Heroes Not Zombies

A determinist states that, in the same conditions, the same phenomena occur. However, the same conditions can never, by definition, obtain in the life of the self, because each, artificially isolated, moment of duration includes the entire past, which is, consequently, different for each moment…..the same situation never occurs twice in the being endowed with memory;…….neither the same cause nor the same effect can ever reappear in experience.

Leszek Kilakowiski

…no movement ever repeats. Looked at in enough detail, every event in the universe is unique….the more detail we note, the more apparent it is that no event or experiment can be an exact copy of another.

Smolin

I’ve shown this photo to many patients over the years. I call it “The Wounded Rock”. It’s a useful illustration of how what we experience, what happens in our lives, changes us forever. I know that with traumas we heal. That’s what all living organisms do. We are endowed with self healing powers. But healing doesn’t mean a return to a previous state. It’s something new.

Whatever happened to this rock changed it forever. That’s true of the big traumas. They change us forever in readily apparent significant ways. But as those two quotations I’ve shared with you suggest…in fact it’s true of the everyday.

There are no two moments the same. There are no two experiences the same. More than that, every single experience is an interaction between us as a subject and what we observe. We are changed by what we observe and what we observe is changed by our observation.

The world is not made up of separate fixed pieces the way a machine is. We are, all of us, in a constant flow of co-creation.

The deterministic view of reality falls down when it moves from the general to the particular. The more we consider the details, the clearer it becomes, that each person, each moment, each experience is unique.

I remain very wary of generalisations which reduce unique beings to items within a category. Of course I understand the importance of being able to generalise and categorise. It’s just I know how dangerous it is.

We must never ever forget that reality is as described in those two quotations. The universe diversifies to produce more and more uniqueness. That includes you and I. You are special. So am I. And so is everyone we meet and every moment we live.

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When the Sun’s rays fall in a certain direction some of the otherwise invisible webs crisscrossing the forest become startlingly obvious. I’m always in awe at the creative ability of a spider. Goodness knows how many of them share this little part of the planet with me. I have the impression I only manage to see a fraction of them and most of the time I only think about their webs when I walk into long thin strands which seem to stretch from one end of the garden to the other.

These physical webs which are illuminated from time to time, or bejewelled with water droplets early some mornings are only a manifestation of what lies behind them. There must be whole communities, whole networks of relationships, vast numbers of invisible pathways throughout the entire garden. Almost like a parallel spider universe.

Then as was sitting drinking a morning coffee after a couple of hours of sun baked weeding I noticed several little lizards, one running along the wall from the window to the door, one making its way along the path, another disappearing under the decking. And I thought, I wonder how many lizards live here? And what do their invisible pathways and connections look like? Aren’t they living in a parallel lizard universe?

I closed a shutter the other afternoon and out flew five tiny bats who had been sleeping behind it. I often see bats swooping around at dusk. I wonder where they live, what routes they normally take through the garden and what their connections and relationships are like? They live in this same small part of the planet as me but in a parallel bat universe!

You know about the multiverse theory of reality right? The idea that there are an infinite number of intersecting parallel universe? Kinda mind boggling isn’t it? But perhaps it’s easier to envisage the multiple universes cohabited by me and all the other forms of life in this one garden. Each of us living in our own particular scale, having our own unique perspectives, our own needs and desires, our own loves and losses, our distinctive behaviours and timescales.

Wow, what a thought! All these vast invisible webs of being and becoming, intersecting, interconnected and interdependent.

Isn’t this an astonishing world?

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This clever huge sculpture carved out of the rock face seems to peel back the surface layers to reveal a girl making her way up a hidden staircase, following the steps, deeper and deeper into the Earth.

I wondered, as I stood transfixed before this art in “Les Lapidiales”, where she was going, and why do the stairs seem to lead upwards as she heads deeper into the world from the surface. But then I thought….if the turn is within, then we enter the world of the subject.

We are all, every one of us, unique subjects. My experience as a subject can only be known to me. I can only know about your experience if you tell me.

This universe is a community of subjects and only imagination fuelled empathy allows us to step out of our world view from time to time in order the catch a glimpse of that of others.

As a doctor I explored the invisible worlds of others. Pain, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, altered sensations, exhaustion and all the emotions are invisible. There are no machines which can measure any of them.

My blog title of heroes not zombies is based on my belief that a conscious life, an examined life, is the only one worth living. We all need to pause from time to time in order to peel back the surface layers, step inside and explore what we can find in our depths.

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There are so many ways to think about the universe and Life. So many ways where we consider reality from two poles, seemingly opposite, but where neither can exist without the other.

What do I mean by that? Well, “night and day” would be one. Without nights we wouldn’t have days. Night and day don’t have clear boundaries, each flows into the other without us being able to draw an exact border between them. They form a continuous, seamless cycle.

I think it’s often much more useful to consider such pairs as polarities instead of dualities. With polarities we know we need them both. Whereas with dualities we take sides. We set one against another. We say “you have to choose”…….”us or them”, “this or that”, “for or against”.

Some of my favourite polarities include “wildness and discipline”, “masculine and feminine”, “yin and Yang”, and “left and right hemispheres of the brain”. If you’d like to explore any of those further you can find posts I’ve written about them by searching for any of them using the search box at the top of this blog.

However, the polarity I used most through my working life was “general” and “particular”. With every single patient I had to understand what was unique about them, AND what they had in common with others in order to make a diagnosis and find the best way forward. We are all unique. AND we all share certain characteristics with others.

We are all separate and we all belong.

Which polarities are most illuminating for you? Any of these ones, or some others?

I’ll just add one more that I’ve used a lot. “Order and Chaos”. The concept of integration is a key way of understanding health in complex systems, such as human beings. Integration is the river which flows between two banks, order on one side, chaos, on the other. Too much order and we stiffen up, and get stuck. Too much chaos and life falls apart. We progress down the river of health, not by pitching up on one of the banks, but by sailing down the integrative flow.

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It seems that I will never cease to be astonished by plants. Their adaptability, resilience, and growth are utterly remarkable. I often find myself thinking “how amazing that these creatures have developed the powers to collect the Sun’s energy, pull CO2 and water out of the air, suck up minerals and water from the soil and create all this material – all these stalks, leaves, roots, flowers and fruits!”

Look at this one. The Passiflora flower only blooms for a day, but look how elaborate a form and structure it creates. All that for a day! Doesn’t convince you of the need to flourish, to express your uniqueness, to pour your energies into your creativity, even if we are only here for the briefest of moments in the timescale of the universe?

I think we have so much to learn from Nature….from our own bodies, but also from the myriad of Life forms on this planet. We can learn from the diversity of ecosystems, from the universe’s tendency towards greater and greater uniqueness. We can learn from Nature’s drive to connect, to form healthy co-beneficial relationships, to integrate.

We don’t really need books to learn all this. It’s right in front of our noses.

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Raphaëlle Duval created this beautiful work and called it “Sentinel. Femme”. It’s in “Les Lapidiales” about half an hour from where I live in the Charente Maritime. There are many, many awe inspiring sculptures there, but this one became an instant favourite of mine.

I feel drawn to it, and held by it. It’s stunning in its power and beauty. Raphaëlle has written a little bit about it and she talks of the African goddesses, of their position standing at the border between tradition and modernism, and between the physical and spiritual dimensions of life.

She, this goddess, is telling us what we need….to weave together the wisdom of the past with our new discoveries and to bring the Feminine back into our lives.

It often seems to me we have created artificial disconnected superficial societies, not least because we’ve let the grasping, controlling aspects of our nature run wild. We need to re-connect to creativity, nurture, care, and the depth of life which brings us meaning and purpose.

In other words we need to bring the Divine Feminine to the fore in each of us. Then, maybe then, we’ll see a better way forwards, a better possible life, not just for we humans, but for our planet.

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In the sculpture park called Les Lapidiales some of the sculptors have written poems on huge sheets of paper and hung them from the trees at the side of the path through the forest.

This is one of those simple ideas where you wonder why you’ve never come across it before. What a genius idea!

I love art in nature. Mostly the kind of art I’ve encountered in parks and forests is sculpture, which makes sense, given the vagaries of the weather. But I’ve also seen photographic exhibitions and installations of paintings which are equally powerful. I’ve also been to sound and light installations where the path through a forest (or in one case, the botanic gardens in Edinburgh) is transformed at night with lights, lit sculpture, and music. But I’ve never before encountered works of poetry hanging from trees.

I suppose I’ve come across the occasional quotation carved into stones in the wild, or written in metal plaques attached to a seat, but not whole poems.

I love spending time amongst trees – forest bathing. It’s good for my psyche, nourishes my soul, and, as a doctor, I know it also reduces inflammation in my body and boosts my immune system……forest bathing….I’m a practitioner and an advocate.

I also love poetry. That too, is good for my psyche and nourishes my soul. It slows me down, drops me into the present moment and stimulates my imagination and creativity. From what I’ve learned from neuroscience poetry is also good for exercising the right hemisphere of the brain, something we all need to do in order to counter the imbalance between the hemispheres provoked by our society and culture.

I’ve an idea to recreate this idea in my own tiny woodland but I haven’t figured out the practicalities yet, so meantime, I take a poetry book with me into the woods. Actually, that’s not the same experience but it’ll do for now.

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There is a truly astonishing sculpture park called “Les Lapidiales” near here. It’s been created in an old quarry and each year several sculptors from around the world are invited to come and create some new work. Most of it is created on the bare rock faces but there are also many standalone pieces.

This is just one of the works which has been created. It’s immense. And it’s wonderful. I don’t know what was in the sculptor’s mind when they carved this out, but for me, it’s a fabulous portrayal of the fact that every one of us emerges as a unique individual created from the stardust which formed this small blue planet.

There’s a tendency to think of “nature” or the “environment” as something out there, a place where we can visit or where we can live for a while. But the truth is we are not separate from nature. We are part of this whole planet. We are born in nature, live in this one massively interconnected environment and we die in nature.

Our body is formed from all that already exists and cycles back through the rest of the world continuously. We are not separate fixed objects but unceasing flows of atoms, elements, energy and information.

It’s better to think of ourselves as subjects within these flows than as objects separate from each other and from the world.

This work of art captures the idea of our embeddedness. You can never know or understand yourself or another without paying attention to the multiple contexts and environments of our existence. Our physical, familial, social and cultural webs of belonging.

We are embodied, embedded, extended selves.

Quite simply, we are not separate. Nature is us. We are Nature. This is the home where we are created, the home we die in, the home we never leave.

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Across the road from my house is an ancient spring. In French a spring is “une source”. I like the French word better because it conjures up the idea of origins for me, so when I pop across to the “source” I feel that I’m touching base with our origins, with the early days of creation.

The Romans came this way a couple of millenia ago and they built, amongst other things, this aqueduct to channel the flow of the water from the “source”. By the way, Latin for a spring is a “fons”, which I presume is the root of our word “foundation”, so maybe that’s what the Romans called this water – aqua fons.

Whatever we call it this spring water is the clearest water I’ve ever seen anywhere.

As I watch the bubbles and sparkles on the surface of the water as it rushes along the aqueduct I’m instantly absorbed into the magic of the present moment. I see and hear the constant flow of the water, and I think of Heraclitus’s teaching about not being able to step into the same river twice. I’m reminded of this foundational fact of reality – constant change within constancies – how this stream of water can be named and visited and experienced by we humans over centuries whilst for each of us this water tumbling along is brand new, individual and unique.

As I gaze through the clear, clear water in the source it appears completely still to me. There’s not a ripple, not a wave, not a single bubble. Yet at its edge where the aqueduct begins it pours noisily between the ancient stones, foaming, sparkling, tumbling, filled with life and energy.

That amazes me every time. That proximity and conjunction of quiet clear stillness and tumbling gushing noisy activity. So different, yet both the same flow.

I can follow the stream which emerges from the end of the aqueduct. I can follow its path through trees, along the edges of fields, as it winds its way to the neighbouring hamlets of Le Grand Moulin and Le Vieux Moulin (The Big Mill and the Old Mill) along a little road called Rue du Ruisseau (road of the stream) which becomes the Rue du Petit Moulin (road of the small mill).

The names of the hamlets and the roads which pass through them reveal the importance of this “source” and whisper to me ancient stories of human interaction with this same, this always different, water.

How many people over how many years have stopped for a moment, entranced by this very same, yet utterly different, water as it emerges from the depths of the rocky Earth? How many have drawn water here or close to here, to drink, to wash, to irrigate the soil in order to grow plants, and to generate the power to turn those plants into enough food to feed their families, their communities?

I can only imagine.

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I was walking through a forest the other day when this caught my eye. Does that happen to you? You’re just walking along when suddenly something catches your eye and you stop. I love when this happens. It’s feels like the universe is calling, saying “Hey, wait a moment, pause a moment and pay attention. I’ve got something to show you.”

So, what do you see?

A snail on a tree?

Well, yes, at least that. But look a little closer and you’ll see two of the most important patterns in the universe.

There are a number of common patterns we can see which repeat in both the smallest and largest forms….as if there are invisible organising energies which fashion whatever they are flowing through into these universal shapes.

Here there’s the spiral on the shell of the snail and the concentric rings on the bark of the tree.

I think these are two highly dynamic patterns. They both indicate movement and change. These are two of the commonest ways in which change spreads through entire systems, whole organisms, communities and biospheres.

We can see these patterns in our life stories. The constant return of the circle or cycle over time which creates a spiral, each time round familiar, but also new and different. And the seeds or germs of an idea, a thought, which grows and grows changing more and more of our life as it goes. Or the way an emotionally charged experience or a trauma acts as a stimulus, a spark of energy which takes our life story off in a brand new direction.

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