Yet traveling to the moon might be taken for granted as part of the next generation's everyday experience. Still those young people, like any of us, may one day pick up a simple rock, snap into another state of mind... to view it with a similar sense of amazement that is often sought through 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 takes 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 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. All 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 culture pushes for the next experience to go "further" as is written in so many school textbooks. (In fact I read the following quote a few hours ago in a history class... "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 also it seeks to answer the curious thirst and touch upon the experience of wonder.
Meanwhile the undisturbed tribal-indigenous person living constantly with the world, while in a presumably more relaxed parasympathetic nervous system state, might encounter wonder all the time with the wide angle vision of the hunter gatherer.
When in Oregon I spent a number of hours with a tracker who explained the wide angle vision that an indigenous person might have while walking in the woods, taking in the world the way a cat does when walking out the door.
The cat hesitates, feeling the wind on his whiskers but is also listening; looking, because he might be prey, because even after all the domestication, he is still aware as a participant of the greater surround. He is still alive & aware.
Consider this quote of a greeting card at the 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; it 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.
Just like a cow who knows a field of grass in an intimate way, enough to see variety and texture and worlds at its feet; just as the shaman discovers endless tracks of time and place within a dream; just as an experienced herbalist knows worlds within a few roots, there are worlds 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 an Nuero-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 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 is said by some to 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 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, some sense of being, some sense of flowing in something beyond explanation, but something that also makes sense in a way, 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