If dogs were my first teachers of kinship, the rainforest was my initiation into something far larger.

We awoke before dawn to the sound of birds I had never heard before—notes that seemed less like “song” and more like conversation. The air was thick, humid, alive. My fellow travelers from the North— still a bit jet-lagged, but also curious, slightly unsure—gathered near the Amazon River with members of the Sapara community who had graciously welcomed us into their village.

The ceremony was simple.

Sacred tobacco. Chanting. Leaves brushed gently across our bodies. Murmured words in a language older than my own. The smell of earth and river. The towering trees encircling us like quiet elders.

On one level, it was unadorned. No spectacle. No drama.

On another level, it blew my mind.

I did not merely “appreciate nature” that morning. I experienced being one with it. And especially with the trees.

Not in a metaphorical way. Not in a poetic way. In a felt, embodied way that bypassed analysis. It was as if some subtle membrane between “me” and “them” dissolved. The massive trunks around me no longer felt like background scenery. They felt like presences—vast, patient, ancient participants in a shared field of being.

It wasn’t that I believed the trees were alive. I experienced aliveness as a shared current. That’s a different territory altogether.

Perception as Participation

Looking back, I realize that moment marked a shift. Before Ecuador, I loved trees. I admired them. I had even planted a few. I cared about forests around me where I live in the North Carolina mountains. After Ecuador, something changed in how I related to my surroundings. It was no longer “I am here, observing nature.” It was “I am inside a living community.”

The crisis of meaning so many of us sense today is often framed as a loss of faith. But I’m increasingly convinced it is something deeper: a loss of relationship with thew living world of which we are an inextricable participant—the web of life.

In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram writes:

“For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people but with other animals, plants, and natural objects… How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world?”

That word—reciprocity—landed hard. In that rainforest clearing, I did not feel like an observer of trees. I felt like a participant in a reciprocal exchange of breath, presence, and awareness.

This is not doctrine. I am not claiming a cosmology. I am sharing a lived moment that altered me. Interconnectedness ceased being an abstract concept. It became sacred and cellular.

From Experience to Vow

Out of that experience grew something that now forms an essential part of my One Cause Morning Vow:

We are here to create life, not destroy it.We of Earth—of Gaia, of Pachamama—may be the only place in the vastness of the universe where the miracle and experiment of life is unfolding.To support that miracle through regeneration is, for me, a sacred act.

When I say those words each morning, I am not speaking in metaphor. I am remembering a forest that felt like family.

The Four Great Truths shifted from philosophy to practice.

Interconnectedness was no longer an idea. It was a felt reality.

Sufficiency revealed itself in the forest’s quiet wisdom. Nothing in that rainforest seemed to operate on “more-more-more.” Growth was abundant, yes—but cyclical, balanced, regenerative. Leaves fell. Soil formed. Life fed life without hoarding.

Reciprocity became visible in every layer of that ecosystem. Exchange, not extraction. Giving and receiving as the rhythm of survival.

I am still learning this sacred rhythm and how to be an active steward of it all.

Back home in my garage, I plant seeds in small hydroponic containers and in small recycled containers designed to bring back food from the restaurant. I watch tender shoots push upward toward the light. I harvest greens and enjoy them in my salads. Even there—in that modest act of tending—I feel a whisper of the forest’s lesson: life thrives through relationship.

Meaning Recovered Through Relationship

If our crisis is one of meaning, perhaps it is not because we lack belief. Perhaps it is because we lack participation. The forest did not give me answers to geopolitical instability or climate complexity. It gave me orientation.

It reminded me that I am not outside the web of life. I am a thread within it. And threads have responsibility—not because they are commanded to, but because they belong. Meaning, I am discovering, does not come primarily from ideology. It comes from intimacy.

A Simple Practice

If you’re curious to explore this without flying to Ecuador, try something small.

For one week, choose a tree near your home. Visit it daily for two minutes. Stand beside it. Notice the light at different times of day. Notice the mood of the air. Notice what shifts in your own thoughts and breath. Imagine, gently, that this tree is a distant cousin rather than a decorative object.

Not as superstition. As experiment. Treat the tree like a beloved relative, not scenery.

See what happens. I didn’t leave the rainforest with a new religion. I left with a new way of listening. And then I discovered: this way of knowing isn’t new. It’s ancient.

And it has a name…which we will explore in our part three of this series.

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