Sunday and Monday, December 20, 21
By Garin Samuelsen:
Life is a dynamic flow of energy. Seeing life in one way, we see forms and evolution sweeping diverse changes through the gravity of time/space. Seeing life in another way, impermanence and flow move seamlessly in utter wholeness beyond anything conceivable or measurable. The dance is always here, youthful and alive if we are willing to let go and move with all that is. Conflict arises when we find ourselves at odds with the world and each other. Dialogue helps brings us back into the dance, back into life, back into communion with others and oneself to where the seeing is transformed into the dance of duality and the immeasurable essence of all that is.
Sunday, December 20: Two questions arose for us. coming forth out of a pondering from last weeks dialogue. What does it mean to truly see someone and what exactly is language and how does it impact our seeing? Within the flow of the dialogue, these wonders came through…
What part if any does knowledge have in seeing? Can Knowledge ever be free of the past?
What does it mean to “See” someone in their wholeness?
When seeing someone fully, in their wholeness, does one need knowledge? Presence? Curiosity? Wonder? All, some or none of the above?
For an equation to work, one side needs to equal the other side such as x = x. Yet, does this sort of mathematics work only in a dualistic perceptive world or can be it also be used in a world as seen as interdependent, immeasurable, and non-dualistic? If the Universe is x, does all things contained in the universe also = x? Or if there is only wholeness and every aspect within the wholeness are wholes within wholes, then is the sum greater than then the perceived parts? And if that sum is infinite, what is being measured?
We talked about three wonderful movies that represent a seeing that goes beyond the human focus attention. The First is called The Bushman, The Way of the Hunter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQG5CcZVBE (Please watch)
This movie illustrates takes place in the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa and follows three hunters who use tracking to find their prey. The hunters never seem to be in a rush. They are focused and seem to be in a meditative state of listening. Their knowledge is not built upon the techno industrial mechanical way of our culture but their knowledge is directly linked to the land. If you take time to watch, ask yourself, are these people primitive or are they living authentically with an intelligence that is tapped into flow? Rather than having the idea of separation, they seemed to be imbued with the wild. Nature is not separate from who they are. They see and read and move with the landscape in complete presence. It shows a beautiful potentiality of seeing and being in that wholeness that quite possibly we all share. (Unfortunately, just as what happened to indiginous cultures in North America, this culture has been devastated and displaced due to the discovery of diamonds in Botswana. And to truly understand this, you would need to understand the brutal history of the past 400 years due to the impact of colonolization had on this region and the impact it has on the policies of these newly formed coutries but also the hands of western societies that crave the wealth in these countries such as diamonds. (Watch blood diamonds to at least get a sense of what is going on or the Power of One. Also, read this… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24821867#:~:text=Thousands%20of%20Bushmen%20lived%20in,Namibia%2C%20South%20Africa%20and%20Zambia.
The second movie is called My Teacher, the Octopus. The documentary is about a man (one of the filmmakers of The Bushman, the Way of the Hunter) Craig Foster, who 18 years after filming this documentary is depressed and has lost motivation. He decides to begin swimming in a kelp forest near his home. Here, he discovers a surprising friendship, a friendship with an octopus. Their way of communicating with each other has nothing to do with a verbal language, but a language of listening, curiosity and wonder. Not only does Craig have this awareness, but so does the octopus. From the octopus, Craig learns about sensitivity to other creatures, the intelligence of this magnificent animal, the interconnections of the kelp forest, how every single thing is needed and how the kelp forest is a super organism 1000’s of times smarter and more aware than us. It makes one think of greater and greater wholes. In this seeing, he discovers that his son through his own passion for this kelp forest, has a gentleness to him. He wonders if it is his son’s participation in nature that has allowed this potential to come forth.
The third film we brought into the dialogue was Avatar. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24821867#:~:text=Thousands%20of%20Bushmen%20lived%20in,Namibia%2C%20South%20Africa%20and%20Zambia. (please watch)
This movie looked at how one character was able to change his human dominant top of the cosmos pecking order ideology into one of connectivity, sensitivity and compassion by truly letting go to wonder and listening. Avatar presents two different paradigms of living. One, representing our cultural belief that we play out here each and every day and another based on how many indigenous cultures saw the world. Our cultural perspective is built on the story that tells us that we are separate from the world around us and that we can own and manipulate the land in any way we want. The indigenous story teaches that we are whole and we can participate within the great ecosystems in which we live and connect through our sense of wonder, curiosity and love. As Daniel Quinn said, “There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”
Words are symbols used to explain things. Are the symbols the actual thing we are describing. In a cultural linguistic system that is noun dominated, does this in effect help foster the idea of separation? If a language is more verb focused would we see more fluidity and connection with the world around us?
If we go into a forest and see a tree and label it are we seeing the tree anymore? Is knowledge stagnant or never ending? Is knowledge used to help in understanding or is it manipulated when we use if for a particular ideology?
We read this from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman..
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.This led me to ponder…..Can we truly see something when using language? Can language or knowledge ever see the present? Or is in wonder seeing. Is in seeing love? Does wonder bring learning, and learning knowledge but not a knowledge that is about gaining or growing but a flow onto itself? And does it all begin when we are quiet within? Where there is no desire to move away from the moment, but simply in the quiet an openness to see what lies right here and now?
Monday, December 21 - Solstice
Our dialogue began with the wonder about religion and control. This could be a difficult conversation for anyone. Yet, i saw openness, authenticity and an honoring of each other and where one was coming from.
Is religion’s purpose for love or for following authority?
Do we need religion?
Is religion fact or not true, or is it as Joseph Campbell shared, “Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies…….Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.”
People grow up learning about the world. We are born with wonder. Does a blind dogmatism happen if our wonder is shut down?
Does control comes from not feeling safe or feeling insecure? Is control real or an illusion?
People grow up learning the stories of their culture and families. When held tightly and as the only way, problems arise. When seen as stories, as pointers, great learning and perspectives can take place.
Within the dialogue, there were different perspectives and ways of understanding religion. Yet, we all seemed to look for understanding and we seemed to all agree that love is the most important thing to live by.
Are we evolving to be more conscious and open, or is that already within us - but our cultural education system trains it out of us?
Here I simply let loose, let unfold from this wonder….I flow into this
wonder
wonder opens me
all my senses, beyond my senses
and i taste and delight in all
the expressions of the universe
flowing momentary impressions
that drift away into impermanence
for me
it doesn’t matter where you come from
doesn’t matter who you are
doesn’t matter what religion you hold
you are here with me
for in I am there are no divisions
there lies no lines of demarcation
no lines of countries or states
only flow
in which i see all and all is me
here in this place of no place
there is no need for control
control is simply a running from insecurity
here in this place of no place
there is no need for hate
hate is only generated by fear and ignorance
here in this place of no place
there is no reason to destroy the wild or any ecosystem
for that is only caused by the illusion of separation
wholeness is
and i flow laughing and crying
as here it all is flowing
like the birth of a morning
