What does it mean to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar? What happens within that moving? How does your inner world live as you expand to allow the unfamiliar to be present? Can you expand and open to allow a new wondering? Can you pause, sense your inner sensations of this unfamiliar way of being?
Likely dark, possibly muddled or unclear and possibly a little messy inside. Cluttered, a bit chaotic and at the same time very exhilarating. Exciting, your senses heightened with curiosity. What will unfold? How do I recognize the very unfolding? I feel my new self unfolding with my own noticing of the unfolding moment I am within.
I just returned from a walk in the forest in the dark on a crisp and cold October evening. We are camping near a river, ready to hike tomorrow to commune with the larches. The larches feed my soul and make my heart sing! A unique species of decidious needle tree that lives in very specific conditions on the east side of the crest of the Cascades between 5000 and 6000 feet.
Walking Into the Larches
PEAK LARCH WEEKEND
It is peak weekend. Peak for the amazing unfolding of color change as the larches prepare to let go of their needles. The dark green needles first turn a shade of lime green and then slowly become a bright yellow finally turning a deep golden shade before they softly nestle onto the ground. A basin of golden larches is an experience to take deeply into one’s soul! Tomorrow will be this year’s moment to unfold…. with those golden drops of joy.
Camping in October in the Cascades is cold and crisp. Darkness descends early. Dinner complete. Camp prepared for the night. Time for an evening stroll. My friend and I started out with our headlamps turned on and then we shut them down. Our walking slowed as we allowed our vision to adjust and our inner kinsthetic sensations to move into the foreground of our sensing.
First, it is possible to make out the shapes of the tall Douglas Firs, hemlocks and spruces against the night gray sky. Like a community of elders gathered together for a sacred ritual moment. As our eyes adjusted, we could begin to make out the edges of the gravel road in front of us. Allowing the unfolding sensations between my foot and the ground led me to know the shape and consistency of Mother Earth unfolding in front of me.
Slowly the lighter-colored maples and elms hovering along the edges of the corridor we were traversing through, came to be recognized. Like the light softness of a cream-colored blanket, cuddled closely on a dark armchair. Inviting. My eye is attracted to the difference. I pause, wait for the unfolding light, shadows, kinesthetic vision, and my inner world to fill in the knowing of what is.
EACH STEP UNFOLDS
The shape and path of the road unfolds with each step. Is the road straight? Does it curve? Are there dips, rocks, changes in surface from packed dirt to loose gravel? Amazing to just observe the new experience of my being unfold in the act of observing the unfolding path. Just observing the very experience of the unfamiliar becoming the familiar only to become unfamiliar again. And to come into knowing again, over and over. This is the very act of learning, evolving, becoming a new being.
The state of living. When observed consciously and co-created with, this is called insight, widom or discernment. Co-creating a new moment in the world. My friend and I walked arm and arm together through the vibrant darkness as a community of two leaderless leaders co-creating our unfolding path and moments as they were experienced.
The familiar, the unfamiliar, the coming into being....
Our collective human psyche is in a similar state. As a collective human species, we are starting to make out the shapes in the unfamiliar backdrop setting we are navigating through. We are in the forest. It’s dark. We know there are familiar species there. Trees, shrubs, gravel, rocks, sky, contours and other sentient beings. They feel and look unfamiliar as we wake up from our dark sleep of denial, fear, greed, and attachment. As we wake up together as a collective and begin to walk the unfolding path in front of us.
We create the very shape, speed and quality of it’s unfolding through just allowing the unfamilar to become familiar. To just stay present for the moment. We have to perceive and come to know our ‘new’ world through the ‘old.’ The new world is born from the old through our very act of perceiving it as it is unfolding. We each have to do that perceiving on our own. As our own leader. Together with others doing the same. A leaderless community of leaders. All living in interconnection with each other and our planet.
OCCUPY TOGETHER
The Occupy Together events sweeping our world are this very creation in progress. Our Universe has been expanding forwards into higher levels of consciousness since the Big Bang over 16 billion years ago. Consciousness becoming conscious of itself. This is the very act of creating a highter level of consciousness.
We must move forward into the total unfamiliar if we want to survive as a species. The unfamiliar of being our own leader within a community of other leaders, all leaderless. We must each learn to co-create with our own unfolding experience of how we are inextricably interconnected with All That the Universe Is… and with each other.
Leaderless Community of Leaders
This Occupy Together movement is our chance to walk into the night forest together. Where it is dark, and allow the unfolding shapes, contours, patterns and sensations form our new co-creative world of knowing our inherent interconnection to All That is. To create a new way of being where we are each fully empowered to live responsibly, engaged with life in each present moment. Living in a equitable, compassionate, way by co-creating with each new moment. Together as a community of leaderlsss leaders…..together.
Join Carrie at Feldenkrais and Qi Gong in Seattle for a class or a workshop. She can be reached at http://www.movementfromwithin.net, 206-459-1773, or feldychi@comcast.net.