A cycle of inquiry 1
From separation to participation
The Sentient River co-operative inquiry group, with its beginnings in 2019, must be among the longest-running co-operative inquiries. The group has settled into a pattern of six-week inquiry cycles two of three times each year. This post and the following one give an account of the cycle that took place in November and December 2023. As we say in How to Read…, this post is intended as an interlinked series, and links are provided to other relevant posts on Learning How Land Speaks.
At the first meeting,[1] we reflected on our experiences so far and considered whether to converge on particular themes in this cycle. This was a choice point, for previous inquiry cycles had been divergent, open to each member’s choice of direction, although we had found common themes and synchronicities arising. At the first meeting, we reflected on our experiences so far and decided to loosely focus on four themes.
Choosing one place. As we explored earlier, while some members had visited the same spot each week, others had roamed more widely. We decided it would be beneficial to explore the familiarity that arises for visiting the same place week after week.
The transition from separation to participation: In earlier cycles we had all experienced a transition from feeling apart from the world to being intimately part of it. We had variously described this as a ‘threshold’, ‘liminal’ and as ‘lifting the veil’. We wanted to deepen our understanding of this experience, to produce rich descriptions of the transition, to learn more about the practices that might help to bring it about, and to gently interrogate the veridity of these experiences.
Exploring different Languages: We had learned that human language, particularly English, creates a lived reality through its ready-made categories of perception. This is a world of separate and static non-living things, a world often divided into binaries of human/nature, living/non-living, sentient/mechanical. We wanted to explore alternative human languages that might offer different perceptions – languages of visual arts, poetry, myth, prayer; and to attend to the language of River and the wider landscape.
The community of inquiry: We had previously noted that the inquiry group provided a vessel for challenge and support. We wanted to explore more fully how we might both validate and challenge each other’s experience.
Familiarity with place
While not everyone chose to or was able to stay focussed on one place through the cycle, there was in this cycle more consistency. We generally agreed that consistently visiting on place was helpful: each time we visited, there was a sense of recognition and the well-known physical features reminded us of previous visits. Luisa spoke of River as a ‘friend’ and of ‘remembering how it feels in your body’; Kathleen returned after a several weeks away and spoke of ‘Homecoming to old friends… a Familiar place: I think simply being here, with this Land Community, is the portal for entrance into that magical realm. The familiarity probably supported our ability to immerse ourselves in the place. For earlier reflections on place see earlier post Engagement with Place)
From separation to participation
How do we move from what Alan Watts called the ‘skin encapsulated ego’ that experiences the world as outside ourselves, to a deep experience of being part of the whole? Through the six weeks of inquiry several themes emerged, some more explicit than others.
Immersion
Out on a clear night, Ezekiel gazed at Orion and the Milky Way near his forest home in Virginia.
I am transfixed (literally “motionless with astonishment”). Something in this sight – mixed with the catalyst of my intention to be on the land in prayer – has altered me, ushered me across an unseen threshold. I can’t look away. But I do. And when I look back, Orion is almost fully revealed. He’s moving! But I remind myself that I am, in fact, rolling – riding the back of a great planet-sized whale that typically dwells below my conscious perception’.
In group discussion the followed, Ezekiel reflected on:
this movement… of being observer, subject-object, looking out onto the world, to being inside the world. I felt like there was in that moment of hearing, the wind and the trees, of feeling myself as the land, as sort of being immersed, not just in a physical landscape, but in a psychic landscape. I very much felt inside of the psyche of the place. It was profound, profoundly moving for me.
Luisa found her familiar place by the Manzanares in Madrid flooded by recent rain. River and Sky seemed to merge, and her attention was drawn to flocks of birds flying high in V-formation. While wanting to attend to River, the Sky and the Birds held her attention:
I was captured, mesmerized. I let go of my resistance to look at river. I took the towel sitting next to river and placed it right in the middle of the circle of trees. I lay on my back, and just looked up to the sky. This energy from below invaded my body and I had the feeling of being inside the ocean, as if I was laying on my back, down in the middle of the ocean, looking up towards the light. I felt like I was inside water… Sky was river. And I was inside. Life smiled at me with another dance. Birds flying by, making beautiful shapes. Bewildering, breathtaking. I was absorbed. I was part.
Kathleen spoke of
That state of bewildered consciousness that is open to everything, that's beyond our human capacity to perceive the world almost. I don't know how else to explain it.
While David described this kind of experience as
getting into that space, finding that space without the history, without the future, without just sort of being in that that place where I'm feeling totally one-ish. I've never had to explain it… but I know what it is when it happens.
Intentional practices
Immersion comes from being present, dropping distractions, dropping pre-conceptions, noticing physical details through all the senses. We each drew on intentional practices that helped create an experience of immersion including:
Intention: Holding a clear intention to be open to River
Pilgrimage: regarding the whole visit to River as a sacred practice
Ceremony: Opening sacred space, dedicating one’s actions to ‘All my relations’
Giving loving attention
Singing and chanting, speaking out loud
Bringing gifts
Paying attention to breath is a key practice for dissolving the ego boundary, as Kathleen and Luisa noticed:
I close my eyes and breathe. The glacial air moves in and out of me until I begin to feel no distinction between the air within and the air without. The boundary of my skin is so gossamer as to be non-existent – a miniscule delusion of the ego.
I breathe and I felt I was her, like she's in me, I passed the threshold with breath.
Many of these intentional practices have been explored in earlier posts on Learning How Land Speaks:
Dave and Peter’s pilgrimage to the upper reaches of the Fowey River
Thresholds – physical and experiential
There often seemed to moment or event that marked a threshold away from everyday consciousness; see Thresholds and Liminality for an earlier post on this theme. These could be physical features such as the metal kissgate that Peter passes through on each visit; and a wooden one on the path to Dave’s ‘sit-spot’. These gates appear not only as physical features but to represent the entrance into ceremonial space, borrowing the Lakota prayer Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ, dedicating their actions to All my Relations.
There are also experiential transformations that can be quite sudden shifts of consciousness, often related to physical gateways. Luisa:
I had just crossed under the [railway] arch that is like a gateway... I was captivated by the sky on water and the sense of eternity. I was pulled by this reflection.
And these thresholds are not always voluntary. Dave walks on a cliff top and is drawn down to the beech to sit on the pebbles and watch the sea as a living creature:
As light fades, the water is alive. Swell mounts up, each crouching wave leaps at the shoreline, shape-shifting into tentacles of foam that finger the land rattling the stones into life. Slowly, slowly see each stone lost to the waterworld… it's clear that sea is an animal pushed by the sun and the moon and the wind…
In the later discussion Dave observes
What I really valued about that the experience was that when I came off the cliff I was invited, almost against my will, to go and sit on the pebbles.
On several occasions, a threshold in consciousness was brought about by grief and horror at human destructiveness. Ezekiel, out on a hike crosses a bridge over a creek and is appalled by the destructive impact of human actions on the water and river banks:
I didn’t intend for this to be my time with land. I wanted it to be more purposeful and planned. I wanted to design a ceremony and bring an offering. But today, the land decided to swallow my intentions and wrench me through this portal… I begin to speak spontaneously aloud, praise and apologies flowing from my lips like a freshly tapped spring. To the land, something like, ‘I’m sorry; I love you; I see you; I’m with you.’
Ezekiel speaks of his
Grief. Shame. Anger. Despair. Confusion. But also love and gratitude and awe.
Kathleen, working on a conservation project in the Turks and Caicos Islands sees an Antillean Nighthawk, a bird whose numbers she has watched slowly decline.
But ki should not be here now. It’s too late in the year. Ki should be back in their wintering grounds in Central America by now, and I don’t know how ki will make their way home without their flock… This completely discombobulated me… I've never seen that before. The world speaks through things, right? And I got that a gigantic message and I don't know what to make of it. It stopped me in my tracks. I don't know what to do with that information, I don’t know how to how to even speak about it. It's just so confusing and ungrounding.
No threshold
It is important to note that the world is not always available and responsive. Ezekiel expresses his frustration of reaching out to a world below the surface and not meeting it in a poem:
I try to open to this,
the world that flows
and endures here…
But I am distracted and troubled
just now, and I will forget again.
Peter tells of a similar awkwardness while sitting by River
I feel the world still being right here, but psychically still distant from me, still behind the veil. I’m not there yet. Like on a Zen retreat when rather than meditating I am just waiting for the bell to signal the end of the session. I have a sense that there was a curious drama just beyond my reach!
And in the discussion Dave reflects on the frustration on Ezekiel’s experience
Is it that when you have crossed, when you know what it's like to cross a threshold, and then most of the time, when we want it to happen, the difficulty, the inability to cross, the unsatisfactoriness of ordinary consciousness. Does this feel like, ‘When ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise’? Is that what you mean?
A ‘formula’
We wondered, somewhat tongue in cheek, if it was possible to draw these experiences together into a ‘formula’ for approaching a threshold
Intention + ceremony/prayer + imagination + surprise leads toward the threshold
Our next post will reflect more on this cycle of inquiry, exploring the different languages we touched on together
[1] Each six week cycle included weekly mini-cycles – visiting River, composing an account, and meeting on Zoom to share and reflect on experiences. These meetings were recorded and transcribed using Otter.ai electronic transcription; Peter then edited the transcription for clarity and identified themes from each weekly discussion, circulating these to group members. The present account has been written by Peter drawing on posts, discussions, and summaries.