Witnessing: Attention, Intention and Healing

When we think of healing ourselves, the thoughts and focus revolve around me, myself, I-- my needs alone, and what is necessary to become whole.  Antennae should sprout up whenever a concern or effort becomes self-centric, because that type of concentration isn't healing, it's actually antithetical to healing.  That type of focus is small, cramped, without space or breath.  And a healing is not possible when I am living in that compressed space.

\Counter intuitively, holding someone or something fully in your attention is an act of self-healing.  This is so because your energy is in flow, moving from inside to out and back again. It's not a masochistic "you come before me", but more an inclusive acknowledgement that a universal love flows in and outside myself, connecting, interconnecting.  A salve completing the Whole.  In physical terms, this might resemble the infinity symbol, the horizontal figure eight.  In that act of interconnecting, we allow ourselves to let go of ego's narrow agenda and we enter a universal connection.  Because of this unconditional attention to someone else, paid attention becomes a prepayment I benefit from.  This paid attention benefits the environment, myself as well as others.

\ I've written about materiality and energy in space (Place, Space, Materiality and Health), wherein I speak about the influence of energy on space, humans and nature.  We all have felt an environment or space blessed by a smudge stick, prayer or meditation.  And alternately, we have felt the tensio\n in the energy of a space that has had a recent argument or violence in it.  We don't consider the vitality of this energy, how it supports or undermines a flourishing.  Similarly, we don't consider the energy of a full attention on an other or on a space.  Humans are designed to connect.  It is in this connection, these exchanges of energy that create a healing.

How could it be that this simple act of observing another (without an agenda) could be so nourishing to another and oneself?   Giving attention, to be a witness is to be in a relaxed, tension free place in oneself.  Our bodies and more whole self relax into the rightness of the Self in this state.  This unto itself is a healing.  It rights (normalizes) hormonal releases (endocrine system), the neurotransmitters that dictate hormone releases from our central nervous system, it hosts a more relaxed, stress-free environment from which to act from, to Be in.  In this state, one creates a slower, more accepting self environment that impacts relationship.  This type of energy nourishes the atmosphere around it, as mentioned above. One can feel the difference; this ripples out.  And as indicated above, it circles around and cultivates the same within.  Mutuality.  Healing is never singular, but always exponential.

What does intention have to do with an attention that heals?  For many, an intention is a mental formation directed.  An intention might start with an idea, but if it is true, it is surrounded by feeling.  It is something that does not wince at not knowing and uncertainty.  Feeling supports intention in a language with non-words the cognitive self cannot understand.  It is a connection to this type of feeling that allows the Witness to suspend the monkey-mind's goings-on, permitting a deeper attention, which saturates an atmosphere with a more relaxed openness.

\

Welcome to the Anthropocene

"Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined recently by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, but has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere." --Wikipedia

I've been almost halted in my tracks as of late with the perception of the incredible dysfunction and seeming corruption this planet, this world and nation are currently suffering.  Everything appears upside down with a grim trajectory imminent.  With the statistical research having prompted the video Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube  to go viral, pointing out the illusion of the public as to how bad the inequality is and the general consensus of the broad sampling, to be a country unlike its current state. This along with the ongoing, endless polarization and lack of sense (but a lot of maneuvering) exhibited by our government which will only negatively impact the already desperate poor, and the seeming lack of ownership of that responsibility (when one is oppressed, we're all oppressed).  My alarm isn't so much over the chaos (there will always be that) but the ongoing and continual fracture that continues to divide us, the smoke screen that keeps us passive despite a practically unanimous understanding (amongst the diverse sampling in the mentioned research) of what is fair and equitable.  There appears no awareness in the relationship of environment to health to inequality, to prejudice and manipulation; only a frenzied barreling toward divisiveness.  Where is the long view?  Where is the world community awareness?

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

--MLK  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

After looking at the research for the above mentioned video (where from were the statistics gleaned, how was the research carried out, what was the sampling?), I was introduced to some material on Anthropocene and a study being done on alternative business practices created from a larger perspective.
 
"The Anthropocene calls to us to recognize that we are all participants in the ‘becoming world’, where everything is interconnected and learning happens in a stumbling, trial and error sort of way. In the spirit of this participation, many offer the experiment as the only way forward: the only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living." (Dumanoski 2009, quoting C.S. Holling)

"At the core of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist political imaginary is the vision of a decentralized movement that connects globally dispersed subjects and places through webs of signification. We view these subjects and places both as sites of becoming and as opportunities for belonging. But no longer can we see subjects as simply human and places as human-centered. The ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene has thrown us onto new terrain. Feminist critiques of hyper-separation are pushing us to move beyond the divisive binaries of human/nonhuman, subject/object, economy/ecology and thinking/ acting. The reframing of our living worlds as vast uncontrolled experiments is inspiring us to reposition ourselves as learners, increasingly open to our interconnections with earth others and more willing to intervene in adventurous ways. In this article we begin to think about more-than-human regional development and regional research collectives that have the potential to perform resilient worlds. For us the project of belonging involves both participating in the vast experiment that is the Anthropocene and connecting deeply to specific places and concerns."

"2013 ingredients of a new world-shaping movement: 1) assemblages that are experimenting with new practices of living and being together, 2) the ubiquity of these assemblages, and 3) the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary. Our working definition of regional development is: how ‘we’ (that is, all the human/nonhuman participants in the becoming world) organize our lives (or how life organizes us) to thrive in porously bounded spaces in which there is some degree of interconnection, a distinctively diverse economy and ecologies, multiple path-dependent trajectories of transformation and inherited forms of rule."

Following are some examples of business practice in relation to this decentralized movement.

"Our first adventure is an experiment in regional development led by individuals and institutions that are motivated in part by an ethic of caring for place and environment. Capturing and democratizing wealth to care for people and environments in place.  The Evergreen Cooperatives are a set of new employee-owned businesses, based on the cooperative model, that hire local residents and contribute to environmental sustainability. In the Greater University Circle of inner city Cleveland, Ohio, investment flows easily into world renowned cultural, educational and health institutions that were originally established by philanthropic industrialists of a past era. Up against these well-endowed institutions are run-down neighborhoods housing some 43,000 residents whose average median household income is under $18,500 per year (Evergreen video 2010). Little of the massive institutional investment in salaries, procurements and real estate development stays within these inner ring neighborhoods. According to Bob Eckhardt (2009), senior vice president of the Cleveland Foundation, each institution acts ‘as if the world ended at its respective property line’. The Cleveland Foundation, established as the ‘world’s first community foundation in 1914, decided in the mid 2000s to concentrate funding and capacity building activities on the Greater University Circle to make sure that ‘as the big institutions grow and prosper, the neighborhood prospers as well’ (Ekhardt 2009). Its mission was to create jobs for local residents in green industries and to generate wealth that would circulate within and help stabilize the neighborhood."

"The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the first experiment to get off the ground. It is an ‘industrial-scale, environmentally advanced, state-of-the-art, commercial laundry providing services to area hospitals and assisted living centers’ (Yates 2009). A feasibility study showed that commercial laundries could pay reasonable wages if they were not under pressure to generate profits for owners and shareholders.  Making the employees owners through a cooperative meant that an employee-owned laundry could immediately offer jobs paying a little better than the going rate for such work, offer better benefits and also be a wealth-builder for employees over the years." (Yates 2009, 17) Gender, Place and Culture."

"We draw here on a video report on the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges by the Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Andy Jordon.  Jordon presents a series of interviews that begin with young corporate executives who trade in Ven, a virtual currency used to ‘buy, share and trade knowledge, goods and services’ (Jordon 2010). Tamara Giltsoff, a sustainable business consultant, is one of the ‘urban influentials’ who are members of Hub Culture, one of many meshworks that have grown out of the social networking capacities of the internet. In selected world cities Hub Culture members flock to Hub Pavilions where they can book space to work, meet, trade non-tangible value and recreate (bookings can be made for a personal chef for 10 or more people, a personal trainer, or a reflexologist/reiki/polarity therapist). Giltsoff describes using Ven: ‘It begins to put a value on intangible exchanges, I guess. I have gained Ven by making introductions to other people or doing favours for people in the network.’ Dan George, a promoter for international music recording stars says: ‘With fluctuating exchange rates you know that if you have a certain amount of Ven you can, sort of, count on it when you are working between countries.’ According to the Hub Culture website (2010): The price of Ven is made up of a weighted basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures and trades against other major currencies at floating exchange rates. Ven is the first currency to include carbon externalities in its pricing factor, making it the first environmentally linked currency in existence."

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.  -- MLK,  Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964

These ancient/new assemblages that experiment with new practices of living and being together,  and the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary is a relief to what we live with now.  It provides hope for a new paradigm of operating.  It gives breath to more of what matters than is currently acknowledged, in the markets and systems currently in place.  Both for health and well being, these sorts of changes are essential for putting into place justice and equality for the masses.

The world is changing.  Environmentally and health-wise it is not tenable for there to be the magnitude of inequities existent in the world (in this country), as there is.  Both the French and Russian Revolutions are historical indicators to this; the Occupy movement is a heads up in our own time.  The paralyzation of governments holding to this untenable way of operating, resistant to a more equitable shift of power, money and influence has only one cataclysmic outcome.

Cooking with Economy and Grace

"Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings.  They usually pick up where something else leaves off….Meal’s ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominoes. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on top; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness.  This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking.”—Tamar Adler

Tamar Adler is a woman after my own heart (and my mother’s heart and grandmother’s as well).  Although I don’t think she mentions the word “relationship” in her newest book, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace: Tamar …, her entire subject matter is about bringing thoughtfulness, consideration and especially awareness to the way we approach food preparation.  Hence, to have an intimate relationship to a basic life activity.

I’ve always been a little self-protective, sometimes embarrassed at my own sense of economy in cooking.  I got this sensibility from my mother (a "Depression baby"), who got it from her mother (a puritan-minded ‘waste not want not’ Irish Catholic from Minnesota, oldest of 11).  However, for me, economizing with food was not based on saving money (entirely), it was more about respecting the life force of the food, the trouble it took to get to me for my benefit, and for this reason, not to discard any of its materiality wantonly.  In the times we live, waste is everywhere.  And I have relaxed my past vigilance somewhat in light of the passive forces that surround me (and which are reflected in me) at every turn, especially around food.  Adler’s book reinforces my previous more caring attitude in relation to food preparation.

“..cooking is an act of gathering in and meting out, a coherent story that starts with the lighting of a burner, the filling of a pot, and keeps going as long as we like.”

Adler’s love and respect for the raw ingredients she cooks and the process is apparent.  She speaks about the denser marrow in free range chicken legs, humanely treated animals (not necessarily the ones labeled ‘organic’, often an industrialized product) as opposed to  the factory farmed variety.  And though they might cost three times the amount of industrial-raised chickens, it makes more sense to purchase and prepare them.  They make heartier stock, are more nutritious; it’s worth the money.  Her viewpoint is not austere, but full of good common sense.  It is how every cook worth their salt has cooked through time.  This is because cooks through the ages love the (intuitive?) relationship they enter when they handle, consider and partner with the raw elements of a meal.  There is no unworthy aspect of anything born, raised and harvested for the benefit of our bodies.  What limits us is our common sense, imagination, patience and memory.  “… at the bottom of any pot of vegetables or beans or grains or meat are unrepeatable flavors themselves, all the alchemy of today’s cooking distilled into a liquid you can neatly pour into a glass jar.”  And use later (if you remember it is there!).

“…. We don’t need to be professionals to cook well… we need to shop and cook like people learning to cook, like what we are—people who are hungry.”

The way we have become related (or unrelated) to the food we ingest is a mirror to the life we lead.  We often fall into the mire of one end of the spectrum or another: on one hand, uncaring where the raw product comes from, indifference to how one marries ingredients, unawareness to color, texture, harmony and balance. There frequently is an obsession with making a meal as time limited in its preparation as possible, as well as eating it equally as fast.  On the other hand, the bored and thrill-seeking turn to a fussy, fancy, over the top use of exotic ingredients and novel cuisine interpretations.  There are lots of ways we manifest our inner fragmentation:  this loss of relationship is a loss of interest in something very basic, a wholesome curiosity to what Is.  Our need to eat regularly is an honorable connection to nature, eclipsing the tendency to lean toward convenience. Adler's warm and witty appreciation of this connection is hearty nourishment to the soul.

“Catching one’s tail [the often ‘tail’ end of components used in a meal] is a curious business. We watch dogs in their constant, fruitless chases all the time.  Plato thought tail chasing not only practical but divine.  He wrote that the mystical symbol for infinity a snake swallowing its tail, was the perfect being; it made what it ate and ate what it made, needing nothing but its own existence for perpetual life.”

 

Active Listening

This blog pretty much centers around  the concept that health and healing can't be separated from relationship; relationship being the container that holds all healing and therapeutic collaboration.  This idea of relationship depends on a deeper listening, also called Active Listening or Therapeutic Listening.  There are several versions of what this is.  There is an actual teaching structure to learn:  ActiveListening.  There is another version that includes an awareness of body language.  In addition, my own  sense of this includes individual and collective energy awareness.

The problem with spelling-out and structuring something as natural as listening, is the danger that the structure and learning of it becomes mechanical.  It doesn't take into account the unknown moments and energy cues, the subtle energy exchanges that can't be qualified nor quantified.  Mechanical is the antithesis of what Listening is. Most of these teaching models do emphasize cultivating "awareness", awareness being mentioned as an almost aside in the methods. But awareness seems to be the crux of listening (and hence, the center of most understanding); awareness is dimensional and requires a commitment to engage more of oneself.  Most of these methods include sounding back word for word what another person has said.  This is helpful for the other person (they hear their own words back and know they've been received) and it's helpful for the "hearing" person as well.  That particular "parroting" tactic if primarily used in an attempt to listen, can be (in my experience) trying especially if it is done automatically and mechanically.  Nevertheless, it is not a bad first step in relating.

Like most things, one can be instructed to learn listening skills.  Also, as in most things, a foundation in skills involving knowledge is partial until an understanding ensues.  An understanding transpires with a lot of practice.  A practice which not only includes the foundational skills, but a building of attention, awareness, humility and patience.  And also importantly, a curiosity.  Curiosity is an imperative part of the process because, once curiosity is absent to another's manifestation (or your own in the engagement), humility goes out the window and judgement moves in.  At this point, the delicate, multi-dimensional act of listening becomes something else closer to reaction.

Active listening isn't something we do with our hearing organ (ears) alone.  It includes all of me.  It actually means to have an active attention, something none of the skill-building methods mention.  Probably because an active attention is challenging to cultivate and involves parts of oneself that are new to that activity.  How do we become practiced in awareness?  How do we build a layered and more acute attention?

All practice starts with oneself.  The Active Listening literature calls for allowing for silences and empty space in exchanges.  So it is with oneself.  Many people cultivate this through meditation, taking time to sit quietly, which activates other more subtle parts of oneself that become witness to what goes on when one is sitting still, sensitizing, breathing more fully.  These more subtle parts don't get a chance to be "practiced" unless these quiet moments are allowed.  They don't come forth readily without that room being made ready, the presence of a more expansive and spacious territory that often is accompanied by acceptance and empathy.  Meditation and a relationship to our own nature is not a cultural more in this country (although may be becoming so).  If it was culturally more "usual", perhaps these practices would be built into our lives and our neighbor's lives.  But they are not, so instigating it in oneself can be a struggle without a community's support.

Another aspect of a deeper listening which is not mentioned in Active Listening literature is the fact that listening is a dual action.  It's an attention on oneself as well as on another.  Practicing being with oneself while taking in tone, words and general energy of another is tricky.  It's a bit like riding a wave.  You're with yourself one moment, than in the next moment, find you have dipped down into the wave's tunnel (lapsed attention), in danger of  becoming attached to something the person you are listening to has said or indicated energy-wise or in body language.  It's a dance of energetically moving back and forth, finding the alignment between oneself and another.  And to further complicate things, there are always the inevitable distractions.  Other noises and movement present as well as the reactions that occur in oneself and the other.  It's usual to be taken by all or any of these things.  Our bodies are lightning rods to energy sources, extremely sensitive to the smallest manifestation.  Listening becomes complex.  Attention is tenuous.  This practice is dependent on the renewing of the curiosity place in oneself, the place that is interested and intrigued by the small and opaque, by the contrasts and paradoxes without getting caught up or attached to them.

Because listening is complicated and layered, to try listening experiments with inanimate objects or animals before intentionally taking on other human beings can be helpful.  Sitting quietly with objects or pets and watching/listening to the play of energy, thoughts, associations going on within oneself and the thing's response, simplifies the listening experience.  Feeling into the life and nature of the thing that is more simple than human beings, gives us a chance to experience this deeper listening in ourselves, to ourselves and to another.  Exploring a sensitized energy exchange in this circumstance is helpful in building a stronger awareness, attention and listening capacity in oneself.

To practice "listening" with and to inanimate objects might seem an eccentric thing to attempt.  But everything has materiality and all materiality has energy and therefore its own truth.  Doing this sort of exercise with say, a door knob, is revealing.  The door knob has an energy of its own and has been influenced by people energies (touch).  From a sensitized place, its materiality speaks (subtle) volumes, its energy is noteworthy.  Giving an object a quiet attention creates an interesting relationship to it; the nuanced "listening" factor revealed.

Therapeutic Listening - A Total Approach
Power to Change – 10 Tips to Effective & Active Listening Skills
Active Listening - Steps and Instructions
The Center for Nonviolent Communication | Center for Nonviolent .

 

Science Set Free

As is everything else, science is changing.  Scientists are now recognizing their playground has been constricted by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas.  Should science be a belief-system, or an exploration?  Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D (Rupert Sheldrake Online - Homepage). is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including  Science Set Free (September 2012), is one such scientist who is turning the dogmas of science into questions, opening up startling new possibilities.   For example, he extrapolates about several basic science beliefs:  the “laws of nature” may be habits that change and evolve. The Fundamental Constants may not be constant. Minds may extend far beyond brains. The total amount of matter and energy may be increasing. Memories may not be stored as traces in our brains.* 

For many of today’s foremost scientists, the world is a strictly material place, made up of dead matter, with no intrinsic purpose, value or meaning. Consciousness is seen as solely a physical function of the brain. Sheldrake demonstrates that these principles are not incontrovertible truths, but rather assumptions that have become dangerously constrictive to the progress of real scientific discovery. With a skepticism characteristic of true scientific inquiry, he sets his sights on ten fundamental dogmas of the science, dismantling each to make room for startling new possibilities. Sheldrake is pro-science, stating, “I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them."*   

Sheldrake compellingly argues that long-held assumptions are now limiting scientific progress and preventing us from effectively meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. The belief system governing conventional scientific thinking has become an act of faith. His recent book points the way to a return to true science, a system based on inquiry and skepticism not blind acceptance. Some of these "blind acceptances"  he explores:

Are Memories Stored as Material Traces? Repeated failures to find physical evidence of memories etched on the brain suggest another approach is needed. Seeing memory as a resonant phenomenon, which explains the observed phenomena of collective, cultural, and generational memory, belies the idea that memory decays at death, and has profound implications for both teaching and evolution*

Are the Laws of Nature Fixed? Making universal assumptions on the basis of pre-evolutionary philosophies limits our capacity to understand change and evolution. The “laws” of nature are really more like habits—for example, crystals grow as they do because they have grown that way before.

Is the Total amount of Matter and Energy Always the Same? In the last 30 years the total amount of matter and energy recognized by physics has increased more than 20-fold. Dark matter and dark energy, whose nature is literally obscure, are now believed to make up more than 96 percent of reality. Can any of this newly-discovered energy be tapped, with revolutionary effects on the world economy?

Deepak Chopra, who published this last book of Sheldrake's, speaks warmly of his work in his blog (Deepak Chopra - Science Set Free):

"Sheldrake's essential point is that science needs setting free from ten blind dogmas. These dogmas embrace a true belief system as much as Roman Catholicism or any other faith. Behind the daily activity of gathering data, science assumes certain things about reality that, according to Sheldrake, are unsupportable. The first dogma, for example, holds that the universe is mechanical. If that is so, then everything in the universe is also mechanical, including human beings - or to use a phrase from the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, we are "lumbering robots." From a scientist's perspective, to understand everything that you need to know about human beings, you only have to tinker with all the mechanical parts of genes and the brain until there are no more secrets left.

Clearly such a view leaves no room for the soul, which becomes a wispy illusion that needs to be swept away. But then, so does the self, because there is no region of the brain that contains "I," a person. As long as "I" is a hallucination formed by complex neural circuitry, one can throw out - or reduce to mechanical operations - love, beauty, truth, compassion, honor, devotion, faith, and so on, the whole apparatus that makes a person's life feel valuable. A random universe has no purpose; therefore, giving lumbering robots a purpose is dubious."

Chopra makes a wide swing to the other pole in the above statement. Would it be possible that there lies a paradoxical truth; that is, the universe is consumately automatic in every way AND also has a mostly undisclosed potential for a resonating, full intelligence?  The impending possibility that there is no fixed "I", only the potential of one-- and truth, compassion, devotion can be as mechanical as anything else, but again, because of this universal possibility contained in consciousness, it could be otherwise.  Perhaps we are coming to: these conflicting truths exist simultaneously in all and everything. We and the universe as "systems",  embody both mechanicality and an extremely sensitive organism with a layered consciousness.

Chopra continues, "The second dogma he overturns is the belief that matter is unconscious. The whole universe is filled with atoms and molecules that have no connection to intelligence, creativity, or meaning. The problem here is that nobody can explain how atoms and molecules learned to think. No matter how closely you examine the water, glucose, and electrolyte salts in the human brain, you can't find the point where these molecules became conscious. How come the sugar water in a can of Coke isn't thinking and feeling while the sugar water in your cerebral cortex is? For science to brush this problem aside as mere metaphysics doesn't make it go away.

The third dogma is that the laws of nature are fixed and haven't changed since the Big Bang. The fourth is that the amount of matter and energy in the cosmos is always the same. And so the list grows, building toward a shocking conclusion: Science has been explaining a mirage and calling it reality. Sheldrake isn't speaking as a mystic or an enemy of science - far from it. He has kept up with the most current findings in physics and biology. Among these findings are some shattering discoveries, as far as rigid dogmas are concerned:

- The universe operates more like a living organism than a machine.
- The existence of dark matter and dark energy topples the conservation of matter and energy. Because the "dark" dimension operates outside the visible universe, the notion of fixed laws of nature suddenly looks wobbly, too.
- Purpose-driven evolution may explain life better than the random mutation of classic Darwinism.
- Genes, far from being fixed and deterministic, are involved in a far more fluid interaction than anyone ever supposed.

Sheldrake works with many more intriguing discoveries; he has a delightfully inquisitive, penetrating mind. He also seems unflappable in the face of the howling protests he has raised for thirty years, beginning when none of the above findings was even suspected. If science weren't a dogmatic belief system, there would be rational responses to his challenges rather than scorn from true believers. But a major shift is occurring. Under its title in the UK, The Science Delusion (playing off Dawkins' best-selling The God Delusion) Sheldrake's new book is getting positive reviews in high places. Even more promising, a new generation of younger scientists, who are trained (unlike Dawkins) in the shifting new realities of physics, biology, and genetics, is actually intrigued by a universe permeated with consciousness, intelligence, and meaning.

Sheldrake is merciless when it comes to dogmas being preached as if they were truths, but he has a special gentleness that rises above controversy and ill-tempered arguments. "Science is more free, more fun, and more interesting," he says, "when we turn dogmas into questions instead." Can anyone seriously disagree? The beautiful part of reading Science Set Free is the Aha! moments that come unexpectedly. All of us are living with dogmas that we accept as truths. When one of these is overturned, there's an initial gasp, soon followed by a rush of exhilaration. The point of life, as Sheldrake shows so well, isn't to set science free but to set humans free, because we are more precious than any of the false gods we have created."

 Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including  Science Set Free (September 2012). He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, Principal Plant Physiologist at ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Hyderabad, India, and from 2005-2010 the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for research on unexplained human abilities, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. His web site is www.sheldrake.org

Much of the above material was gleaned from Science Set Free *book releases.  His book can be found: 

Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery: Rupert Sheldrake ...

 

The Body as Political Forum

In my posts Violence: a Cautionary Truth and Use: The Alexander Technique, I broach the subjects of the impact on the body by external influence.  In other past posts I've supposed the malleability of the psych/body to cultural influence and the often disempowerment of self to these forces.  In an article, The Architecture of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E in Performa Magazine (http://performamagazine.tumblr.com/post/33854559841/), the suggestion our bodies are a political forum because of their materiality ties these deductions together.  Author Cassie Peterson, puts forth some provocative conjecture:  "The body is a material representation of the ways we exist in relation to the social (dis)order. In her essay 'How Can We Have a Body?: Desires and Corporeality' (2006), psychoanalyst Susie Orbach writes, 'All our known ways of being create physical and neural pathways that become constitutive of self, not just on a psychological level but on a physical, material level.'  Much like Foucault, she believes that our bodies are constituted by the social discourses that shape them. She asserts, 'bodies are made, not born,' meaning that we become our 'selves' through repetition of language and social practices. Accordingly, E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E begins with a performer asking us, 'What’s the difference between uncirculated money and heart disease?'

Nothing. There is no difference. Social discord manifests as personal dis-ease. The social body is becoming in the physical body. "

a stylized (socialized?) image of the human form

She continues, "Our relationship to our bodies mimics the perpetual privatization of space and resources. We are socialized to dominate our bodies, to 'own' them, and shape them to meet idealized consumer standards. In 1975, Foucault wrote an essay called 'Docile Bodies,' in which he concluded that the more a body is coerced by dominant social forces, the more equipped it is to reproduce these same disciplinary forces unto itself and others. The more 'productive', economically viable, and groomed for service our bodies become, the less political force we have because we have become isolated in narratives of individuality and exploitation, ensnared in the competition and tyranny of the market." 

This is a powerful and meaningful conjecture.  Much of F.M. Alexander's work was about healing the impact of this relationship between the natural inner and the unnatural outer influences.  But it usually takes much physical pain and kinesthetic dysfunction for a person to seek help in addressing the negative impact of the external world on their organism.  For those who don't turn to a modality like the Alexander Technique to right the wrongs of this influence, doesn't mean they don't need it or their bodies aren't under this social influence.  Trend and fashion are at our heels (literally; five inch stiletto heels being the rigueur of urban women), at our hem lines, in the trends of cultural cuisine and the neighborhoods we choose to identify and live in.  As is indicated in Peterson's, Orbach's and Foucault's writing the apparel we cloth ourselves in force us to have a relationship with our body, for better or for worse.  Not only does it actually change the way we move and behave in our bodies, it can't help but change our perception of social issues such as poverty and probably disables our awareness of pretty much everything but the superficial. To the impacted (us), this veneer becomes our reality.  Social context becomes political.

Pina Bausch embodying the "let go"

As might be indicated by Foucault's writing on these dominant social forces, the "perfecting" of our physiques through rigorous "health" regimens is part and parcel of this concept, especially when done for appearance.  This holds true for the perfecting of anything;  a newly minted resident doctor once confided to me she was worried the medical training (which would include the social influence of the training) she had received would kill the right impulse she had in becoming the doctor she had hoped to be.  So it is with the exacting training of being an artist and maybe more so, a dancer or musician.  

The politicizing of the art of dance begins with the rigorous training and even "branding" of the type of dancer made.  A dancer doesn't become the artist until (s)he lets the training go.  It is only in the melding of the natural self to the almost militaristic trained self when the honest, authentic self is revealed and the art of it surfaces.  Perhaps I speak of "performer" more than artist in this way, as I am not at all sure that a non-trained person is not a dancer-artist. I just know that the relinquishing of the material one's cells have adopted by virtue of a long and perfecting process (training) need to be surrendered before the genuine truth of movement can be known and seen.  All those jetes and arabesques need to become fodder for the natural movement/expression impulses waiting in the wings.

All of this is an interesting premise in relation to nature, pointing once again to the enormous sensitivity of the organism.  If our bodies are indeed "made and not born" and they are "constituted by the social discourses that shape them", we as material beings are as powerlessly impacted by our surrounds and social influence as we are by the automatic release of hormones coursing through our blood stream.  There is indeed no difference between uncirculated money and heart disease.

So, are we damned to "become isolated in narratives of individuality and exploitation, ensnared in the competition and tyranny of the market."?  What makes us free? (Is that an impossible premise?)  Even though they too are subject to social influence and hormones (among other things), I turn (once again) to the young child for perspective; they are somewhat more free then the general population, social indoctrination not a huge factor until age five or so.  Young children rest in themselves and their all consuming interest in Being and response.   Their worlds are not huge yet (or is it miniscule?).  They are Nature, heavily weighted in what Is; the body's process, sensation, the ephemeral.  They are working on being indoctrinated, but they are not there yet.  They are a little more free than you and me.  What freedom they enjoy is one we could return to (partially) when we return to our more authentic nature also in our body's process, sensation and the moment.  Unlike children, we have a more global, mature and experienced intelligence to support the notion of a freedom.  It is dependent on an integrated intelligence, meaning an all of me that is informed, body, mind and spirit.  Like the highly trained dancer or medical resident, a letting go of materiality is required in order for there to be a return to the authentic, a hope for a life to become art.  And this is not an end product, a static performance, but a rich and moving process dependent on a cultivated awareness, deep interest and patience.

Cultvating Sacred Space

We will undoubtedly at some point find ourselves in our life not relating to the space we occupy.  Maybe not at the  moment we move into a space, but sometime down the line we lose relationship with where we live.  We take for granted environments we fall in love with, much like the human/animal loved ones we purport to cherish.  We  may set up our sacred spaces with that love and honoring vibration present, but then we stop paying attention.  We stop paying attention to ourselves, our changes and this manifests in our environments.We internally become static.  Our external space in turn also becomes static.

I discuss this at length in the post Place, Space, Materiality and Health.  I hope in this post to expand on that previous post and discuss the relevant relationship of space and objects to myself and the reflection of my state to my space and what I surround myself with and how that relates to my well being.

As was mentioned in previous posts, everything is energy.  What happens when my sense of relationship with myself becomes thin or tenuous,  my sense of relationship to that which is outside of me becomes same.  As I renew myself regularly with hygiene practices, nutritious meals, clean water, movement and spirit renewal in regular prayer/meditation or play time, my external space needs to be considered similarly.  Space carries energy; objects carry energy.  This energy not only reflects on me but influences me.  We are on a continuous give and receive energy loop in relation to our insides and outsides.  When we break an aspect of this circulation by allowing stasis to move in, the rest of the cycle's rhythm and flow is arrested.  Our "castles" and "kingdoms" no longer are a place of haven and refuge, but a place that leaches on our energy and sense of peace.

Looking at space in relation to our well being is really interesting.  It reliably brings up my edges. My edges around my needs and wants, around the things I have and don't have, my longings and my discomforts. Everything I grapple with inside somehow manifests on the outside.  If it is one's tendency to become overwhelmed, looking at one's surrounds will probably elicit the same response in either an external emotional reaction or a shut down response.  A decade ago an exercise in maintaining an empty space helped me to look and consider space in an entirely different perspective.

I found myself with an almost empty room in my home and this was exciting.  I always wanted my own space a room of my own.  I had shared space with others for forever.  In my dreams, this room of my own would be empty.  When I found myself with this opportunity,  I made a pact that I would maintain the emptiness no matter what.  It took me six months of struggling to stay close to this wish to actualize it.  Not only did I have to fend off infidel household members who wanted to fill the space, I surprisingly found I was guilty of the same inclinations. There was no good reason not to fill it and I couldn't explain away to others or myself this pact.  But I gave my admittedly feeble reasons anyway ("just because").  And with some adamant vigilance the empty room stayed empty.  I meditated there.  I visited it often and wondered at the blank walls and open corners.  I rolled around on the floor frequently and layed in the sun spot which arrived between 3 and 4pm on winter days through the little attic window . And with the pleasure came the pain.  Those six months were very uncomfortable a lot of the time;  empty space, like a blank canvas is intimidating.  Initially, there is a lot of pressure to "do" something with it, to make it something, to identify the space.  It was uncomfortable for me to just let it be what it was, empty. I wanted to at least have a picture or a stool or little table there-- anything.  Letting it be empty was a direct reflection of what it was for me to allow an empty room to exist in myself, to allow space in myself to breathe.  It was a wonderful, revealing six months including more than a few moments of agonizing ambivalence. And with less and less struggle it stayed empty.  And now after that little-big exercise, creating and maintaining empty space for myself has been easier.

I mention this story because it illustrates how the animate and inanimate energetically move through periods together, influencing and creating relationship.  My usual self discounts this.  It doesn't recognize the relationship, the vitality and the drain that can be present in the relationship, the give and the take the influence on a self, on an intimate atmosphere.

Looking at personal space and making changes isn't something that should be quick or immediate.  Respect for the space is required and that means spending some time there without doing anything but sensitizing oneself to the qualities of the room.  How does the light move through, how do the walls, floor and ceiling respond to that?  What are the dynamic qualities in the room?  Where is it's magnetism, the place that draws my attention over and over again?  Like everything else in my life (hopefully) I need to make a relationship with it.  This means I don't bulldoze ahead and "do" stuff to the room.  I consider the room as I consider myself.  I take time with it and in it.

What do I need from the room? Is it a place I need a sense of repose and relaxation or one of stimulation?  Is it a community space, where I hope to gather others?  Is it a private place for my own beauty to show, a place for me to self-appreciate?  And what does the room need from me?  A warmth because it faces north? Help in finding its spaciousness due to its low ceilings? A grounding due to its odd dimensions or many corners?  The function of a room can change or can (or need to) harness several different functions.  How do I consider this in the quiet of my examination of the room?  Everything, including space has a certain energetic capacity.  How can I think about, be with the capacity of this room and help it keep its integrity (keeping my own in the process)?

When I respect myself and a space, the energies of both join and I am informed in a clear way as to how to proceed.  The creative that lives in us both is the informant to the color and objects necessary to create the whole that is asking to be met. This is an exciting and exquisitely profound experience of being matched and bringing what can be a healing to both self and space.  Taste and aesthetic have nothing to do with it.  It's about what is right for the partnership at the time.

When I am close to myself and the room in all these considerations, there is no right or wrong, there is just what is and what must be. When I am not close to myself, I behave mechanically, I lose my thoughtfulness, my consideration of myself and the room.  My intimate, personal space of repose becomes cluttered with things I "love" but which energetically takes up a lot of soul/psych space.  This largely occupied space becomes about these things not about me and the rooms purpose.  This intimate breathing, dreaming space is considerably diminished because of these other energetic occupants.  We have to make choices for the room (table or altar) and myself on behalf of the relationship.  It's an interesting exercise to test for yourself how much (psychic/soul/physical) capacity the space has to accommodate objects before it begins to not feel like the relationship which is required now between you and the space.

Cultivating sacred space requires us to practice this type of cultivation within ourselves first. Allowing breathing spaces within, opens those private, intimate spaces inside ourselves creating a respect for the small, quiet and unexpected. That sensitivity creates a relationship that then can be recognized outside oneself.  Outer sacred space is but a reflection of one's inner sacred space. 

Place, Space, Materiality and Health

Everything is material.  Everything is energy.  Everything has Qi. A closet, a room, a house are layers of embedded self.  Our "stuff" is charged with energy.  Likewise, most of our other stuff crammed into closets, buried in corners never to see the light of day, are energetically static, becoming a drain on our personal energy, and the collective energy of the space. A room, a house, objects are living, breathing things.  They bring life or they don't.  What animates them is my relationship to them.

Besides for hygiene purposes, we regularly bathe to clear our inner and outter energy fields.  Usually, we relax in a bath or shower, breathe deeper (moving the internal energies) and cleanse that which has energetically stuck to us on a given day.  Why would it be any different in a world where there is Oneness, even in regards to inanimate objects?  That which we surround ourselves and live with needs to be cared for in a similar way in which we care for our bodies.

Our materiality needs to be met, attended to.  Things that remain broken and uncared for reflect our own defunct state.  Things that are in order support a life, allowing it to work well.

What makes us so attached to the things we own, the things we don't really want or need?  Why don't we want to take care of what we have, what possessions we surround ourselves with?  What makes us hold onto more than we can handle, more than what we can attend to?

What does it mean to attend to an object, to exchange energy with something that is material (usually inanimate)?  Giving attention to an object is an exchange of energy; it acknowledges the space it takes up and therefore the space at large.  We create a place with our attention to that which we live with.  Looking at a picture, admiring it or disliking it, moving one's memory in regards to it is "owning" it and reaffirming one's relationship to it. Running a cloth or duster over objects is recognizing them, recognizing their need to have attention.  In the act of care, we acknowledge our relationship to it.  Similarly, our act of neglect recognizes our lack of relationship to the object.

What is the first thing I wake up to?  An altar created with prized objects that affirm their worth, my worth, that changes periodically depending on where I am in myself?  Or do I wake to a pile of dusty books? unfolded laundry? spent flowers in a tired vase? Papers stacked on a side table I don't want to deal with? Is the first thing I see upon waking energizing, hopeful, an impression that beckons my life to this new day ---or is it another  unattended "thing" to be ignored for the millionth time, unseen, unloved, uncared for?  This connection to inanimate objects are real and vibrant relationships that manifest all types of energy through my life and effect me and my health every day and every night.

How do I take care?  Where don't I?  How is that related to my present day reality? Does the pattern of attention (or in-attention) follow me from room to room?  Where is the place of choice?  Having choice as to what is in my life and what is not in my life. Is the collection of objects or clothes or shoes a decision not to make a choice?  Accruing materiality.  Crowding inner and outter space.  Denying Place. Not facing the energy gotten and given by such things, not acknowledging the depletion, sometimes depression these things (by no fault of their own) exert.  A type of negativity is rendered  because of my refusal to validate the relationship I have with them. How many decades has it been since I pulled that book off the shelf?  How many years ago did I last wear that dress?

Forget the psychology of objects, and "owning".  Remember the energetic dynamics that play on and impact one's life with these things and the subsequent layers of memory, influence and connection created. Engage with the concept of being a "good householder".  One's health depends upon it.