a class, I almost always have to tweak or sometimes even completely let go of my personal goals and work with their level of energy at the moment.

To help in this process I use a technique developed by Joseph Cornell called Flow Learning.™ Flow Learning is a technique of working with energy to calm the mind so learning can take place much more effectively and peace be felt much more deeply. It has four stages:

1. Awaken Enthusiasm,
2.Focus Attention,
3. Experience Directly
4. Share Inspiration.

Let me demonstrate the process of Flow Learning in pictures…

1. Flow Learning first starts with a lively activity to awaken their energy and enthusiasm by having fun. In this activity, “Animals! Animals!” the girls act out a Dragon Fly.

2. Next you take that newly awakened energy and bring it to a calm focus. In this activity, “Duplication,” students are given 15 seconds to memorize natural objects before they are covered up. They then go and search for those objects.

3. Now that their energy is focused and their mind is calm, it is easier for them to experience nature deeply. Here Mark is practicing “Still Hunting” in a tree!

4. Finally the students gather to share their experiences. Sharing helps to extract meaning more immediately from an experience.

So far the boys and girls have had a wonderful time working with and teaching Sharing Nature activities. They’ve taught to mostly all of the younger students at Living Wisdom School and the girls recently got back from their trip to Hawaii where they taught a class of 7th graders. In May we will be Traveling to Ashland, Portland and Seattle to do a series of workshops and next year we will be taking Sharing Nature into the schools in Nevada County. Maybe you’d like us to lead your family or group in Sharing Nature activities? You’ll be sure to have a joyful time!

My inspiration in writing this was Swami Kriyananda’s new book on renunciation, A Renunciate Order for the New Age. Also my own desire to be a monk… but also to be married.

The old cloistered form of monasticism says you need to renounce and “get away from the world” to find God. One might say that monastics living a reclusive life are selfish in the sense they are not being a service to society. Others might say they are doing more for society since they are trying to live in accordance with the Divine, and that their prayers are doing more than social works could ever do.

On the opposite side of the spectrum you have the worldly person trying to live his life, primarily driven by what he or she can do to find happiness: good job, family, career, etc. But as we see, most worldly people aren’t truly happy in comparison to the saints who are immersed in the consciousness of God.

Now let’s say you have a non-monastic person who is religious in the sense that they attend Mass every Sunday, pray ever day, and do their best to live a God-Centered life. While this way of life is indeed admirable, unfortunately  the “idols” of the world are able to pull us into delusion much too easily.

As Yogananda said, “environment is stronger than will power.” Thus, wouldn’t the practical solution be to bring both environments together, the monastic and non-monastic lives? At Ananda, instead of trying to run away from the delusions of the world to find God, we try to see God in every life experience.

And most importantly, as Yogananda advised, we try to make our hearts our “hermitage,” so that wherever we go, there is our church, there is our God. At Ananda we have cloistered our hearts and have tried to bring that light into our service to society. As St. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel, use words only if you must.”

From my own experience I have found it truly is much easier to live in the presence of God where everyone is trying to do the same.

I came to Ananda with a deep desire for God and to share his joy with everyone, a desire that “typical” life did not fulfill for me. Being here a year and a half I am able to see how Ananda’s model of living can’t help but spread in time throughout society.

While things here aren’t perfect, there is an underlying spirit in the people, an underlying attitude of cooperation, harmony and peace, that is saturated all over the land. It is born not of pretense, but rather of the deeper inner joy found in the stillness of meditation, and in serving everyone as images of the Divine.

As I walk the forests and meadows, and see the houses and people that live here, I can’t help but imagining God speaking through every part of this community, every person, tree and building, this holy phrase: “Be still and know that I am God.”