Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Whole Body Thinking



Destemido and Sedutor



There is something about where I live that makes me feel less than human.
There is something about where I live that makes me not mind that feeling.
There is something about where I live that makes feeling less than human seem like more.

What I know about being "human" has been culture-shaped by the circumstances of my birth
And the "human superiority" world view of the people I have been raised among.
Where I live has taught me that what I know about being human has limited me as an experiential being.

Here in the wilderness, among the horses and the wind and the throbbing gnosis of the landscape,
What humans think of what it means to be human is of little interest.
So I set it aside, quite easily...


Altamiro

Fascination comes from sensing no separation between that which sees through my eyes
And that which sees through the eyes of Altamiro,
And that which sees through air breathed in and breathed out,
And that which sees through the sensations of cold air up warm nostrils.

Esperanda

Where I live one realizes thought comes with the entire body -
Whole body thinking.
Whole body thinking makes the brain subordinate.
Whole body taking in and giving out information,
Whole body making determinations of what action - or inaction is appropriate in the moment.

Where I live there is never a sense of boredom!
Where I live there is endless creativity,
Even (especially!) among the wandering grasses.

What a delight to be part of such poetry!


Fading and Ousado


"Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.  A nuanced creativity is necessary to orient and forage in a world of ever-changing forces.  Equipped with proclivities and patterned behaviours genetically inherited from its ancestors, each wild creature must nonetheless adapt such propensities to the elemental particulars of the place and moment where it finds itself--from an unexpected absence of water in the usual watering hole, to a sudden abundance of its favourite food.  No matter how precise are the instructions tucked into its chromosomes, they can hardly have encoded, in advance, the exact topology of the present moment.  And hence a modicum of creative engagement in its immediate circumstance is simply unavoidable for any organism that moves (whether an elephant or an amoeba)."  --David Abram from BECOMING ANIMAL/An Earthly Cosmology