Psychesphere: Nurturing and Nurtured

For this question we will have to begin with what is nurturing? What nurtures us? Why do we need it? If look around and in our lives and perhaps find that it is one of natures, fundamental, governing and watertight laws.

If a seed does not find nurturing it does not turn to tree or flower and fruit. If an egg is not nurtured, no little chirpy chick is ever going to pop out of it. If a stream is not nurtured by a guiding course of the elements, then it may never become a life pronouncing river nor fill up the ocean. If an idea is not nurtured it never becomes a reality to serve any purpose whatsoever. If a human being, no matter what age does not find nurturing environments within or around, he or she may hardly fruit into his or her potential and survive, leave alone thrive.

However, one eminent difference between nature and human beings maybe that, some animals, birds and insects can thrive without a parent after a given period of time but, human beings grow to need more and varied nurturing environments within and around them all throughout their lives and even after death (lol). This leads us to a clear understanding of how we are part of this richly diverse symbiotic tapestry of life and hence so thickly interconnected with each other in this ecosphere outside us and, what I like to term “psychesphere” within us. The oneness of life thus stands explained. We are nurtured by default. In the face of grave situations we have all encountered help and support emerge from places and people we may have least expected.

This leads us to the why? Why has nature designed this? Nurturing enables the cycle of life and interdependence is evident but when one looks deeper where the need is born we may be surprised to find something amazing.

Examining my immediate needs I see how I depend on my breath to sustain me and connect me to the outside and the unknown from where the ceaseless ebb and flow of my breath may be germinating. I depend, evidently, on a whole lot of things outside me to allow me any kind of ease in living, like my work place, the farmer, the water supplier, the family and so on.

When we ask the question “why”? Why it may be designed such then what emerges is a web of protection. It is all in order to protect me, protect us or protect something larger or valuable than I can understand.

Let me explain - this very interdependence provides us with the kind of protection any living creature or element needs. Not protection from some mythical evil force, no, but the kind of protection a parent naturally shrouds the child with. The protection offered by a farmer, maintaining a steady and familiar soil so that the roots of new life can take form and give food. The protection offered by a closed room where a writer/thinker/student/ can find pleasant concentrations of the senses and create. The type of protection a countries borders exhibit to each other in order to allow time and maturity for the people and cultures to grow until the borders mean little.

This protection enables one vital need – concentration, focus or dhyan. When something is kept in focus or when someone is allowed to concentrate it naturally gives birth to something new. It allows something original and pertinent to that time, place or person which was perhaps not available before to exist.

The need for concentration facilitates health and wholesomeness and this is the very need that we as beings thrive on. Hence one may conclude that concentration and focus nurtures us. And we may use the aid of being at "work" to execute this need.

It becomes evident that nurturing is born from the need to protect and protection is needed to allow for concentration and attention along with time for the fruit to ripen and what follows next is the consumption of the juices and celebration thereafter. Maybe not in all cases does it lead to celebration for ‘everyone’ but someone, even one living being does certainly stand to benefit. For instance, in the fundamentalists or conservatives stand to protect their way of being as the only way, not many benefit from such a ‘protection’ but he or she - the one propounding that way does benefit in its own unique way. At this point, again another of Natures evident law’s stares us in the face – that, it does not discriminate between a liberal or a fundamentalist, between right or wrong. However that’s a whole other story.

To know the stronghold of this nurturing force which is as palpable as the law of gravity lets end by asking ourselves - how many times have we felt nurtured by an unknown force/person/place/food/idea/energy/ etc. many times and especially during the most hopeless and distraught hours in our lives? Can you locate a logical reason for that to have occurred at that pertinent hour?

I cannot but ascribe this phenomenon to anything but the fact that I, you and all, living and non-living things are part of an intrinsic fabric that binds us into nurturing and being nurtured. And a vital element of the processes of nurturing includes being protected, guided, held while we mature into our true nature or what we ordinarily term as “our potential”. Nurturing and being nurtured is what we are by default. The oneness is unable to exhibit any other face but of holding us like it does the stars and galaxies and the universe as we know it with its black holes and birthing planets all in a massive harmonious effect of a concentrated nurturing unity.

I feed you - dear body

the music you heed

and you give me back a radiant dance.

I feed you – dear mind

the thoughts you seek

and you take me across the stars.

I feed you – dear heart

the warmth you yearn

and you embrace me with a million arms.

I feed you – dear soul

the stillness in surrender

and I stand fed, taken care of and

tucked into the safe quilts of peace forever…

I am home.

- (c) deepali parmar

aug 2016