Mindfulness of Things Not There
All forests are one…They are all echoes of the first forest that gave birth to Mystery when the world began...There were two forests for every one you entered. There was the one you walked in, the physical echo, and then there was the one that was connected to all the other forests with no consideration of distance, or time. The forest primeval, remembered through the collective memory of every tree…Legend and myth, all tangled in an alphabet of trees, remembered, not always with understanding, but with wonder, with awe.
Charles de Lint
A method
Breathing and positioned as you wish. Come into contemplation - of an object, place, sky, mountain or so forth - and consider its sensory qualities: how it feels to touch, how it rests on the earth, what sounds it evokes, naming its colours, if it is warm or cool, the patterns of its motion.
Slowly become unfocused and mindful of things unseen.
See and sense these things as fully as you see and sense a stone you hold in your palm.
Begin to see the processes by which it was formed - the roaring of ancient seas to sculpt the mountains, the longdistance where the clouds rose up from the water and the places they will drift apart again, the wood that was once forest and how centuries before a boy put this seed in earth and he is dead now, and his children and his childrens children.
Become aware of great age, great size and great distance - that the mountain is no mere picture but an uncounted weight of stone, that from where you stand all roads lead to the Sea, that others stood here before and will after.
Begin to see the way it transforms towards the Stellar - see through the sky towards the stars towards infinity, see through the tree-bark of water and wood to the rich strangeness of deep earth, up the waterways towards its source and then within to the mysteries of hills.
Here is a place that is not a place, here is a time that is not a time - you are already on the threshold of farseeing. Let your mind travel across the nearby landscapes that you know, rippling out from where you stand as far as the walks that you know - and then beyond, into those you do not.
Look at it long enough that it becomes bizarre, as if seeing for the first time, the absurdity and wonder of things - like a child might, or a person from another world - long enough that it becomes frightening.
How mighty are the things of the world, and that which is beyond and behind it! This is what it is to worship: to fully see in awe and terror, and name and know it as God.