Flipping Over

by Michael Stein-Ross

I learned the word "non-acquisitive" today as I read Maria Popova’s post “Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World.” She quotes Snyder’s Turtle Island:

     The nub of the problem now is how to flip over, as in jiu-jitsu, the magnificent growth-energy of modern civilization, into a non-acquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature…

Made me wonder. What if we added a bit of curiosity to make the phrase “inquisitive non-acquisitive?" Besides being fun to say aloud, this could be an interesting way to describe forest bathing. 

As a guide, I often invite people to open not just their mind, but their whole self, to a sense of curiosity, of wonderment. I reckon curiosity is what leads to wonderment, as much as entering the forest with an intention of curiosity sets a nurse log beneath our senses, allowing wonderment to take root. It is an inquisitive nature that we nurture in forest bathing.

I also often describe forest bathing as a non-extractive process. We do not enter the forest from outside the forest to harvest, mine, or otherwise extract anything we ourselves didn't first put there. Instead, with an intention of reciprocity, we allow the balancing of our relationship with the forest, so eventually we can no longer tell who was the last to either give or take. When the boundary between giving and taking is blurred, there is no acquiring, no accumulation.

Forest bathing, then, is inquisitive as well as non-acquisitive -- an approach, I would think, to Synder's “search for deeper knowledge of self and nature.” And perhaps one that will help flip over some things that could use flipping. 

Invitation

Slowly wander among the forest beings.
​Find ways to flip over. Allow yourself to both flip and be flipped.