Why has the mystic and the natural world been intertwined with symbolic meaning and the path of awakening to a different way of perceiving life since the beginning of human experience? From the 1st of April 2020, Boyd Varty from Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa realizes a life long dream as he goes into the wilderness alone for 40 days and 40 nights to try and answer that question from inside that experience. - Episode 37: Day 35 "Enchantment" I think of this experience as the slow removal as a shell. As the days went by I felt more myself. I felt the creativity coming back in, co-creating the story with nature. My energy levels return to new highs. My relationship with beauty was revived. I feel like so much of what I was trying to do before was trying to tune out, now I am trying to tune back in. I felt I was absorbing tons of information but my minds own capacity for dynamic movement was slowing. It’s like a fasted state, you know you are much much leaner. Things I used to eat I can no longer touch. When I eat something that I shouldn’t I get an instant no. After a long run I will crave exactly the kind of salt I need. I feel that with my mind. I relish the stillness and the silence now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m watching myself and sometimes I get into bursts of frustration and rage. In some way what I’m learning is that mystics went to nature as a set of bars. In nature you reset the bars of harmony, stillness and present. It shows you where you were, it shows you where you could be. It plants a flag. Stillness produces right action. Solitude teaches you about connection. Simplicity gives you more. Everything you want with the world is inward. How often do you meet someone who is enchanted with life? Its pretty rare isn’t it. Out here I feel like I’m touching that at moments. Utter enchantment. The bateleur is a long standing totem of my family. The spirit of guidance. The ways we naturally make meaning when we stand close to nature sustains us. Our relationship with life itself comes to life. That’s enchanting. I climbed high onto a single large boulder on a hillside and watched the land below me. My mind was empty of thoughts and watched with empty perception. All I could do was take it all in. I was actually there. That’s what it takes to be enchanted…to actually be there. Eckhart Tolle says that there are 3 levels of enlightenment. 1. Acceptance 2. Enthusiasm 3. And I forgot the third one I spent five weeks thinking about how long it was to be alone and now I have five days left wishing it was longer. Here is some homework, free write for at least a page on the following. Where do I see beauty? Where in life am I enchanted? What makes me feel the most alive? When was the last time I was totally on track? Who really sees me? What’s my mission? What do I complain about? Who do I complain about? What am I doing out of a sense of duty? If you bring back to life enchantment in yourself you can awaken it within other people in your community. Enchantment is a type of activism.