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Finding each other instead of our self

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”   D. H. Lawrence.

Michelle wrote : That kind of acceptance of the world is an amazing thing to contemplate.

Somewhere along the road to finding deeper spiritual meaning in life I was taught to believe the path to self-improvement required looking inside and finding my true “self”.  My inner self was unique, separate from others around me.  Only in finding my true self could I find the way to improve my life.  But over years spent looking inward I’ve come to realize the faulty premise of this idea is the existence of a separate ‘true’ self.  There is no separate self.  There is only awareness of being alive, in relation to others.

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh wrote an article titled “Forget mindfulness, stop trying to find yourself and start faking it.”  Puett teaches Chinese Philosophy at Harvard.  They wrote ‘We are multifaceted, messy selves who develop by looking outward, not inward. Our personalities are formed through everything we do: how we interact with others, our reactions to things, the activities we pursue. Each of us is a complicated being bumping up against other complicated beings all day. Each encounter draws out different aspects. Who we are consists of behavior patterns and emotional ruts we’ve fallen into over time – but that means we also consist of numerous possibilities of what we can become.”  Dr. Puett summarizes these ideas in a TED talk [Why it’s better to stop searching for your true self | Michael Puett | TEDxNashville].

I’ve come to realize the validity of his message, perhaps the same thinking D.H. Lawrence expressed in the quote above.  When we look at the world we  experience as being connected to instead of divided from others, life emerges as a flow of energies ever-changing and dynamic.  We stop feeling that we are separate and divided from others.   Each moment who “I” am is changing…my feelings about what is happening are changing, my thoughts and ideas about what is happening are changing, and my relationship with others is changing.  The belief that there is an eternal “I”, distinct and separate from others is false.  We are not something separate from the world we live in.  Others around us are not something to conquer or overcome, to win against in competition.  We feel most alive through our connections with others.  Our relationships give the richest meaning to living.

The bird does not feel sorry for itself, because it does not see it’s self as separate.  There is no “self” for whom to feel sorry.  There is only the cold, the branch, and the release into death.  That kind of acceptance is an amazing thing to contemplate!

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Unexpected Acquaintances

I was walking behind the barn recently and spotted these large shelf mushrooms growing on an old log. I looked them up and found they are probably a type of inedible polypore, a family of wood decomposers.  That makes sense because of where they were growing. What struck me was their distinct funnel shape, which allows them to catch rain water and direct it towards their base.  I suppose seeing a mushroom more than a foot wide also made them quite distinctive.

Ever since this brief encounter I have been thinking about mushrooms and mycelium.  I even had a dream about mushrooms and when I awoke I felt a strong desire to read more about fungi so that I could understand them better.  Years ago I bought a book entitled “Mycelium Running, How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World” by Paul Stamets.  Now I feel impelled to start reading it, a strong desire to know more about the fungi that live in the woods and soil around my home.

This unexpected encounter makes me want to reach out and connect with this form of life, and perhaps the feeling is mutual.  I know that may sound strange, but perhaps strange is how we would describe communication with another species.  And why don’t we believe that life around us might try to connect with us?  Aren’t we as much a part of their world as they are a part of ours?  Isn’t that what anima/soul is all about, connecting with others as we explores the world around us?

Most humans disregard communication with non-humans because we don’t think plants or animals are intelligent.  We often disregard the feelings or consciousness of others.  Feelings are too subjective, improvable, and unscientific!  We only consider communication valid if it comes in the form of speech, sounds that are made in a pattern of words that we can understand.  Animals and birds communicate with sound but not in a language we understand.

Plants, fungi, and microbes communicate chemically in ways that the cells of our body can understand.  Researchers have found that microbes on our skin ‘talk’ to and teach our skin cells, train our immune system to recognize pathogens.  Microbes in our gut ‘talk’ with intestinal cells influencing digestion.  Perhaps the question we need to ponder is “How would life communicate with us if it didn’t use the language or made the sounds we understand?”

As we move through a world made up of climate controlled, human designed spaces, how can we expect to encounter other life forms?  If you were born blind and deaf, can you imagine how difficult it would be to learn to speak and communicate? By staying within the safe, comfortable spaces of home, car and office are we not limiting our ability to develop communication skills with life other than human?

Imagine a world ‘out there’ that is full of life, waiting for you to encounter it. What acquaintances might you discover in a walk through the woods, on a path beyond the edge of grass?  What would other forms of life tell us if we could only be patient enough to listen without expectation? What might we learn if we ‘listened’ with our feelings and empathy, and not just our ears? What might our heart hear that our head missed?

I wonder if other species of life on earth are aware of the extinctions occurring, of the climate that is changing.  Are we aware of how we affect the world with our application of chemicals to lawns, where our sewage goes when we flush the toilet,  the air pollution that spews from our vehicles and buildings?  What might the other species on earth try to communicate to humans if only we could understand?

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Welcome to Anima/Soul

It’s a work in progress.
I’m still figuring out how WordPress and this particular web theme works.
But what I’d like is for this to be a place to talk and think together about how we can see ourselves and the world differently. More accurately, better. How we can break down some really out-dated barriers between the human and the not-human, nature and not-nature, the spiritual and the worldly, between you and me. How we can find and nurture commonality (same-ness amid difference) not just among humans, but among human and non-human. How we might assemble the bits and pieces of a way of life with staying power – the shards of pottery, the foot-prints in the dust…
What would you like to see here? What would you like to talk about?

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