A teacher in the Southwest once asked the children in his class to draw a picture of themselves. He recalled, “The American children completely covered the paper with a drawing of their body, but my Navajo students drew themselves differently. They made their bodies much smaller and included the nearby mountains, canyon walls, and dry desert washes. To the Navajo, the environment is as much a part of who they are as are their own arms and legs.”

The understanding that we are a part of something larger than ourselves is Nature’s greatest gift. With it, our sense of identity expands and, by extension, so does our compassion for all things.

Everything in nature expresses the Divine Consciousness. Master Mahasaya, a saintly disciple of Ramakrishna, told a young Paramhansa Yogananda, “Let us sit [by the lake]. Here its placidity reminds us of the vast calmness of God.” It is often through nature that people first feel the universal presence of Spirit. Walter Dudley Grant tells of a boy who was “taken by his father on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. They hired a guide, left the beaten trails and spent a week in the heart of the woods. The boy was greatly impressed by the ability of the guide to see all sorts of things invisible to the ordinary eye. One day, after the guide had been pointing out some of the hidden secrets of nature, the lad asked with an awed voice, ‘Mister, can you see God?’ The old man replied, ‘My boy, when I am out in the woods it’s getting so I can hardly see anything else.’”

Those who have the eyes to see perceive goodness everywhere—in themselves and in all things. I have developed the Sharing Nature activities to help adults and children experience more harmony, love, stillness, and intuitive understanding in their lives. One educator, who hikes every summer the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail, said that after practicing one nature meditation for four minutes, he was able to experience a state of heightened awareness that usually took him a month in the wilderness to feel.

A Sense of Joy Should Permeate the Experience

Everyone wants happiness; and happiness and joy are the result of self-forgetfulness. The less self-involved or preoccupied a person is, the greater is his awareness of life and his sense of joyful kinship with it. By focusing people’s attention on nature in engaging and absorbing ways, the Sharing Nature activities are effective tools for helping others expand their sense of self.

Imbuing every natural encounter with a sense of joy magnetically draws both young and old wholeheartedly into an experience. The joy I am speaking of has two levels: the first, the exuberance and gaiety that come through play and laughter; the second, the deeper joy that comes from feeling serene and expansive.

Many people—and especially some children—are too restless to relate to subtle nature experiences. However, joyful, absorbing play can help everyone forget about themselves by focusing and increasing their energy level; making them more alert and enthusiastic. Once you have people’s willing participation, they relate more easily to the more reflective activities. 

Explaining things to people is not nearly as effective as having them put out the kind of energy that will bring them onto the same wavelength of what you are talking about. Artfully using playful experiences as needed, then offering calming and centering nature experiences, and finally, inspirational ones, allow you to work with people where they are, and to gently invite them to more profound experiences of nature, and themselves.

Nature Activities for Increasing Awareness

Some of the Sharing Nature activities are playful and experiential and help people creatively understand the processes and laws of nature. Other activities like Making a Sound Map, challenge players to concentrate on one of their physical senses. In doing so, they become more calm, observant and receptive to their surroundings. Activities like Meet a Tree and Interview with Nature increase players’ empathy for other living beings.

In Meet a Tree, you lead your blindfolded partner to a tree (free of poison oak, ants, etc.) and let him discover its leaves, branches, bark and other interesting features. Then you bring your partner back, take off his blindfold, and see if he can find his tree. In Interview with Nature, you look for a special rock, plant, or animal that has an interesting story to tell. You ask it questions like, “What events have you seen in your life? What is it like to live here? Is there something you would like to tell me?” People sometimes feel a little awkward at first talking to something as if it were alive. But very quickly they come to appreciate the fact that their rock or tree has a precious life of its own.   

The Camera Game’s forte is heightening people’s perception. This activity is played with two people: one is the photographer, the other the camera. When the “photographer” taps the shoulder of the “camera” twice, the camera-person opens his eyes on the scene before him. Then after three to five seconds, the photographer taps the “camera’s” shoulder once to close the camera’s eyes. Because the camera-person looks for only a few seconds—before his mind begins to daydream—the impact of his “picture” is quite powerful. Players of the Camera Game have told me that they’ve retained a vivid memory of their pictures for five, even eight years afterwards. The Camera Game helps children and adults experience what it is like to truly see. This activity also gives the “photographer” the incentive to look for and share beauty with another person.  

Other activities, like Expanding Circles, help us consciously affirm and intuitively feel our oneness with Life. For this nature meditation, find a place with a panoramic view and an interesting foreground. Ideally, choose a location where there is water or at least a light breeze, which will create a sense of movement in your area. 

Sit down, close your eyes, and become aware of your own body. Then open your eyes and extend your awareness beyond your body just a few feet to include the nearby grasses, rocks, and insects. Feel yourself moving and becoming alive in them. Try to feel that you are in everything you see, as much as you are in your own body. Continue to extend your visual awareness gradually in stages until it finally reaches the distant ridges and vast blue sky. Now… let your awareness flow freely to whatever interests it… Feel yourself in the sky… trees… and grasses waving.

One woman said that as she did the Expanding Circles exercise in the Sierra Nevada mountains, she felt as if she was composing a picture, then suddenly, she felt herself become the picture—the nearby peak, its pine trees, and the brilliant blue sky.

The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.

True caring for the environment comes, as Lao Tsu said, "when you love the world as your own self." In Western culture, especially, people often confuse knowledge with wisdom, and think that if we learn enough, then we'll care enough. But knowing what we ought to do, and doing it are two different things. Tanaka Shozo, the pioneering Japanese conservationist, said, "The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart." This is because love is the greatest stimulant to the will.

While science can explain nature to us, it is only our intuition, or calm feeling, that can perceive it. Intuition has been described as the knowledge of the soul because through it, we experience our unity and harmony with the totality of life. The contents of the human soul contain the whole world. As we begin to feel ourselves as we truly are—unified with all creation, and as children of the Creator—we reclaim our birthright. Only then will we truly heal ourselves and live in harmony on this Earth. The Sharing Nature activities—in their humble way—are invaluable aids for expanding our self-identity and learning Nature’s most precious gift—that we are a part of something much greater than ourselves.

Joseph Bharat Cornell is one of the most highly regarded nature educators in the world today. Being with him in nature is a memorable event because of his obvious joy being in nature and his love for the Earth. In the late 1970s, Cornell's book introduced ``nature games" in which nature is the teacher games that inform, inspire, and are just plain fun. Almost two decades later, with about 500,000 copies of Sharing Nature with Children sold in 15 languages, and many thousands of his other books, "Sharing Nature" has become not just a book, but a worldwide approach to nature education.

Cornell says, "I wrote my first book, Sharing Nature with Children because I passionately wanted others to know about these wonderful games, and this exciting way of teaching. Since the book's publication, it's been a joy to see thousands of people embrace its activities and philosophy with enthusiasm equal to mine."

Why such universal appeal? "I believe it's because in addition to teaching ecology creatively," Cornell says, "these games help people experience a profound sense of joy, serenity, and belonging to the natural world. Nature activities help people to tune into something very deep inside themselves. The games provide a wonderful glimpse into another way of being."

Cornell is the founder of Sharing Nature, a worldwide movement that uses creative nature activities to give people joyful and inspiring experiences of nature. His Sharing Nature Book Series has been published in twenty languages. For over thirty years Joseph has been a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and a student of Swami Kriyananda. Joseph serves in the Ananda Communities as a minister and meditation teacher.

See the works of Joseph Cornell