Meditations with Nature: Africa, 7 Guided Meditations

These meditations are a gift to people all around the world, a vivid opportunity to inhabit, via sound, places of deep nature, to connect with the calming, soothing balm of the natural African world.

I recommend that you listen to these meditations on headphones, so that you hear the full spectrum of what Africa offers you. It is, after all, a place of sound: whenever I have returned to Africa from a Western country I am greatly relieved to be back in the soundscape of voices in multiple languages, birdsong and animal communications, the complex whispering of grasslands and trees, and music, music, everywhere!

Most of our global population lives in urban areas, and I know that many people long to be in nature, love to be in nature. I'm sharing these meditations with you to help you cut through the cacophony of modern life, and to soften the hard edges that a technological life can bring. I find a meditation practice essential to create space for inner life to breathe and flourish.

These meditations exist to bring nature to you, as you live your life wherever you are on the planet. They exist to remind you of the infinite complexity and diversity of nature, and our place within it. Of our responsibility to defend, protect and love nature, as the developers and bulldozers roll relentlessly forward. Let us make sure that nature exists for future generations as a tangible, substantial reality, and not just memory or a mythic reference.

I am so happy to bring you to my corner of the world, this spectacular Motlatse/Blyde River Canyon, the third largest in the world, where gigantic mountains with deep red features dwarf us humans; where riotous baboons remind us that our laws and desire to control every aspect of life hold no sway with them; where the birds weave and float song all day long, ecstatic and exhilarating in the mystery of life that they are chiming into, drawing on, and broadcasting.

My hope for you in participating in these meditations is that you be filled with delight, that your heart be soothed and your purpose, as an instrument of witness and creativity in the world, be honed, and refined, and loved in the same way that you, and we, are loved and being honed and refined in these wonderful, terrible, bracing times.

Thanks to Becky Harmon for editing and her loving, encouraging holding, Brendan Jury for mastering the collection, Kyla Davies for her exceptional design and Donalea Patman for her support and potent wildlife activism.

Wishing you peace, creativity, wildness and deep connection,

Stella Horgan Motlatse Canyon, 12th March, 2020 www.stellahorganconsulting.com