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I’ve heard it said that we humans evolved to be the brains and directors of
creation, the Spocks and Kirks of a terrestrial space ship. Nonsense! Our
original purpose, if indeed we have one, is to live in order to feel-- and to
feel in order to praise and celebrate that life.
We “feel” the world trough the complex symbiosis of emotion and instinct we
call the heart, through the “five senses,” and those unmeasured faculties like
intuition and precognition that scientists have lumped together as the “sixth
sense.” While one can benefit by learning the “facts” about any chosen
bioregion or terrain, we can never really know a place by reading a book on the
subject, or by thinking about it. We only come to know it like a baby, humbly
and appreciatively touching and tasting the world we’re a physical, integral
part of-- launched bodily into the experience/knowledge of place: the eyes
seeing every nuance of undressed life, sucking its hitchhiking molecules up
through the passages of the anxious nose. Reading the vibrations in the air as
they play across the taut tissues of our eardrums. Trying like that baby to put
the entire world into our mouths, constantly reaching out to handle it. Our
natural response to our being born is to pull the substance and meaning of the
world closer to us, or by grabbing a hold, to pull ourselves ever closer to it.
In this way life “makes sense,” and our senses make the experience of life.
Re-earthing and primitive survival skills are a cure to the normal
disassociation of modern human kind, as we increasingly become as tourists in
our own bodies. We learn cordage not because we expect to find ourselves lost
in the wilderness, but because we know it will help us find ourselves again.
And because of the way it binds us to our essential native selves, weaving us
back into the fabric of nature. We practice to avoid the slide into rote,
habitual behavior, to prevent the dulling of the animal senses that connect us
to the so-real world.
We can practice awareness wherever we are, and not just on the trail. We can
“stay awake” by noticing the way a chair cradles the back, the tickily way in
which air dries the sweat on our neck, or the messages of hormonal exepheremones
released by others in the room. Each is trying to tell us something, to
communicate with its presence the factors relevant to our being. Things like:
our neck is going to be sore if we don’t change positions, the window needs to
be opened, and somebody we love is very angry with us! Staying in-body is a
constant and unrelenting task, a challenge to willingly face the cauldron of
tests, the bursting moment, the shadowless crucible. But one must actually
choose to see less, hear less, feel less. We are individually responsible for
our failures to perceive, and for what happens or doesn’t happen when we’ve
deliberately turned away. And likewise, we can take credit whenever we make the
decision to wholly feel instead!
By looking, listening, smelling-- we are touching, acknowledging, engaging
and thus affecting the world we’re a part of. Regardless of the degree to which
we affect it, regardless of measurable results we’re nonetheless rewarded,
immediately, for any “return to our senses”: The ears that discern each element
of discordant traffic are bestowed with the songs of the birds in every trimmed
shrub. The nose that is trained to remain alert even in the presence of noxious
fumes, has a field day in line at the bakery. The eyes that meet the eyes of
the world, behold the magic of unveiled truth. The hands that reach out, are
grasped in return.
The human body is an ecstatic organ, an agent and organ of Gaian bliss. The
practice of its reinhabitation involves refamiliarizing ourselves with the feel
and function of our flesh. You can start by attending the feel of our blood
pushing through our veins, then the vibrations of the ground below us, then the
point where our trembling rhythms intermesh with those of the Earth. Then
without moving from where you are, like an enthusiastic cook, isolate the
ingredients of your experiencing, segregating and recombining each of the
senses. With the eyes closed and ears plugged, know the world through the wind
and whatever else touches you. Try to taste with the nose plugged. Smell with
the eyes closed, and try to identify each distinct aroma in the air, then
attempt to triangulate your position in this way. With the eyes and nose
blocked, try to measure and qualify the source of each sound occurring around
you. In the woods or in a safe part of a park, plug all the head-bound senses
and feel your way through the grass, examining every object with deft fingertips
alone, enjoying and communicating with the most ordinary of them as if they were
remarkably new and unique to you, communing in the giving/receiving of touch.
By choosing to open up and pay attention, in time we begin to notice the way
different foods affect our energy levels, recognize the gentle effects of
different herbs and know the position of the moon without looking. We notice
what postures cause us to tighten up and which increase our range of movement.
Too much of our disappearing moments are spent drifting through inner space, the
cerebral abyss. For our reprieve, we can thank any and all sources of “wake up
calls.” Reprieval, and retrieval.
And why deprive ourselves, why diminish the depth and richness of a single
lived moment? It really is a sensuous world we work, play, dance through, a
glad explosion of color and form! To know our place in such a world, to come
home-- we must first “come to our senses.”
Come to them, I suggest, as we once left them behind.
*Jesse Wolf Hardin* is a teacher
of Earth-centered spirituality and nature magick, living
seven river crossings from a road in an ancient place
of power. His latest effort is _Gaia Eros: Reconnecting
With The Magic & Spirit Of Nature_ (New Page 2004),
a book acclaimed by Starhawk as "a must-read for
those who want to worship nature not as an abstraction
but in ways sensual, practical, and transformative.”
When not presenting at conferences and festivals he
can be found hosting seekers for retreats, quests, events,
workshops and resident internships at their enchanted
wilderness sanctuary: Animá Center PO Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 email: mail@animacenter.org. Visit Jesse's website by going here http://www.animacenter.org/
©Jesse Wolf Hardin 2005 Reproduction
in any form is prohibited without express written permission
from the author.
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