Re'membering' The Secret Whispers of The World
To all the sweet and powerful murmurs we do not hear...
Speak to Me of Weaving: From Human Hands to Mechanical Engines
Time flows on with unrelenting power, and its primary currency is not seconds, minutes, or hours, but ‘change’. All things are in flux, transforming from state to state, and shifting from season to season. The ‘fates’ have woven and continue to weave a complex tale on earth, of which human life is but one thread, and in 1760, life on this planet took a serious turn, as the industrial revolution was born.
The symbol most often attributed to the ‘weavers of fate’ is a loom, and ironically enough the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in 1764 as James Hargreaves conceived the idea for a ‘yarn-spinning’ machine called the Spinning Jenny.
This was a machine meant to weave yarn at a rate faster than the human hand. This one move dramatically orientated us away from the human relationship to forces moving through the world, to mechanics, maxed-out quotas, and unrelenting productivity.
To offer perspective, it allowed one human to work on 8-10 spools of yarn, where once, there had been only one.
This seems like an expansion, but yet, as Newtonian physics and Daoist alike contend, there is an equal and opposite reaction to every action; thus as our capacity to produce with the aid of our mechanical allies, our focus shrank along with our broader sense of what was important.
Production was ‘dis-membered’ from a humane rhythm.
Shortly after, the steam engine was born, and off the races we were. Suddenly the skills that were once critical to our survival and honed over eons of deep time were not quite as important. I speak not of making fires, hunting, and shelter construction, but of the skill of perception and attunement to nature itself.
This one event has not only altered the face of the planet itself by ‘terraforming’ it for a species of machines, but it has also shifted the very sense of the human beings’ place in the cosmos, by altering how information is prioritized, processed, and then conceived. Thus, is the nature of change.
Although there have been many gifts that have come with the Industrial Revolution, and I enjoy hot running water on demand just like most contemporary people, I also apprehend a ‘loss’ of something essential and vital.
Something that is not ‘gone’ but more so in hibernation like a bear in deep winter. Yes, the new skills of being attuned to machines, binary code, and traffic signs are important for those of us living in modern times, and, we can also reawaken this dormant sense: to re-member the secret whispers of the world. Why? For it is our birthright to hear and speak with the whole.
Selecting for A ‘Different Type’ of Information Flow
A popular opinion that has grown into prominence over the recent years, is that we live in an age of access to ‘more information’ than we ever have before. I understand this point of view, and once upon a time, I held it too.
However, these days, I am less sure about the notion of a generalized ‘more’ and apprehend it to be a focus on ‘more of a different kind’ of information. Since the Industrial Revolution, (and likely a few hundred years before it) we have begun to select for the ‘accounting’ aspects of information flow. Highly rational, logical, logistical, mechanical, and numerical forms of information.
Even since the time of our Paleolithic Ancestors, we have had access to incredible amounts of information. Megatons of it.
Information is not just symbolic and intellectual.
In a recent podcast, I speak about how the impact of waves can teach, for every buffet is information flow teaching the organism how to know the currents of the ocean. When a serious practitioner of Judo picks you up and slams you on the ground, or an expert in Muay Thai kicks you, they are giving you information. When a dog attacks you, they are transmitting information to you. This is an (in-‘form’-ation) universe.
The sun’s gargantuan solar flares, the moons metered and measured monthly cycle, the flow of water in rivers, the lightning bolt in the sky, the hummingbird’s heartbeat: information.
This kind of ‘instruction’ and ‘data’ is not conceptual. It’s not rational. It’s not linear’. The primary language of the universe is energetic, and this can be felt during meditative processes, stalking a rabbit through the woods in the intensity of a hunt, or in an earthquake.
‘Before the time of the industrial revolution, the human organisms system and sensorium were by default much more ‘open’ than they are now, because they needed to be. We evolved in a context in which we were inherently attuned to animals, rivers, oceans, marshes, storm clouds, seasonal cycles, and the stars in the sky because we depended on them to exist.’
This is why systems of correspondence between individual bodies, seasonal cycles, directions, landmarks, and the stars in the sky were created and codified in so many ancient cultures. They were accessing the information being transmitted by these forces.
Mercury: God of Messages, Communication and Transmission (of any kind)
What defines communication? I suppose it depends on who you ask...pun intended.
Does the honey bee communicate?
Does the mycelia beneath the soil speak?
The horseshoe crab convey?
These kinds of questions point to a truth that was once known, and that is that the whole world is speaking. The whole world is in dialog.
The Roman god Mercury has become popularized as the god of communication, and the divine messenger between humans and the gods...and yes, he/they does represent these forces, but Mercury was also the god of thresholds, crossroads and intersections.
When two forces or beings touch one another (with words or otherwise), there Mercury can be found. He/they does not just represent communication in the way of human language, but wherever it occurs at any scale.
The flock of finches sitting in a tree at night, chirping back and forth, or the pheromone signaling of army ants on the march is Mercurial.
Mercury was once more present in the human relationship to the forces of nature. We could literally speak to birds, and dialog with the primal energies moving all around us. The overwhelming majority of ancient deities were not just archetypal (which is a facet of many of them to be sure), but, at another level they were a personification of primeval energies we were in communication with.
The loss of a connection to the Gods, is also in many ways, a loss of a connection to nature. We have become less ‘environmental’, as we have shut down ecological information flow.
Like Mercury who who lives at the places where two coyote trails meet or the place where two radio waves pass through one another, each God is a phenomenon in the universe understood through human perception.
One could say that the ‘scope’ of information we access today has actually shrunk, along with the bandwidth of the human experience itself. This shrinking of ecological self corresponds to the our focus on progress divorced from the earth, from spirits, from context.
Opening Yourself To Learn from Nature
One could argue that everything we encounter, from plastic to forest fire is ‘nature’, and from one vantage point, they are correct, and from another, let us be honest: there is a solid qualitative difference between an apartment in downtown Miami and finding oneself knee deep in mud in the Amazon basin. One can learn from walls and electrical sockets, but I refer here to the practice of opening one’s perception to the world of birds, bodies of water, and buzzing bees.
This is how we ‘used to learn’, through direct contact with wild forces and animals. By default, we were selecting for this kind of information flow, because that is what was available and relevant to life and death.
The alchemical, medical and martial traditions of Chinese culture…
The medicine wheel of Native American traditions...
The star knowledge of Western Astrology...
The yogic and Vedic teachings of India…
The profound meditative and magical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism
The plant medicine wisdom of South America
All of this and much more (I have only referenced of few ancient traditions), emerged from direct observation and relationship with the forces of nature, spiritual beings, and selecting for ecological information flow.
All this communication is already there; the world is secretly whispering to us already, but as a culture, we ignore it, muffle it, disbelieve it, and all together shut down the capacity to hear the world speaking.
Yet my point is not to constrict the human capacity to learn, formulate, and practice to ancient traditions alone. I am not a traditionalist. What, I am interested in personally and advocate for, is re-remembering how to dialog with the world again, and understand my ancestral inheritances, so I can bring those capacities into modern times. The Ancestral Now.
We can create endogenous, contemporary, and organic forms of practice informed by the past, but no exclusivity bound by it.
So, please do not misunderstand, I love learning through modern means. I read, listen to podcasts, watch videos, and salivate over topics that interest me. I teach through these means obviously, and I am a creature of curiosity at heart.
But I also do my best to listen to the wind, feel the pulse of the waves, and to learn from the turtles.
Living and working at a wolf sanctuary for ten years taught me how to listen to the world around me, and more than once, it made the difference between life and death. This has been further reinforced by living in Hawaii, going into the ocean on a daily basis, and building a relationship with the land itself. Other practices I engage in like Primordial Alchemy, and physical cultivation help solidify this further.
Small, but personally meaningful examples of learning directly from animals in my life:
+Learning how to snorkel and swim from studying the great sea turtles, which are sages proper in my opinion. If you watch them closely, you notice how at ease they are, and you begin to apprehend how exhausting and futile it is to fight the ocean. Instead, you flow with it and only impose your will in strategic ways already in line with the currents. From the ocean, you learn to surrender to something much more powerful than you.
+Among other qualities, I have improved my physical whole-body waving practices (where you create a ‘wave’ inside every part of the body) by watching eels undulate and move through rocks. They show you how to navigate around ‘tense’ objects (which could be internal or external), with fluid grace.
+From stones I have learned something of patience, and trust in deep time. They also communicate to you in such a way that you realize that while something may be conscious, it may orientate towards existence very differently than you.
+The wolves at Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary taught me an enormous amount about wild animals in general (a topic for another day), but also, about boundaries. They are master teachers of boundaries, for they teach you how to own your own space (and respect the space of another) with incredible aptitude.
These are a few selections of many possible stories I could share, and likely will over the years. For now, I hope they offer perspective, and below I want to offer possible suggestions for you to begin your own process of Remembering the Secret Whispers of The World...
1. Feeling the wind, and the direction that it is blowing in. Sense it’s caress or it’s imposition. Is it sharp? Soft? Severe? Notice. Listen.
2. Identifying the four cardinal directions, especially in your habitual habitats and haunts. A compass can help.
3. Taking time to observe the sky. Cloud gazing and star gazing are fruitful activities. Notice the general path of elliptic, and try and find the planets in the sky (if possible).
4. Watching animals closely and learning from them: cats, birds, lizards, insects & dogs. Humans seem to have ‘animal blindness’. Play this game...when you hear a bird, try and find it.
5. Walk barefoot in challenging terrain. This teaches you to listen to the earth with every step.
May you follow your feet...
Great article, Ramon