Shae: Life now is so full of noise and distraction. More than ever, as technology brings more information and stimulation that keeps us busy, so that the conditions for tuning ourselves to wider fields of resonance are less likely to “just happen” spontaneously. Making space and time is needed, and it may also be that choosing to engage in practices that assist us to tune our capacities takes choice, and conscious effort.
Alexander: Yes, although I do think that many of us actually do have experiences of peak connectivity in life. Whether it is a eureka moment, an ah-HA! moment, an insight, or intuition, something comes to us when we are “available”. We have talked previously about being available to this deeper dimension of the cosmos, to the patterning of life, to the information coding from the Akasha. It is possible to make ourselves more available if we breathe, if we are listening, if we are connected and present and there is some integrity in that engagement, and not if we “problematise” everything. So, this is where I got to with my thinking; that we are like human tuning forks. I am going to use the metaphor of “dialling in” as if we were AM or FM radios, whether we are in the short-range busy-busy FM frequencies of what is going on in my immediate life, or in the longer-range AM frequencies that carry fewer but more powerful signals from the deeper dimensions of time and space. When we tune to the second kind of frequencies we can receive messages from further away and maybe even from other times, such as when we reflect on something that has us asking “Why did I think that?” or “Where did that come from?” or even “Why did that think me?”
I think of it as consciously choosing practices. This is something that I am thinking of exploring, and now I am wondering how this ties into the idea you mentioned of a healing approach to the challenges we face rather than a problem/solution focused perspective of fixing, and how this might relate to educational frameworks.
Shae: Educational settings are a particular challenge, yes. This is a very big subject! Currently educational learning is still somewhat focused on the transfer of information. But change is happening, and engaging with the whole person within their relationship with the world is being seen in a range of initiatives. Healing rather than fixing is an approach from Australian educational scholar Peter Le Breton [see ref. below], who talks about engagement with each other and life beyond facts and representational knowledge of a world out there. Peter recommends the inclusion of emotions and relationships within learning. Which is also the deep complexity approach of teaching and learning with Complexity Patterning based education. As I’m exploring writing curricula with Complexity Patterning, I’m inspired by Peter’s work. I also acknowledge that encouraging students to engage with the world in an embodied and direct way requires care and clear process. I believe that being in a complex patterning of dynamic relationality with the world is healing; it can help us to heal the pain and suffering of both the isolation/unhealthy competition sides of the same coin.
Alexander: When I am truly “available” as we talked about before – in the open conduit channel, that it something different from the “normal” state of being. When people are completely open channels, they may not remember what happened because they are not even there, because they have stepped aside from themselves. They enter a trance-like state – like the Whirling Dervishes of the Mevlevi Order of Sufism, or whatever trance state one can enter – then you are in that flow state with minimal obstructions for the cosmos to flow through. So, as a human variable-tuning-fork, to “tune in” means first checking, “am I in the ego channel or in the conduit channel?” and even then, you can still fine-tune your flow state. And this is where the question of living beyond words and beyond thoughts comes in again. Another thing for me, Shae, is that this process doesn’t mean abandoning anything. It is not just being completely passive and expecting something to happen to you. It is more about being in high presence and intensity for something to happen through you. So, it is not at all about “abandoning ship”; it’s about being very present and listening very intensely. This is my inquiry as a pilgrim of the ineffable.
Shae: Ah, the idea of experiencing without interpreting… well, interpreting as little as we can, considering we are human beings. From my personal experience working in the healing arts, I think healing is about quietening the noise that is in the body, or reconfiguring the frequency tuning capacities of the human being on all levels. This can be accomplished by smoothing the effects of past experience that may be continuing to create distraction and noise, noise that may interfere with being able to be present to the immediacy of the flow of connectivity with the world around us, in tune with the flow of information from the implicate order. I’m sure it is a process of re-establishing the coherence that enables connectivity with the generative flow you are describing.
I see that conditions are an important factor here, too. Sustenance and shelter, safety, and time enough to be still, are all necessary conditions to open ourselves to listening, tuning into the coherence of the universe, with other beings such as trees or mountains, or wider realms in time and space. I guess this is why traditionally people who lived in such communion were often in ashrams or monasteries, with reliable rhythms of life with not much external noise or distraction. I’m thinking of the Buddhist conditions for enlightenment. Or in cultures that live with an intimate relationship with life, so as to access it – to become available to it – as just how it is.
What is really interesting is that in today’s world, more people have the material conditions to have some free time, and the knowledge of practices to support tuning ourselves is freely available rather than being esoteric knowledge accessible only to an elite few. Yet, there is also what I see as a cascade of intergenerational trauma that large numbers of people are dealing with. Also, of course there are more distractions than ever, in the instant entertainment of the technosphere, and general life-administration requiring constant attention. There are also layers of complication in the world that constantly pull on our attention. All of these factors can contribute to a kind of “shutting down” to relationship with the world around us.
Alexander: How have we become so separated from ourselves and each other, from the language of Gaia? Is it largely due to our dependence on technology? Technology can get in the way of energy flows. That’s why I don’t go running in shoes but prefer to run barefooted. You know, we can be separate from nature in so many ways. How do we heal this? How can we cultivate subtle and non-verbal connectivity more consciously, to have this syntony sense in ourselves, with each other, in our society, and perhaps in our education systems? This is a subject that I could explore with you forever!
Shae: This very big question of “how we might teach an open sentient relationality with life – one that is beyond words – in educational settings?” needs a few more Daologues! I’m thinking there are many aspects here – many, many, things to consider.
Royalty free image ‘Milky-Way-4451281_1280’ by EvanIT, Pixerbay.
Le Breton, P. (2012). Evoking love in higher education: towards a sustainable future. Journal of conscious evolution, 8(8), Article 4.