Come into Animal Presence

Come into animal presence
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence. 

"Come into animal presence" by Denise Levertov, from Poems: 1960-1967.

The Farthest Shore

I think in some works of fiction there are nuggets of priceless wisdom and some of them really strike a cord with my own personal truth.  The Wizard of Earth Sea Series has really impressed me in that light.

Here is one such recent example from the book The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin:

Sparrowhawk:

You see Aaron, how an act is not as young men think: Like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it.  

When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter.  The hand that bears it, heavier.  When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond.  And where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed.  On every act the balance depends.  The winds and seas, the powers of water, earth and light.  All that these do, and all that beasts and green things do is well done, and rightly done.  

All these act within the equilibrium.  From the hurricane and the great whales sounding, to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnats flight.  All they do is within the balance of the whole.  

But we, in so far as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and whale and wind do of their own nature.  We must learn to keep the balance.  

Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance.  Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.  

Who am I, though I have the power to do it?  To punish and reward, playing with men's destinies.

Aaron: But the is the balance kept by doing nothing?  Surely a man must act, even not knowing all the consequences of his acts.  If anything is to be done at all.

Sparrowhawk:

Never fear.  It is much easier for men to act, than to refrain from acting.  We will continue to do good and to do evil.  But if their were a king over us all again, and he sought council of a mage, as in the days of old and I were that mage, I would say to him, "My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praise worthy or noble to do so.  Do nothing because it seems good to do so.  Do that which you must do and which you can not do in any other way."  

   

Animal Communication and Egotism

Animals are beautiful, fascinating, charismatic and present in their own bodies and their own lives in ways we can not help but aspire to.  I am of the opinion that they do choose to communicate directly with us sometimes, whether through thought-feelings, imagery, body postures, sounds, eye contact, smells and other forms.

In some spiritually oriented communities, some believe that animals are always trying to communicate to us on matters of deep, spiritual significance.  This might bear some truth, and yet, it is also a potential food for self-importance.

To assume that whenever an animal is getting your attention that is must be bearing some deep, profoundly personal spiritual revelation is a bit narcissistic.   After all, that animal may be trying to tell you to move away from its nest, leave its young or otherwise simply leave it the hell alone! You could say that in itself is a pretty profound spiritual lesson.  Perhaps, not the grandiose one hoped for my some naive spiritual seekers, but none-the-less profound if seen clearly for it is.  We are, after all, not the most important creatures in the landscape.  We are just one, and our work is to learn to move with respect and understanding.  At least that is what I care to believe and how I tend to orient my life.

There is much that can be said about how the universe is communicating to us constantly.  Whether through our senses, emotions, and bodily feelings.  But, to have an inkling of this communication we must first be profoundly self-aware, and profoundly aware of the world around us.  To really glean significance from the world around you, you must know that world.  You must study it closely, and thoroughly so that you know what you are looking at and what is going on.

When it comes to animals, you must know their habits, their natural history, their cycles during the day, the season, the year and beyond.  Otherwise, misunderstanding can easily arise.

Stop for a moment and appreciate the simply profound fact that such cross-species communication is possible.  If you take a walk down that mental path, you can't help but appreciate the profound spiritual implications of unity and harmony found there. Whether you believe or have experienced the more telepathic types of communication or not, you can't deny that just through your 5 sense you can glean a wealth of information from other species.

The mear presence of an animal may help us feel more deeply connected, stirred on a primal level, and sometimes stopped in our tracks (physically and mentally).  The flight of a bird can uplift us and give us perspective. The songs of frogs and birds can help calm and ground us. The howl of a wolf can strike a cord so deep in us that it cuts through thousands of years of "civilization."  For some, that kind of instant bodily realization chills some, while it thrills others.

And then, there is a deeper level of speaking which requires from us, a deeper level of listening...

Experience is Real

Recently, while on a 3 day trip with some friends I got involved in an interesting and somewhat emotionally charged conversation.  These 2 friends had been discussing the nature of reality, and what was true.  One was making the argument that only that which is proven empirically, or at least described in Psychology can be true.  The other rallied against that and shared that he felt there was aspects of reality that are hidden from such research that are just as valid and true.

At first I chose to just listen, but then ended up engaging in it as well.  I did not want to prove a point, and so I think I stood on safer ground conversationally.  What came to me was something that I have learned from studying about, as well as practicing a more shamanic and animistic perspective.

I tried hard not to take sides in the argument, as I knew that would only leave one side feeling sore and undermined.  But, what came to me was the idea of experience being ones reality.  In terms of the perspective of a pragmatic shaman, truth is a relative thing.  One of the major keys to being able to experience a richer, more holistic relationship with the universe is to be open to being wrong.  Seemingly in contradiction, part of that is also to understand that one's experience of life, and one's experience in life is real.  Whether that is while awake, asleep or having a mind altering experience that involves meditation or some hallucinogenic plant or fungi.

The search for ultimate, universal truth is just a dance that the rational mind does, like a dog chasing its own tail.  As far as a practicing shaman might be concerned, it is of limited value.  After all, shamanic practice is about being in relationship with world or worlds, as it may be.

In the conversation I mentioned that possible experience of someone having what in the western, rational perspective we might call a "hallucination."  This simply means that at that time their experience of reality is different from our own.  Does that make it false, or unreal?  This might seem to be a stupidly obvious question.  After all, that "crazy" man walking down the street talking to himself is not having an experience you are sharing.

Sure, however, isn't reality an agreed upon experience? Don't we use language and cultural framing to help us agree upon what we think is significant enough to focus on? 

Consider for a moment the experience of 2 people of very different backgrounds who are describing a common event.  Let's say for a moment that a cup falls off of a table and breaks on the floor.  One person, an American man, looks to the person nearest that cup and might think, "This person broke the cup.  Why would they do that?"

The other person, a woman from Spain, looks at that same event and thinks, "The cup broke.  I wonder why it broke?"

That simple difference is a matter of cultural and linguistic implication of blame and responsibility, although it would of course involve the shading of the individual and their personal past experiences.  You might say that this a subtle difference.  After all, the languages and cultures are relatively similar in many ways.

Now consider those 2 people to have vastly different language and cultural backgrounds, such as a person raised speaking English in America, and a person raised in a small village in central China speaking Mandarin.  You think there experience would be the same?

Let's say that a man from a tribe from a small island in the Southwest Pacific describes the event as the cup leaping from the table at the approach of one of the people.  And he goes on to further describe how certain spirit beings that were in the room at the time found this event very funny.

Would you argue that this can not possibly be true or valid?

So... Let's come back to our man walking down the street talking to himself.  He may at that moment be engaging with a being that is invisible to your senses.  We can say from the western psychological perspective that he has schizophrenia.  In that moment, that man's experience is of that event being reality.  You can argue it is a false reality, a mental fiction.  Perhaps you could say that the being he is engaged with is a mental projection of his own fears...

But, you can not deny that in his experience it is real.

To the individual, experience is reality.

What use is it knowing that?  After all, this man's experience may be so different from other "normal" people around him that he is practically incapable of functioning or interacting effectively with others.  Indeed, the experience he is having may even be negative, even destructive and wildly unstable in nature. It may be one he desperately wants to change or escape.

Well, it is useful to take note because it can allow us to stop chasing the tail of "ultimate reality" and "truth" in the world.  Chasing the one right way for everyone to see the world.

The problem, is that what he is experiencing may be causing him great paranoia, loneliness and disconnection.  He may be incapable of changing his experience without the support and compassion of others.

The endless arguments waged over the superior reality of one religion over another, one god over another, science versus spirituality are really potentially just as destructive.  The only difference is that millions of people might agree on that experience and interpretation as the one truth.

When any perspective becomes dogmatic, it has lost track of this idea that experience is reality.

No 2 peoples experience is ever exactly the same.  Does that mean that one of them has had an experience that is true, and the other false?  Outside of proving the rightness of one perspective and the wrongness of another, what value would that bear?  How would pointing out the rightness of one perspective improve the lives of both people?

I think the more important questions are:

- Does your experience bring you joy, fulfillment and connection with the world?

- Does it allow you to communicate things of value to others, and interact with them with compassion and consideration?

- Did the experience you just had support your sense of positive growth, and a richness of life?

- What can you do to change your experience, if it is not supporting you in growing and connecting to the world in the ways you really desire?

- What stories are you simultaneously telling yourself and living? What other people's stories do you tell yourself, and how do they affect you and your experience of life?


 If I tell you now that sometimes animals look me in the eyes and speak to me, you might think that is a fantasy or projection of sorts.  You may even be tempted to prove to me that such a thing is not possible, and that this is a delusion.  You can argue that they are incapable of such action, and I am incapable of communication or receiving communication in such a manner.  You can lecture me on the scientifically solid theories of modern psychology and neurology, and how they disprove that such things are real.

Yet, I can still know that choosing to support the perspective that this kind of experience is real allows me to be in better relationship with the life around me.   An that, ultimately, is what matters most to me.

After coming close and looking right into my eye, the fox below told me politely to kindly leave the area around its den because me and my companions were too close for its comfort.  This appeared in my mind as a combination of thought-feeling and imagery.  This was supported shortly there after by its physical behavior as it walked a few steps away, urinated and looked back at me again expectantly.

And yes, I did heed the request... But this leads us to the final questions...

What stories do you hold to be true, and how do they improve your life and allow you to improve the lives of others?  How is your experience of life different from others?  Is it useful and life-supporting?  If not, why are you still carrying it?

Malidoma Patrice Some

Currently reading parts of a book by Malidoma P. Some called THE HEALING WISDOM OF AFRICA. I am admittedly fairly ignorant of the belief systems and spiritual perspectives of most of Africa, and really enjoying learning more about the approach to shamanism by the indigenous peoples of Africa... especially the Dagara people to which Malidoma Some belongs.

I am delighted to see the similarities and intrigued by the differences of approach to healing ways. Been really inspired by some of the what Malidoma has said so far in the book. Here is one quote that struck me as wonderful...

Indigenous people see the physical world as a reflection of a more complex, subtler, and more lasting yet invisible entity called energy. It is as if we are the shadows of a vibrant and endlessly resourceful intelligence dynamically involved in a process of continuous self-creation. Nothing happens here that did not begin in that unseen world. If something in the physical world is experiencing instability, it is because its energetic correspondent has been experiencing instability. The indigenous understanding is that the material and physical problems that a person encounters are important only because they are an energetic message sent to the this visible world. Therefore, people go to that unseen energetic place to try to repair whatever damage or disturbances are being done there, knowing that if things are healed there, things will be healed here. Ritual is the principal tool used to approach that unseen world in a way that will rearrange the structure of the physical world and bring about material transformation.

More SOULCRAFT...

Here is some more excellent material from the book SOULCRAFT by Bill Plotkin. Much food for thought...

There are many varieties of addicition, but, sooner or later, we each have to address what is the paramount addiction in the Western world: our psychological dependence on the worldview and lifestyle of Western civilization itself. This is the point brilliantly made by eco-psychologist Chellis Glendinning in her book My Name Is Chellis, and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization. The Western worldview says, in essence, that technological progress is the highest value and that we were born to consume, to endlessly use and discard natural resources, other species, technological gadgets, toys, and, often, other people, especially if they are poor or from the Third World. The most highly prized freedom is the right to shop. It's a world of commodities, not entities, and economic expansion is the primary measure of progress. Competition, taking, and hoarding are higher values than cooperation, sharing, and gifting. Profits are valued over people, money over meaning, Firest-World entitilement over global peace and justice, "us" or "them." This addiction is the most dangerous one inf the world, not only because of its impact on most of humanity but because it is rapidly undermining the natural systems that sustain the earth's biosphere.

All other addictions in the West can be seen as components of this larger one. If we are born to continue, then it is a dog-eat-dog world, there is no deeper meaning, no human soul, and creation is just a huge, dumb joke. That's a conclusion you wouldn't want to live with every day; better to distract and deaden yourself with addictions.

By the time we reach our first adulthood, our ways of thinking about ourselves and the world have been molded and constrained by the predominant values of Western culture. This limits us in ways difficult to see at first; we are like fish in the sea, unconscious of the cultural waters within which we have come of age.

All children and adolescents fashion personalities that fit within their native culture. In the West, that means a society largely materialistic, synthetic, technological, anthropocentric, ethnocentric, and egocentric. Fitting in with such a culture is difficult to accomplish without losing contact with our souls and with nature, the web of life. Western lifestyles that revolve around a constant barrage of anemic distractions may be, in part, ways of self-numbing so as to minimize the pain of that loss. Many people have succumbed to daily routines of soul-starving entertainment, superficial fashion, and mind-numbing jobs.

This way of life becomes an addiction. The more we live this way, the more alienated we become from something deeper and more meaningful, and the more we need this way of life to keep us from experiencing that alienation.

How do you address an addiction this pervasive? Begin with the soulcraft practices found in these pages. Relinquishing attachment to the adolescent identity is a primary means of overcoming our dependence on the cultural worldview within which that identity was formed.

Appreciation

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. - William Blake

Thoughts on SOULCRAFT

Had a friend lend me his personal copy of SOULCRAFT by Bill Plotkin. I am loving the book, and find it is one that for me takes slow and deliberate digestion. I think I will share quotes from it here periodically as I slowly consume what is within it...

Malidoma Some, an African shaman of the Dagara people, gives us an extreme example of how therapy and soulcraft goals can diverge. When Dagara boys undergo their initiation ordeals, the people of the village realize that a few boys will never return; they will literally not survive. Why would they Dagara be willing to make such an ultimate sacrifice? For the boys who die, this is certainly not a therapeutic experience. Although the Dagara love their children no less than we do, they understand, as the elders of many cultures emphasize, that without vision - without soul embodied in the culturally creative small risk of death is preferable to the living death of an uninitiated life. Besides, when we compare Dagara society with our own, we find that an ever greater percentage of our teenagers die - through suicide, substance abuse, auto accidents, and gang warfare - in their unsuccessful attempts to initiate themselves.

It is fascinating that in such a risk-avoiding, convenience driven-society as our own we think that people such as the Dagara are backwards or violent because of such initiations. Yet, the evidence is there to show us how our own children are seeking to be initiated through the only vehicles they see fit to use... drugs, alcohol, fast driving, gangs and so on.

In addition, many of the children who survive in our culture and make it into so called adulthood, hardly seemed to have grown into true man or womanhood. Some, no matter what age they might be, are still children who happen to be in adult bodies.

Graduations, promotions, legal drinking age, and other small acknowledgments of the transitions in life are in our society a generally soul-less affair. They address the mundane transitions, but not the deeply individual changes occurring at those times.

From Tracking Apprenticeship Winter Outing

A Langauge Older... revisited

A great quote from Derrick Jensen that has made its way into my present life again.

There is a langauge older by far, and deeper than words. Its the langauge of bodies. Body on body. Wind on snow. Rain on trees. Wave on stone. Its the langauge of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We've forgotten this langauge. We don't even remember that it exists. - D.J.

A beautiful quote from a series of documentaries called THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICAS BEST IDEA. The series is so powerful, it moved me to tears on several occasions. And, that's saying a lot since I have only watched 2 out of the 6 parts... :)

As long as I live, I'll hear the birds, and the winds, and the waterfalls sing. I'll interpret the rocks, and learn the language of flood and storm and avalanche. I'll make the acquittance of the wild gardens and glaciers, and get as near to the heart of this world as I could.

And so I did. I sauntered about from rock to rock, from grove to grove, from stream to stream. Whenever I met a new plant I would sit by it for a minute, or a day. To make its acquittance, hear what it had to tell. I asked the boulders where they had been and wittered they were going. When night found me, there I camped. I took no more heed to save time or to make haste, then did the trees or the stars. This is true freedom. A good, practical sort of immortality.

- John Muir

From AWCP OR Dunes 2009

If...

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- IF,
by Rudyard Kipling

The little mysteries

Step out onto the Planet
Draw a circle a hundred feet round

Inside the circle are
300 things nobody understands, and, maybe
nobody's ever really seen

How many can you find?

- Lew Welch

All I know is that I don't know

My recent participation in the Tracker Evaluations and other events have left me feeling very small and humbled. All though I have heard and understood this before, it seems the recent lesson to focus on for me is:

The more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know.

The more my awareness of the world grows, the more understanding I gain, the more this wisdom seems to be hammered home. I feel like the closer I reach to mastery in nature awareness or tracking or whatever else, the more clearly I see that what I see is a single layer... barely a nail scrape on the surface of what is there.

My eyes just become open wider to the awe-someness of the mysteries all around, outside and in. When I am honest with myself, when my personal ego stands aside...sometimes all I can do is stand and stare in wonder.

Just when that part of me that wants to claim some kind of control over the world (the ego) feels like taking control, it seems an opportunity arises for me to open my eyes wider. To listen more closely.

Isn't it funny how it is at the edges of things that life seems to flourish most intensely?

In that place between joy and sorrow, that knife edge between pain and pleasure, selfishness and humility, it is there that life seems to shine most profoundly...

Many of my recent experiences and thoughts on our cultural and individual relationship to the land never formed themselves into words. They did not seem to want to be written here. So I have not posted for a while.

I picked up a book called THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES by Craig Childs. I have only read a little of it, but already it has my attention. Here is a great quote from the introduction, and is referring to the authors encounter with a great blue heron.

You can not look at this bird and decide who is superior and who is not. The encyclopedic vocabulary of a raven is no more admirable than a red-spotted toad's ability to drink through its skin. The human penchant for deciphering the world has no greater merit than the unusually large eyeball of a pronghorn.

This is essentially an animist outlook on the world of wildlife around us. I dunno if Craig Childs would bother calling himself an animist, but this statement fits the bill anyway.

We are the land

I struggle to put to words the great feelings of intimacy that flow from me to the land, and from the land to me. This understanding I have is largely intuitive and so personal that I find it a struggle to write out. But, I feel it is so vital that I want to try here.

In the book SPELL OF THE SENSUOUS the author, David Abram, describes well the significance of this feeling by saying that we are human through our relationships with the living, aware, and other-than-human land.

Since I was very young, I recognized that different places had different feelings associated with them that one could describe as the "essence of that place." Though I could not describe it back then, nor really even understand it consciously, it was always there. As clear and real as the rising and setting of the sun, or the beating of my own heart.

Part of that experience was what the landscape and all of its elements communicated to my senses. The land still speaks this way to me today. Every place I have grown to know and love, has a distinct swirl of smells, sights, sounds and more. The way the light dances across the forest floor in that very particular way. The way the bark on a particular Douglas-fir tree looks during a cloudy day. The distinct tartness of the huckleberries from this patch. The mosaic of sounds of the soft breeze rasping the salal leaves or scraping the Oregon grape leaves, or sighing and hissing through the tops of the hemlocks and cedars. Those peculiar pockets of cool or warm air that always seem to be around in certain parts of the forest, which I feel with my bare arms or the skin on my face and neck.

Each element, each individual other-than-human person in the landscape, whether rock, tree, animal, herb, fungi, stream or whomever else, shapes the feeling of that place. No two bio-regions are alike nor are any two locations within a bio-region exactly alike.

I think we all perceive these things quite naturally, though, as members of modern western culture we learn to tune these details out as more or less irrelevant. Not much more than the backgrounds noise and a setting for more important human activities.

Every aspect of the living landscape is part of the language of that place. Each species of bird, mammal, amphibian, reptiles, insect, crustacean, herb, shrub, tree, mushroom, mold and so forth has a very particular essence in and of itself. For instance, a white-crowned sparrow might have certain behaviors, songs, locations it prefers that are unique to its species. With time we might notice the individual differences of one or a particular group of birds from that species in the given location. It is easy to slip into the western perspective and see these individuals as separate parts of the natural world. Sometimes it is useful to do that. In a perspective were everything is separate, this obviously makes perfect sense.

If we step for a moment into another perspective, where everything is connected we might see things differently. Every gesture of an animal, a tree in a wind, the sun moving across a stone or the bubbling of a stream is the land speaking to us. This is our birthright, as human beings. It can be argued, that this is what makes us human.

Who I am right now is due to a very large degree on the places that I have gotten to know and visit, and especially those I have lived in, have shaped who I am as a human being and as an individual. I am still the white and black sage covered hills of southern California where I romped when I was a boy. I am heat waves shimmering in those hills, the rattle snake coiled on the road in the evening. I am the cougar that roams those hills like a shadow, and the deer that it hunts. I do not mean this as a metaphor, rather, I am an expression of those places.

Every molecules of my being is infused with the lands where I have been and dwelled.

From UBNA Adventure Nov. 16

In the same way, right now here in the cool, wet Pacific Northwest, I am also an expression of the rain and the forests right here. I am the dripping moss hanging from a big-leaf maple, and I am also the big-leaf maple. I am also the Douglas squirrel chattering from the limbs of that same tree. The air that fills these lungs is air exhaled by the trees and shared by all. There is no way for me to separate from these connections.

This is the essence of animism.

All my relations

Recently a video showed up at nationalgeographic.com about 2 Burmese fishermen who survived at sea for 25 days off of only rainwater and fish regurgitated by seabirds. The video can be viewed here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090121-survivors-video-ap.html


I am sharing it here because it exemplifies the typical western attitude of disbelief in the face of stories of other animals helping humans to survive.

This is in great contrast to the animist world view, where animals, plants, fungi, stones, stars and rivers are brothers and sisters all working together in cooperation to create a seamless and harmonious working system from which all benefit and grow. There are many stories told by tribal people of animals such as wolves, bears, dolphins, birds and even ants helping people to survive in times of dire need. In a world were all are working as part of the same community, such things are not really unheard of nor even terribly surprising. At least to people with a direct relationship to the living world.

Such stories are absent in our culture, or if they appear are generally labeled as fantasies of "primitive minds" and children, who we are told are both largely ignorant of the world around them. After all, our sciences tell us that nature is run largely by competition and violence. Better yet, animals are driven merely by instincts and can not act outside of the boundaries of what we believe to be the limitations of their behaviors, which are already pre-determined by the genes they carry. If an observation is ever made of something that might even imply to be outside of these limitations, we so easily write them off as being unlikely or random. As if animals were robots which for a moment had a glitch in their systems, and then returned to "normal" working function.

Even the meeting of an animal in the wild is to us a largely random event, to which we usually ascribe no great meaning other than perhaps as yet another reminder of the greatness and uniqueness of us as a species as a contrast to the other species of lower intelligence or lesser evolutionary developmental stage. We see animals so often not as they are, but as mere mirrors through which we can look at our own egos.

Our assumptions about our place at the pinnacle of evolution serves only to push us farther away from the relatives all around us.

From Herons and kin

To an animist, every element of the natural world, whether animal, plant, fungi or some other form, is an other-than-human person. Encounters with these others are taken very seriously and observed very carefully. Since these other-than-human people are seen as equals, there is no room for ideas about or feelings of superiority.

All the persons, human and other-than-human, have a role to play in the web of life that is flowing all around us and through us. How can one say that 1 piece of that puzzle is more or less important, than another?

Finding wonder in the everyday world...

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the finding wonder in the everyday world.

Two of the many hats I wear from time to time are that of wildlife photographer and wildlife observer. I would argue, you can not really be one without being the other. Both can often be subject to the whims of cultural biases, even regarding wildlife observation.

For instance, in the region of the Puget Sound where I live there are many common species found in urban and suburban areas, which might include: American crows, feral pigeons, European starlings, mallards, Canada geese, house sparrows, ring-billed gulls, glaucous-winged gulls, raccoons, Norway rats and a handful of others. These species are generally ignored by people, and it might not surprise you, also generally ignored by wildlife watchers/naturalists and wildlife photographers.

It is easy to understand why if you consider how people in western culture view the natural world. If the creature in question does not inspire awe or fear or if the animals importance in the natural world is not immediately clear and of obvious benefit to humans, it gets ignored or worse.

Let us take Canada geese as an example. Though Canada geese have been native to the region for long before the white settlers arrived, a majority of the population you see around the greater Puget Sound that is present throughout the year is introduced by humans in 1968. Unlike the Canada geese that migrate through the region in Fall and Spring, this population stays put. It so happens that the urban/suburban areas around the Puget Sound with their plentiful waterways and adjacent mowed green spaces are very much to the liking of the geese. With few predators, lots of food and nesting sites the goose population has increased considerably.

People complained about the noise of the geese, and largely about the scat they leave behind on lawns, playing fields and walkways. The city of Seattle had so many complaints that since the year 2000 over 5,600 geese have been put in gas chambers and killed. The geese are still seen by many in Seattle as over-sized rats with wings.

Not many wildlife watchers in the Seattle area pay much attention to these geese, and some times they are even not mentioned when people are out doing bird species counts.

I have had the pleasure on many days to get to hang out with - and sometimes among - a flock or gaggle of Canada geese. As with many of the other species I mentioned as being largely ignored in urban areas, the geese have provided me with some of the most amazing wildlife encounters in my life.

From Urban Wildlife

From Urban Wildlife

The photos of a Canada goose drinking happened during one of those wonderful moments where things just come together beautifully. If we are observant and attentive, those moments are to be found all the time.

I was practicing a Taoist-inspired meditation in which you mindfully observe everything around you without judging. In this case, as I sat near the edge of an urban pond, several geese came slowly swimming towards me. One of them started to bob up and down in the water, and throw water over its back and wings. Like so many pearls of silver, the water drops rolled over and off of the goose's back. It took my breath away. Time seemed to slow down.

I was in the middle of getting my camera adjusted and did not capture that moment. Also, I did not want to be looking at nature from a "what can I get out of this" attitude that is often assumed as a necessity for successful wildlife photography. Instead, I wanted whatever came to me of its own accord to be what I would photograph.

As I slowly pointed the camera at the geese, one of them started drinking the water right in front of it's chest as it floated placidly. The light was perfect, and the camera allowed me to capture what I saw, exactly as I would have liked. The shimmering drops of water falling from the gooses bill are frozen in space. The painted ripples stopped in their graceful path. The moment is captured, as is the feeling that expresses so perfectly the simple wonder in the everyday world.

This photo is one that often brings me into a relaxed meditative state. It always reminds me to pay attention to the things close at hand, the seemingly common and everyday.

When I look at this photo with the eye of an animist, I can see easily how everything in this universe is alive and how it dances and moves together in such perfect harmony.

I feel that the spirits of the place: the spirits of the geese, the water and the light came together so seamlessly and gave me a gift. Even more than that, I was left feeling like I was truly part of that same fabric.

And that, is perhaps the greatest gift we can receive.

Virtue of the small

The contented man can be happy with what appears to be useless. He can find worthwhile occupation in forests and mountains. He stays in a small cottage and associates with the simple. He would not exchange his worn clothes for the imperial robes, nor the load on his back for a four-horse carriage. He leaves the jade in the mountain and the pearls in the sea. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he can be happy - he knows when to stop. He does not pick the brief-blossoming flower; he does not travel the dangerous road. To him, the ten thousand possessions are dust in the wind. He sings as he travels among the green mountains.

He finds sheltering branches more comforting than red-gated mansions, the plow in his hands more rewarding than the prestige of titles and banners, fresh mountain water more satisfying than the feasts of the wealthy. He acts in true freedom. What can competition for honors mean to him? What attraction can anxiety and greed possibly hold? Through simplicity he has Tao, and from Tao, everything. He sees the light in the "darkness," the clear in the "cloudy," the speed in the "slowness," the full in the "empty." The cook creating a meal with his own hands has as much honor in his eyes as a famous singer or high official. He has no profits to gain, no salary to lose; no applause, no criticism. When he looks up, it is not in envy. When he looks down, it is not with arrogance. Many look at him, but nobody sees him. Calm and detached, he is free from all danger, a dragon hidden among men.

- Taoist alchemist and herbalist,
Ko Hung

The Taoist ideal is living in simplicity, in the most direct relationship with nature that is possible. It might be argued by some that this life style is perhaps not fit for everyone. Though, it seems to me that there is much to be gained from understanding this way of life, this perspective.

The Taoist mind is the mind of a child. Children respond to the world much more directly, simply and honestly than most adults. The word being alive is simply WHAT IS to a child. Communication with the natural world is engaged in often with joyous abandon by children who are presented with the opportunity.

So why does any of this matter?

To me, the child's mind is our original mind. It is a state to which we as adults can not only strive for but also reconnect with in a pragmatic, daily way. The world, the universe at large, is a wondrous and mysterious place. How much that is overshadowed by our fears and concerns as adults? Our concerns about being someone and about doing something important. Children know that what they are doing is important, whether that is eating ice cream on a hot summer day and having it run down their hand or its jumping around in the mud catching frogs or imitating them. The small things are important. The small things have virtue. These small things are really vital in life, yet so many adults have forgotten to experience them.

The virtue of the small, the weak and the dark are often ignored or looked down upon in our culture.

One interpretation of the TE in the Tao Te Ching is virtue. As Benjamin Hoff describes it in the Te of Piglet:

Te is not, as its English-langauge equivalent suggests, a one-sized-fits-all sort of goodness or admired behavior that can be recognized as essentially the same no matter who possesses it. It is instead a quality of special character, spiritual strength, or hidden potential unique to the individual - something that comes from the Inner Nature of things. And something, we might add, that the individual who possesses it may be quite unaware of - as is the case with Piglet through most of the Pooh stories.

How many people in western culture seek to be somebody? Or be somebody different? From teens to adults who never really matured, never really grew up fully because they never had a chance to get to know themselves. To get to know their te, their own personal, individual virtue.

So many adults I have met, no matter what age they might have written on their birth certificate still act out the drama that they never really faced as they transitioned from teens to young adult years.

Our culture lacks significant rites of passage for people in the major stages of life changes. Getting a driver's license. Reaching legal drinking age. Graduating high school, then college. These things are almost meaningless on the truly individual, personal level.

It lacks a way to truly acknowledge the sacred cycles in our lives.

So much time it seems is spent seeking youth, seeking to stay youthful. Yet in "becoming adults" people rarely seem to grow up, really. They bury their child's mind under fantasies, fears, and masks. For all their age, they seemed to have gained little that can be called true wisdom.

An truly matured adult might be described one who takes care and fosters a healthy relationship to the child's mind within them.

We have forgotten the virtue of the small to such an extent, that many of us worship BIG. We love powerful things, powerful people and personalities. Even when we look at nature, we tend to focus on the fastest, biggest, most dangerous, most frightening. When and if nature is talked about, we spend most of our nature discussions talking about these creatures.

Yet so much of the natural world depends on the work of the small. The bacteria, insects, spiders. The fungi that help break down the soil and decaying matter into nutrients usable by plants. Even the smallest mammals are mostly ignored for their true virtue.

Bats are one of those creatures that are so often recognized for the fear they inspire: for the way they suck blood (though only 3 out of several thousand species actually feed on blood, and they lap it up and don't actually suck), the way they can get tangled in long hair (thought many species can see even in pitch blackness something as fine as a single human hair using their echolocation), the harm they can cause by spreading rabies (which is rare and they generally die from the disease too quickly to be able to spread it to humans) and so on. What seems to often to be missed or ignored is the great care with which they use to tend to their young. They way that bats in a colony will groom themselves and sometimes each other. The acute awareness with which they experience their world. The longevity with which they can live, despite their small size... likely a testament to how well they take care of their bodies and especially, their teeth. Some small species can live for over 30 years. That's incredible, if you consider that another insectivore of comparable size like a large shrew generally does not live long enough to have its first year birth day celebration...

There is much wisdom to be gained in studying the virtue of the small...

From Bat Species Survey of Olympic National Park 2004

Fundamental difference between the Western and indigenous ways of life

I have been reading, and thinking so much on what I have been reading that I have not posted here for sometime. Stumbling on an interview I had bookmarked some time ago, I spotted something worth sharing here. This is an from an interview between Derrick Jensen and well-known Native American author Vine Deloria.

Jensen: What would you say is the fundamental difference between the Western and indigenous ways of life?

Deloria: I think the primary difference is that Indians experience and relate to a living universe, whereas Western people - especially scientists - reduce all things, living or not, to objects. The implications of this are immense. If you see the world around you as a collection of objects for you to manipulate and exploit, you will inevitably destroy the world while attempting to control it. Not only that, but by perceiving the world as lifeless, you rob yourself of the richness, beauty, and wisdom to be found by participating in its larger design.

In order to maintain the fiction that the world is dead - and that those who believe it to be alive have succumbed to primitive superstition - science must reject any interpretation of the natural world that implies sentience or an ability to communicate on the part of nonhumans. Science insists, at a great price in understanding, that the observer be as detached as possible from the event he or she is observing. Contrast that with the attitude of indigenous people, who recognize that humans must participate in events, not isolate themselves.

Ironically, although science prides itself on being a search for knowledge, Indians can obtain knowledge from birds, animals, rivers, and mountains that is inaccessible to modern science. And Indians can use this knowledge to achieve better results. Take meteorology. Scientists know that seeding clouds with certain chemicals will bring rain, but this method of dealing with nature is wholly mechanical and forces nature to do our bidding. Indians achieved the same results more peacefully by conducting ceremonies and asking the spirits for rain. The two methods are diametrically opposed. It's the difference between commanding a slave to do something and asking a friend for help.

Being attuned to their environment, Indians could find food, locate trails, protect themselves from inclement weather, and anticipate coming events thanks to their understanding of how all things are related. This knowledge isn't unique to American Indians. It's available to anyone who lives primarily in the natural world, is reasonably intelligent, and respects other life-forms for their intelligence. Respect for other life-forms filters into our every action, as does its opposite: perceiving the world as lifeless. If you objectify other living things, then you are committing yourself to a totally materialistic universe - which is not even consistent with the findings of modern physics.

The central idea of science, as it has been developed and applied, is to get machines or nature to do the work human beings don't want to do. This is immensely practical, but in a shortsighted way.

As Deloria states, this kind of way of knowing and being in the world is not limited to Native Americans. It is the birth right of all peoples of the Earth. It is unfortunate that many carry the attitude that such a life is a pipe-dream. That such ideas are mere fantasies of those suffering from middle class guilt or an obsession with tribal peoples.

Deloria and Jensen continue with:

Jensen: How so?

Deloria: Developing the automobile, for example, allowed people to get quickly from place to place, but at what cost, both in terms of accidents and of damage to the natural world? And what effect have automobiles had on our spiritual life?

In a capitalist system, whoever supplies the money de-termines the technology. This means that science, as it's applied, is never really for the good of humankind, but instead for the good of the financial elite or the military. It also means that science will be dominated by the authorities who have found institutional favor, whether they have the best evidence for their beliefs or not.

When beliefs and knowledge harden and become institutionalized, we turn to institutions to solve all our problems: people purchase food grown by others, settle their conflicts in courts and legislatures rather than by informal, mutually agreed-upon solutions, and wage extended and terrible wars over abstract principles instead of minor battles over the right to occupy land for hunting and fishing. Similarly, beliefs about the world are processed into philosophical and rational principles rather than anecdotal experiences, and religion is reduced to creeds, dogmas, and doctrines.

Now, every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people must be to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others. Because of hierarchies, European thinkers have not performed their proper social function. Instead, science and philosophy have taken the path already taken by Western religion and mystified themselves. The people who occupy the top positions in science, religion, and politics have one thing in common: they are responsible for creating a technical language incomprehensible to the rest of us, so that we will cede to them our right and responsibility to think. They, in turn, formulate a set of beautiful lies that lull us to sleep and distract us from our troubles, eventually depriving us of all rights - including, increasingly, the right to a livable world.

Rather than trusting our own experiences and senses, we often look to scientists for explanations of the world. In giving explanations, these scientists defer to the dogma and doctrine they learned in universities and colleges. It's gotten to the point where almost anything anyone with a Ph.D. says is taken as gospel, rather than as someone's opinion...

We can be blind to the limits of the scientific perspective on the natural world as the only perspective. Okay. Obvious enough, I suppose. But what does he suggest is an alternative?

Jensen: What are some better ways of perceiving and living in the world?

Deloria: I would say one alternative to forcing nature to tell us its secrets is to observe nature and adjust to its larger rhythms. This alternative is practiced by many other cultures, but it scares a lot of people in the West because it derives information from sources that may be tinged with mysticism. For example, many centuries ago, three sisters appeared to the Senecas and said they wished to establish a relationship with "the two-legged people." In return for the performance of certain ceremonies that would help them to thrive, the sisters would become plants and feed the people. The three sisters became beans, corn, and squash. And the soil of the Seneca farmlands was never exhausted, because these three plants, in addition to sharing a spiritual relationship with one another, also formed a sophisticated natural nitrogen cycle that kept the land fertile and productive.

The white man came later, planted only corn and wheat, and soon exhausted the soil. Then, after conducting many experiments, scientists "discovered" the nitrogen cycle and produced chemical fertilizers to replace the natural nitrogen. But now we know that these chemicals have unpleasant side effects that may be even worse for us than they are for the soil.

The point is that, for every scientific "discovery," there may exist one or more alternative ways of understanding natural processes. But we can't know what these alternatives are until we absolutely reject the idea of forcing nature to reveal its secrets and instead begin to observe nature and listen to its rhythms.

With this blog I am attempting to encourage the accessibility of another way of looking at life and seeking understanding. Perhaps our connection to that knowledge never ceased, even among our best scientists...

Jensen: I've heard about South American tribes who can take a poisonous plant and, by some complex process - boiling it three times, skimming off the froth, and so on - turn it into medicine. Usually, the tribes are assumed to have arrived at these processes through trial and error, but this seems ludicrous to me, because the original plant is a deadly poison. By contrast, you've written that "getting information from birds and animals regarding plants is an absurdly self-evident proposition for American Indians."

Deloria: There are plenty of Indian stories where a plant will appear in a dream and speak to someone, or a person is walking through the forest, and suddenly a plant will say, "I'm edible, but you've got to do these various things in order to eat me."

When I was much younger, I would bring Indian plant knowledge to scientists for them to investigate. But they always wanted to take the plant apart, break it down to see what its constituents were. Their efforts were pointless, because that's not the way the medicine men use it. They use it whole, and then they get the natural product out of it by making a tea, or a poultice. You can't chemically disassemble it, because it's the whole of the plant that cures, not any one ingredient.

Jensen: This seems to get at the heart of the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous cultures: seeing the plant as a whole and letting it literally speak to you, versus putting nature, as Francis Bacon said, "on the rack and extracting her secrets from her."

Deloria: That's true, although most of the greatest scientists dabbled considerably in spiritual matters and believed that mystical and intuitive experiences provided them with knowledge. This is true even of Descartes, the first materialist, who is famous for articulating the mind/body, human/nature split. He said an angel came and explained things to him. Heisenberg, Einstein, and Bohr all had sudden insights. What's the difference between that and the Indian performing a ceremony and hearing the plant say, "Do this"?

An Inuit Poem

At the end of the movie NEVER CRY WOLF, there is a poem. It touched me in a powerful way I can not put into words. It is an Inuit poem who's author is unknown. It is a good one to contemplate.

I think over again my small adventures,
My fears,
Those small ones that seemed so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach;
And yet there is only one great thing,
The only thing,
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.

Anonymous (Inuit, 19th century)