In Japanese Zen Buddhism, the term "Shoshin" is known, which describes the mental attitude of a beginner.
"Shoshin" means approaching something with a beginner's mind – as if you didn't know anything about something yet.
This attitude expands our own possibilities, because it frees us from our assumptions and prejudices that we have about something.
In this way, we allow ourselves to have a direct and authentic experience with something. And that can be very enriching.
You can also practice this beginner's spirit wonderfully in nature and in the forest.
The next time you're in the forest, just try it out:
- Collect yourself for a moment and come to rest inside. Maybe you close your eyes for a moment.
- Imagine you're in a forest for the first time in your life. Maybe you come from a dry desert area and don't know Wald from your own experience.
- Get into the feeling of being a complete beginner in the forest. You don't know any of the plants or animal species in this place. You have never smelled fresh forest air in your life, have you ever seen the play of light of the sun in the canopy of leaves.
- Leave behind all the experience you may have had in your real life with the topic of forests.
- Then open your eyes and let the forest around you work its magic on you.
- Look left and right, up and down. What can you discover?
- Maybe you want to take a few steps further and look around. What is there for everyone to see? Don't name any of it, because you know it's your first time in the forest and you don't know anything about what surrounds you.
- Look around on the ground as well. What can you discover there? Take the soil in your hand, touch the plants – as if you were doing this for the first time in your life.
- Maybe you want to smell the soil or the plants? Maybe there are flowers near you whose smell you can breathe in?
- Feel how "Shoshin", the beginner's mind, intensifies and sharpens your perception. Let nature have a deep effect on you.
- If it's good for you, go back to your "old self." How did the experience change you?
Often we run on autopilot so much that we don't even notice many things around us. All too quickly we become numb and wonder why life seems to have lost its color.
With this "beginner's exercise" we can always bring this color back into life.
It is best to practice the exercise regularly to intensify the liveliness of your experiences outside in nature again and again.