Yet traveling to the moon might be taken for granted, as part of the next generation's everyday experience. Still, someone, at any given time, may pick up a simple rock and snap into another state of mind. They may view it with a similar sense of amazement that is often sought through our extravagant journeys.
Perhaps, at some point in their lives, when a sense of everyday wonder is lost... when they have been so flooded with color, that they no longer appreciate simple tones... perhaps, one day without reason, they will discover something new, right at their feet, that delivers them right back to the edge.
With my cousin, one day on a west coast beach, the tide was coming in fast (while we were walking by a rock wall to the next clearing.) There was no more visible sand, and the water was all the way up to our ankles.
There was a slight sense of danger, nestled safely within that immense sense of wonder. Everything else disappeared for a moment, and the sky, the rocks and the water stood outside of time. Time yielded to mystery, and some sense of truth was known in that.
Modern cultures push for the next experience to go "further," as is written in so many grade school textbooks. (In fact I read the something recently in a history class, regarding "the advance of man.")
The culture hopes, at best, to ease its suffering and to improve upon it's own bubble of history, the bubble of civilization, but it also seeks to quench our curious thirst--and touch upon the experience of wonder.
Meanwhile, an undisturbed tribal-indigenous person, living constantly with the world (while in a, presumably, more relaxed parasympathetic nervous system state) may encounter wonder all the time... using the wide-angle vision of the hunter gatherer.
While in Oregon, I spent a number of hours with a wilderness tracker. She referred to the wide-angle vision, that an indigenous person might have, while walking through the woods, taking in the world like a cat does when walking out the door.
The cat hesitates, feeling the wind on its whiskers, but the cat is also listening, looking, because it might be prey. Because, even after all the domestication, the cat is still "alive and aware," as a participant of the greater surrounding environment.
Consider this quote (author unknown) from a greeting card that I stumbled upon at at grocery store:
"We Are All Wanderers On This Earth.
Our Hearts Are Full of Wonder
And Our Souls Are Deep With Dreams."
While technological endeavors may play a part in the story of civilization, upon its departure from indigenous living, we must remember that indigenous peoples and other creatures still thrive today, and when their methods are undisturbed by civilization, their ways are effective.
And they are playing with a world that, to someone in the galaxy, is millions of miles away, that, to someone in the galaxy, is an adventure beyond compare.
A cow knows a field of grass in an intimate way, seeing variety and texture and worlds at its feet. A shaman discovers endless tracks of time (and place) within a dream. An experienced herbalist knows worlds within a few roots. There are worlds, at our feet, unexplored.
And how many keys does it take to open the door that leads to wonder? Perhaps only one. Perhaps it is the simple becoming of that state. To suddenly be. To immerse one's self.
Yet modern life asks for a narrowing of vision, so we may stare at computer screens. It asks us to spend a greater amount of time indoors.
According to a Neuro-Linguistic Programming class that I took not to long ago, the narrowing of vision is associated with a more sympathetic nervous system response (more of the fight-or- flight, stress-oriented variety)
When I met my friend, who was telling me of her experiences with tracking, it occurred to me that the narrowing of vision would happen either when you found what you were looking for... or when you were being pursued in some way. What is it like to stay in it all the time?
In reference to the passing of time, the narrow vision may be associated with a quicker passage of time... or the experience of time (in the relative sense.) So, we have to ask the question, how long are our lives after all?
If that sense of wonder we had, as young children first experiencing the world, returns to us as we grow older, perhaps this indicates that we've been lost, all this time, in the space between. We've learned to gather... but forgotten how to be.
Perhaps everything in the world, despite those raw planet-earth-series moments, is living in that space between... with some sense of, what we call, wonder. It knows how to be... and it is moving and flowing in something beyond itself, beyond explanation... something that is more real, as it was that time standing on the coast, than the everyday distractions of the mind and of progress.
Where are we going? If we get there, we may find ourselves in the company finally of the rest of the world, advanced in its own particular way.
Wonderful observations, J-man, presented in your typically insightful/entertaining style. My generation tried to address these issues with chemicals, and did an epic pratfall. Indigenous peoples try to hold their ground and are consumed. Our prophets shout into the wind and are ignored. It is possible to regain the clear vision of the youthful. The vision of the artist. The focus of indigenous peoples. The inclusiveness of the tribe. But it requires immense effort, unfortunately, to find the spirituality of existence which allows intuition to function unimpeded. Because it is the intuitive mind we're talking about. The mind which functions best when the power of concentration is faced with few obstacles. Exactly the type of circumstance so lacking in the modern produce/consume nexus of existence.
ReplyDeletePlease do not be discouraged by life. Play your music for those who have the ears to hear. And wait for the tide.
J. Wilson