Nature as Teacher: the song of the wood thrush
- Anne White
- 6 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Silence is a moment of the greatest energy.
Jean de Salzmann
The wood thrush is a solitary bird, unremarkable in its sparrow-like size and its subtle brown and white markings. You wouldn’t pick it out in a crowd. In the spring, guided by an internal compass and solar, stellar, and environmental clues, it migrates 1,400 miles, seeking for its summer territory the deciduous cathedrals of the eastern United States: deep woods of sheltering canopy, dense, perch- and nest-worthy understory, and forest floor rich in shrub fruit and invertebrates that breed in leaf litter. In late August, the thrush will migrate south, crossing the Gulf of Mexico in one night of flight to winter in Central America. He will be flying into the unknown.
Now it's April. A wood thrush has chosen our woods. The male’s clear, three-part song—chirp/chirp—flute trill—tch/tch/tch/tch—brings my head up. I have waited for his return. More an expression of grace than a demand, his song is ethereal and sets him apart from other songbirds. As I listen, I lose the sense of time and come into the present.
Thoreau wrote:
“The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. …It is the only bird whose note affects me like music.” 1
He is aware of levels. His varied songs map the three dimensions of his space. The low chirp-chirp: “I inhabit this space and thirty feet below me to the ground.” Food. Then the high, piping variable flute trill: “And upward into vertical space fifty feet above me into the canopy.” Light. Then the roiling tch-tch-tch-tch sweeps around, clearing a full 360 degrees of space. Home.
In that space, he suggests a quiet spaciousness of less noise, more listening, perhaps the mystery of an open-ended search.
He is aware of space. While his song is magical, it is the silence between his songs that interests me now. In that space, he suggests a quiet spaciousness of less noise, more listening, and the mystery of an open-ended search.
Thoreau again:
“He launches forth one strain with all his heart and life and soul, of pure and unmatchable melody, and then he pauses and gives the hearer and himself time to digest this, and then another and another at suitable intervals.” 2
Nature as teacher: Nature puts space between things
In one memorable moment decades ago, I realized I could not slip a piece of paper between one activity and the next, one thought and the next, one emotion and the next. Fed up with the drivenness that had worn me out, I began to answer a call to something else. I took steps. One was to hang in plain sight from a kitchen cabinet a small Post-It note:
Do one thing at a time.
Do it slowly and deliberately.
Do it completely.
Do less.
Put space between things.
Each sentence piqued my curiosity, but the last directive resonated. It’s rather Zen—yes, suggesting the intervals between the wood thrush’s song and the possibility of silent intervals in my own busy life, like mini-retreat. Every authentic spiritual teaching speaks of uncluttered spaciousness and the need for stillness.
... we know that when saturated with distractions and bombarded with noise, putting a space between things can slow us to a more natural pace, ground us, open us to awareness ...
We can reasonably infer that the human brain evolved in quiet, natural settings—deep woods, broad savannas, rich river deltas—punctuated by intermittent natural sounds. Birds chirping, water, flowing over rocks, leaves rustling in thw wind. On a cellular level, we know that when saturated with distractions and bombarded with noise, putting a space between things can slow us to a more natural pace, ground us, provide time to digest what we are experiencing, birth our individual creativity, and open us to awareness of what is below, above, and around us. Yet here we are—forgetful in the constant noise of urban life, which surely must disrupt this evolutionary harmony, these ancient rhythms, with sensory overload and cognitive fatigue.3
We know this. Why do we still resist ensuring for ourselves essential stillness? Where is our reverence for both outer and inner silence? If we thirst for meaning, discernment, balance, and peace, why do we not act on what we know: that silence is not only the medium for the receiving of these gifts, but also the first casualty of busyness?
This from Mme. de Salzmann:
“Sometimes there is a stop between two thoughts, and for a moment I sense the space expand beyond all limits. It is only within this space, a vast space which ordinary ‘I’ cannot reach, that the thinking becomes silent. Then I no longer seek an answer and, in giving my entire attention, I enter the unknown. … We need to discover the nature of silence, when thought, feeling, and body are all silent.” 4
The cushion, preparation for a work in life
Birthing this still space first on the cushion is a beginning. Sitting is a practice in receptivity, in opening and listening. This uncovered still point of the turning world can then become the felt echo I take away from my morning meditation—that essential spiritual craft—which, like prayer, is the “falling back of attention into its source,” a resting in quiet awareness. 5
... precious moments of silence not available to the driven mind arise naturally as attention becomes more free and attracted attention abandons the objects that have taken it.
I practice putting space between things—between random thoughts, snippets of my story, emotions that attach, speculation and conjecture, plans for the day—and precious moments of silence not available to the driven mind arise naturally as directed attention becomes more free and attracted attention abandons the objects that have taken it.
Thought taken by associations loosens its grip, tensions in the body relax, and sensation arises naturally, grounding the body. That cyclic of thought-emotion-tension-thought-emotion-tension cools. The unskilled parts of ego—those parts that know all the answers—lose their grip. Wish returns. Whim dissolves. Awareness arises. The space within—unknown and untraveled—opens. Now I can listen. Now I can receive.
I need this practice on the cushion each morning so that I can manage noise and distraction during the day. So that I can remember to put a quiet space between things. As between cells, leaves, hurricanes, planets, galaxies. Nature is my teacher.
The greatest energy
Again, Mme. de Salzmann:
“I have a preconceived idea that a state of silence, of peace, is deprived of energy and of life, a state when there is a stop, the suspension of everything that generally moves me. In fact, silence is a moment of the greatest energy, a state so intense that everything else seems quiet.” 6
The word “energy” can be explained by scientists who study the natural bodies that emit it and those that absorb it, the beings that use it and the instruments that record it, and the transformations that occur as it changes from one mechanical or chemical state to another, conserving every atom.
Shall we, for the moment, allow the metaphor and acknowledge the movement of “energy” that descends from a Higher Source into the silent space between things and, having been digested by an attentive Self, transforms our state and ascends again to replenish, losing nothing.
Spiritual teachers use the word “energy” metaphorically to describe not what can be defined and measured, but rather the movement of spirit, the breath, prana, chi, mana, kundalini, and other emanations that moves among planes of being in vast cosmologies, a vibrant, “felt” presence that flows in the silence. Shall we, for the moment, allow the metaphor and acknowledge the movement of “energy” that descends from a Higher Source into the silent space between things and, having been digested by an attentive Self, transforms our state and ascends again to replenish.
The gifts of spaciousness
Silent spaciousness provides practical gifts. I admit to being more practical than mystical. I am interested in the practical gifts this “greatest energy” that silence can work within the dynamic inner space of Self: heightened awareness, introspection and imagination, emotional resilience and restorative healing, and improved interpersonal relationships. And that special gift of surprise, the Eureka! moment.
Too, there are gifts of the Spirit. A growing intelligence of mind. A deepening discernment. A growing capacity to act from compassion. A call to service.
And, of great importance, the happy entrainment of the varying frequencies at work in the centers—the thinking, the body, and the feeling at the fulcrum of the heart—without which I could receive nothing. (Clearly, when my centers are at odds with each other, their interconnections interrupted, I receive nothing but static.) Retreating often into Nature restores to me these gifts, offering the rhythmic backdrop and harmonious environment that evolved in our ancestors.
What payment is required of me?
Putting space between things and discovering inner silence in a moment is not automatic. What work, what payment, is required of me to “unclutter my instrument”? In college physics, I learned that “work” is defined as the energy transferred—that is, the force needed—to move an object over a certain distance. Usually against some resistance. In physics lab, I pushed objects up inclined planes, measured the forces at work, and did the math. Work measured in joules.
From Gurdjieff:
“Hard work is an investment of energy with a good return. Conscious use of energy is a paying investment; automatic use is a wasteful expenditure.” 7
The Gurdjieff Work may be seen as the work—the payment—required to bring attention to an endeavour, the aim being awareness, consciousness, being. We learn that this attention arises not from the head but from the fine alignment of “energies” powering the head, the body, and the heart. It takes effort to pay attention, to align these energies. It’s work with ever-present resistance. Help is nearby; help is just Above us, and generous.
This love longs to be of service—to our higher selves, to others, and to the community, the planet, and the cosmos.
In the silence spaces in between—which is where I learn to invest my work—I experience the emptying of thought, belief, and opinion, that “unknowing” that makes receiving possible and, with it, the descending outpouring of universal love, itself “energy”. This love longs to be of service—to our higher selves, to others, and to the community, the planet, and the cosmos.
To serve the Whole
Again, Gurdjieff:
“I serve so that energy can be transmitted to other forms of beings, to other places, to other levels unknown to me.” 8
Other living beings—the brown wood thrush among them—live in the present, aligning themselves with the movements of invisible influences and forces, receiving and transforming a life energy without getting in their own way, serving the Whole. We, too, might become aware of this great mystery: transformation from the ordinary to the conscious occurs only in silent spaciousness. In those moments in between, we turn our attention (from the Latin root “to stretch”) inward and upward. And we listen.
What is the highest and best work I can do each day? Perhaps it is to ensure that I am open to receive. For this, I need to pause, to be still. Perhaps a Work on oneself is, in part, the work to provide for oneself this essential stillness, to discern what is needed and what is noisy detritus. Nature is the teacher. Seeking silence—even in the small moment when I put a space between things—is an act of intention, courage, and hope. It is an act of real self-love.
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1 Thoreau, Henry David. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, March 5-November 30, 1853. Bradford Torrey, Ed. Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1906, 255.
2 Thoreau, 292.
3 Editors, Science Today. “The Science of Silence: How Science Changes the Brain.” Science and Technology, August 23, 2025.
4 de Salzmann, Jeanne. Reality of Being. Shambhala: Boston & New York, 2010, 166.
5 This idea of resting in awareness, recently encountered in Rupert Spira’s The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter (Sahaja Publications: Oxford, England, 2017, 61), is repeated in the writings of Ouspensky (as self-remembering), of Ramana Maharshi (as sinking into the heart of awareness), of Sri Nissargadatta (as focusing on the experience of “I am”), of St. Paul (in Thessalonians 5:17, to “Pray without ceasing”), in the Gurdjieff teaching, and in the teachings of others.
6 de Salzmann, 165.
7 Gurdjieff, G. I. Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff as Recollected by His Pupils. E.P. Dutton: New York, 1973, 114.
8 Gurdjieff.