Heroes Not Zombies

This is one of my favourite autumn photos taken many years ago in “The Sma’ Glen”, a little valley in the middle of Scotland.

At this time of year the sun is lower than the hills on each side of the glen, so most of it is in deep shade.

This is one of those “view from on high” perspectives which lets us see not only the darkness of the valley floor, but the brightness of the blue sky above and in the distance.

The hills beyond the glen are glowing almost golden in the sunlight, and if you look carefully you’ll see the blue sky, and some bare trees, reflected in the water which lies between the hills.

I find this a beautiful and intriguing image. It draws me in, takes me deep, lifts me up, pulls me onwards to explore what lies in the distance.

There’s an old philosophical, or spiritual, practice taught by the Ancient Greek philosophers….taking the view from on high.

Literally, it refers to how you can see more of the land when you survey it from a height, but it’s actually a mental exercise, a thought experiment where you stand back from whatever it is that you are contemplating, take a pause, and consider the contexts, the environments and the circumstances.

In other words, it’s a call to broaden your focus and take a more holistic perspective.

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Autumn is a beautiful season, filling the world around us with glorious shades of yellow, gold and red.

Then the leaves start to fall from the trees, leaving bare branches to face the winter chills and winds, scattering dead leaves across the garden, and down the street.

The leaves decompose, breaking down and adding nourishment to the soil. We might feel driven to “tidy up” some of them, but it’s best to allow nature to make the most of her well developed process of change, rest and growth. Even if it’s good to sweep up some of the leaves so we don’t slip on paths and steps, it’s good for gardeners to collect them and allow them to turn into rich mulch.

Nature doesn’t produce waste. Well, only we, the human part of Nature does. It’s one of the worst characteristics of our species….that we live, produce and consume in ways which creates waste which is toxic to the rest of the planet.

The plastics we have created and thrown away can be found on even the most remote beaches, are everywhere in the oceans killing sea-life. The chemicals and radiation we have created find their way into every living being, including ourselves, combining and interacting to produce who knows how many chronic diseases.

Can’t we find a better way? Can’t we learn from what Wordsworth called our greatest teacher…..Nature?

We need to live more like the other species on the planet, at least in relation to how we produce and deal with waste. Short term, blinkered, narrow thinking prevents us from seeing the connections which exist. It stops us from understanding the cycles and seasons of the planet.

But living with no thought to the damage our way of life causes all of Life is coming back to bite us, our children and our grandchildren.

Don’t we need to take a bigger, broader, deeper view? Don’t we need to become much more aware of how everything is connected and to live more sustainably, more gently, on this little blue planet?

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How often have you had “a heart to heart” with someone? What does that really mean? Is it just a metaphorical use of “heart”? As in how we use “heart” to mean the “core” or the “centre”? Something important. Something authentic and true?

Or do we mean “heart” as “love”, so a “heart to heart” is a loving exchange?

It’s all that and more.

Because we know now that the heart has a network of specialised nerve cells around it, and that the heart physically processes and produces information for us. Exactly what kind of information isn’t clear but it’s not the same as “thinking” in any conscious or rational way. It seems it’s more like intuition, more like feelings.

But there’s more. Because the heart is rhythmic it produces waves. Waves of energy which radiate throughout the body, brain, and beyond. We know from heart resonance studies that two people, sitting close to each other, can find their heart rhythms begin to synchronise. They get in tune with each other. They connect along the same wavelengths.

So a “heart to heart” is both a physical and a metaphorical experience. We know what it feels like. We know when we have been heard, even felt, by another person, because we’ve connected heart to heart.

Just one more thing…the heart, of course, doesn’t work in isolation. It is massively interconnected within the body, and embedded in multiple feedback loops. When we experience a “heart to heart”, it’s more than our hearts which connect. It’s our whole being, our mind, spirit and soul.

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I love bridges. They connect. They open up new ways to go. They leap across boundaries and barriers. They make possible what previously appeared impossible. But I especially like that they symbolise betweenness – the relationship between you and me, between us and the other.

I love autumn too. It’s a season of coming to fruition, a season of change. The colours of the leaves transfix me, turning the average walk into a visit to a gallery. I love it for its beauty. But I especially like that it symbolises betweenness – transition and transience and emergence.

Together in this photo, the bridge in autumn, inspires me to contemplate betweenness and relationships, becoming not being, how life is made of experiences and events, and how what matters most is the quality of our relationships.

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Here’s another couple of lines from Wordsworth, this time from, ‘A few miles above Tintern Abbey’ –

While with an eye made quiet by the power
of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
we see into the life of things.

Harmony – whether it’s in sound, sight, taste, scent or touch – it’s such a profound feature of life. It stops me in my tracks. If I see the harmony of how plants grow and fit around each other, how they resonate with each other, I’m filled with joy, life slows down and I feel immersed in the here and now.

It’s the same with music where harmonies have the ability to en-trance, to touch, stir and lift the soul, to make my spirits soar.

It’s the same with a harmonious experience of tastes and scents at a delicious meal, or even, for me at least, in savouring a delightful single malt.

And it’s the same in relationships. We have those relationships in life where we “are on the same wavelength”, where we “resonate and connect”, where we discover our soul mates – that too is the most wonderful experience of harmony.

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The poet, Gregory Orr, wrote – One of the terms we poets use in our considerable effort to avoid religious and spiritual terminology is ‘beautiful’. Of course no one can define the word, or everybody defines it differently, and yet we believe in it. Beauty is an article of faith among poets. I think many of us are trying to sidestep religion, and beauty is a word we use to do that.

What do you think about that?

I certainly think that beauty, along with goodness, truth, love and purpose are fundamental, foundational characteristics of the cosmos. They don’t develop from something else. They are the ground of Being, of the One, the All, the Divine.

I don’t say much about religion, which I tend to associate with institutions and organisations, but I do indeed find the appreciation of beauty to be a spiritual experience. It takes me deeper and takes me beyond at precisely the same moment.

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I read the observation that we think more than we can say, we feel more than we can think, we live more than we can feel, and there is much more besides. (attributed to Eugene Gendlin).

I like that. I see it as a series of concentric circles of life – the smallest one in the centre being what we can say. Our words are very limited and we’re never able to articulate all our thoughts. Thoughts seem endless and unceasing, don’t they, and even in meditation we realise many of them pass on by far too quickly to be named or described.

Our thoughts though seem to emerge both top down, and bottom up, as the neuroscientists describe. Some originating within the brain but always meeting the ones coming up from the body, the probable source of most of our feelings. Remember how we use body metaphors to describe feelings…..heart ache, gut feeling, etc. We only become aware of a portion of our feelings, most of which remain in the unconscious, where they create the tidal flows and tones of each moment to moment experience.

And feelings are only a small part of the unconscious which is filled with a constant stream of signals and information from both outside and within the body, only some of which reach the level of awareness as sensations. We live more than we can feel.

And there is so much more besides….single cell organisms like viruses and bacteria, atoms and molecules of natural and manmade chemicals, a whole vast spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and so on, constantly impacting on us, flowing through us, co-creating who we are and what we experience.

Astonishing isn’t it?

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In the garden this afternoon I heard that distinctive sound and looked up in time to see a Flying V heading south to Africa for the winter. In France they are known as “grue”, and in English, “cranes”.

I love to hear and see them each year. They are such impressive birds, whether seen singly, or, more commonly, in flocks. There’s something especially mesmerising about their flight patterns, those not too rigid V shapes sometimes of just a handful of birds, but other times of hundreds.

Migration.

There are so many creatures which spend part of their lives in one part of the world, and other parts in far distant ones.

Maybe that’s why I feel so drawn to these birds….I, too, am a migrant. Having lived my first 60 years in Scotland, I’m now settled in South west France. A deliberate decision to spend part of my life in a different culture, a different environment, a different language.

Migration remains a hot topic around the world, as governments try to turn imaginary, invisible boundaries drawn on a map, into substantial, even insurmountable ones. But we humans move. We always have done. Even if you’ve never lived in any other country than the one you live in now, chances are your grandparents, or your grandparents’ grandparents, lived somewhere else.

The Right Wing myth of “blood and soil”, is an invention, something which requires a severe restriction of vision and understanding to swallow. The threads of DNA, of cell lines, of cultures and endlessly branching family trees show we all have countless connections with each other, connections which fly high above the imaginary state boundaries with just as much ease as those flying Vs of cranes.

Migration is normal.

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There is nothing separate in this universe. All that exists comes into being temporarily through the creation of connections, shared events, experiences and links.

Wordsworth expressed it this way ….

…exist by mighty combinations, bound
together by a link, and with a soul
which makes all one. 

Once the number of connections increases above a certain level, we reach systems, networks and organisms which can only be described as “complex”.

Complex systems develop certain characteristics, not least certain capacities. They become adaptive, self repairing, functional wholes.

Each “whole” that we perceive is embedded in even greater wholes….what Arthur Koestler called “holons”, all nested into each other. The more complex the system the more likely we are to be able to discern its “essence”, its consciousness, even its “soul”. But some argue, convincingly in my opinion, that consciousness and/or soul exist, to some degree, in everything.

Indeed, maybe everything we call an object or an entity, is only the temporary manifestation of Consciousness, of the World Soul, the Divine.

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This is my favourite stone. I keep it in my cabinet of curiosities. I don’t know what type of stone it is or how it came to look like this. It’s completely smooth and delightful to touch.

This idea of duality which is never separated into two really appeals to me and has done for most of my life. I’ve worn a Yin Yang symbol around my neck for decades.

The dualities which can never be separated include the classic yin and yang energies, but also masculine and feminine, the divine forms of both. And also light and dark, day and night, hot and cold, north and south and east and west. There isn’t a single one of those which makes any sense other than in relation to the other. They are bound, inextricably, permanently together.

It also works for the neuroscience view of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, as elucidated and developed by Iain McGilchrist. Those two ways of approaching the world, of focusing and of engaging with reality give us our unique abilities as human beings.

This symbol also represents balance of a very particular kind – dynamic, flowing, constantly moving balance. In doing so, for me, it captures the idea of the Life Force, of Life itself.

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