Something outside my window catches my attention and I glance up from the computer screen to see a bird land on the branch of a tree.
I’m contemplating the Creator, the Divine, the Universe, whatever you want to call it.
I’m contemplating Love as the force and the source; Love wanting to know itself, to see itself, to be revealed to itself.
I’m thinking of the Universe looking back upon itself.
I’m contemplating the paradox of oneness and separateness, of experiencing and being Love.
I wonder:
Am I being revealed to myself by way of noticing that the bird sees me?
Does the bird in the tree see itself, know itself to exist, by way of me seeing it?
Callie, the yellow lab, barks at my front door. She wants a biscuit and a walk. She is my reminder of the importance of adventure, so off we go winding our way through various trails in the local woods.
I ponder the perception of trees. If a tree can’t see with eyes, how am I revealed to myself through a tree? I pause before a redwood use my body as a kind of gauge to sense how the tree lets me know I exist. There is a feeling in my body. It’s a knowing, yes, and it’s a vibration. It’s also a groundedness, rootedness and strength. These are the words I give the vibration. Easy enough to be with and there is a haunting that’s a bit harder for me to receive: the grandness of size.
At the river, I listen to the bubbling conversation of the water clamoring over rocks. Sound is another way of knowing, of being known. If I were blind, I would not use sight and I would certainly use sound.
How do I come to know myself through sound? Maybe this is why I find music, especially singing, so compelling.
I sing, and I hear myself, therefore I am?
You sing and I listen, therefore I am? We are?
I watch Callie follow her nose in excited pursuit of something that does not exist for me, but is highly potent for her. She experiences her world through her nose and ears more than her sight. Imagine how the grasses experience Callie and how they experience themselves in relationship to her.
Wherever you are sitting now, stop and close your eyes and explore all your senses.
What if the only way you had ever known your world was without sight?
What if the only way you had ever known your world was through touch?
What if touch and sound were the only way you “saw” yourself?
What opens up for you in your experience of yourself, others and “reality” when you explore these and similar questions?
These are the contemplations that in-form me today.
Copyright(c) May 2009, Kathy Loh, All Rights Reserved
Beautiful. Precise.
Thank you – I really enjoyed your post.
Christina
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Thank you Christina – looking forward to futher connections with you here and on Twitter – Kathy
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Kathy … have you ever read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan? I think you would like it. Easy read … he talks about seeing life from the view of plants and how they have more control of their destiny and use us for their own good …
I loved the book.
I would like to meet you at some point.
Peace,
Peter
From the Jacket
In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant — though this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin?
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds’s most basic yearnings — and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom?
Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature.
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Hi Peter – nice to hear from you again. I have not read that book and will add it to my list. Sounds intriguing. Thanks for the resource. Peace in return – Kathy
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Sounds like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening” might be a spin off “The Botany Of Desire.” The book looks like a fun read.
Found this quote by philosopher Allen Watt on one of the hundreds of tiny scraps of paper that adorn my desk.
– Through our eyes the universe is perceiving it’s self. through our ears the universe is listening to it’s cosmic harmony. We are the witness to which the universe becomes conscience of it’s glory, it’s magnificence.
Just wanted to add it to the mix before it ends up in the trash.
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Don’t you love the magic of synchronicity? What’s the message for you personally, Ingrid?
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After thought. Beautiful reflection Kathy. Sent my mind sailing in all sorts of directions, particularly the haunting that goes along with the grandness of size.
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God (or whatever you call it) has prepared for those who love him.” -1Corinthians 2:9
No matter how much I turn it around in my mind I come back to wanting to make friends with the mystery of all. Sometimes I ask my self if I just make all this stuff up, because what it all boils down to is, I am small. Very small. And story’s help me to cope with the fear.
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Oh gosh, I can’t wait for our conversation this weekend…look out world! And from my point of view, you are small and paradoxically grand…a redwood in my life.
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Hi Kathy,
Beautiful. I see spirit flowing through you and it is beautiful.
Saira
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Hi Saira – great to hear from you – how go the butterflies?
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Reading this, I wished I was walking with you and Callie, in that wood, talking about the great adventure of life ; )
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Now that would be a wonderful treat!
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Kathy ..
Great questions and what comes up immediately ..
I believe it was Gaugin who said “I close my eyes in order to see!”
And from me … in those moment I’d be looking for the mirth and fun in life as a way to make sense of it all.
Love you x
Pemma
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Hi Pemma! What a great quote from Gaugin, who happend to be one of the subjects of my Master’s thesis…Gaugin, Debussy and the French Symbolist Poets…that was long ago…
Love the perspective of looking for the mirth and fun in it all. Why not? Let’s play!
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The butterfly has emerged and is building faith in the wind, as it allows its wings to be filled.
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