Tosia H Zraikat

Forests and Water

 

 

(Photo: Top of Purlingbrook Falls, Springbrook, by Entoni Wright)

 

I just learned the today - 21 March 2022 in the northern hemisphere - is the International Day of Forests. The theme this year: " 'Forests and sustainable production and consumption', to warn that forest renewal and sustainable management helps fight climate change and crises that occur due to the loss of biodiversity." (from total-croatia-news.com).

 

Forests are vital to the quality, abundance and life-giving properties of Water. They are necessary to each other.

 

"The Upholder of the Cycles which supports the whole of Life, is WATER. In every drop of water dwells the Godhead, whom we all serve; there also dwells Life, the Soul of the 'First' substance - "Water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in which it circulates."

 

"The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed."

 

"More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized powerstation is presently able to produce."

 

"Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests."

 

(Water expert Viktor Schoenberger)

 

(Photo:  from total-croatio-news.com).

 

 

"...Water has the ability to transfer information, once it has obtained it, to other systems such as living organisms."

 

"All life processes are directly or indirectly connected with water, therefore it entitles water to have a very high priority and positioning in the environmental situation."

 

(German physicist Dr. Wolfgang Ludwig).

 

In Croatia, by the way, "the Hrvatske Šume state-owned forest management company notes that there is no fear of forest loss in Croatia because the country manages its forests and forest land in a sustainable way, in line with 10-year plans" (total-croatia-news.com). Sadly, very few countries can say that.

 

That helps explain why their water system is one of the cleanest and purest I have ever seen, drunk or swam in.

 

 

(Photo: One of the seven (actually more) lakes and many waterfalls in Plitvice, Croatia, by By Natasha Zraikat).

 

 

Being Present in the World

It is taught that we are in the world, but not of it.

 

If 'not of it' means that we are not or should not allow ourselves to be dominated by it, that we should not mistake the dream of this reality for Reality itself, then I might say, yes. Maybe.

 

Yet we are here, for whatever mysterious reasons, here we are, souls entwined in bodies through which we perceive and experience this reality, visible and invisible ... not to dominate or be dominated by it, to become its masters or its slaves, but simply and as fully as we can, to Be ....here...now ... part of this world, built from the elements of nature, affecting and being affected by it.

 

 

 

I - the part of me that touches, sees, hears, smells, thinks, feels - I am as much of this world as are the birds that watch us from the treetops or the clouds, as the fish at home in the deep sea, as the tree roots and mycelium and creatures that run beneath my feet. On many levels, I participate in their reality and they in mine, for we are intimately, deeply connected.

 

We are, in the most fundamental of meanings, related. ... and "the body is my very means of entering into relationship with all things."*

 

 

So let us rejoice in our bodies. Let us acknowledge their innate animal ability to attune perfectly, deeply to the life of this world, to nature, to our environments. Let us be - while we can - fully human.

 

(* from The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram)