Practices and Protocols

engaging with the world as sentient

What kinds of practices and protocols have we found helpful as we invoke Rivers as sentient beings in our co-operative inquiries?

When the eco-philosopher Henryk Skolimowski first developed his philosophy of a participatory world, he explained his ideas enthusiastically to a theatre director friend, who listened with interest but responded, “It is all very well. But what kind of exercises are you going to give them?” Skolimowski was at first taken aback, “What have exercises to do with philosophy?” he wondered. His friend explained “If you give them only ideas and theories, these ideas will remain abstract in human life… to make these ideas a part… of people's emotions and perceptions… you must find special exercises whereby your ideas will be… translated into… new tactics for living”. This conversation lead Skolimowski to develop exercises he described as ‘eco-yoga’.[1]

We tread a similar path, guided in part by Freya Mathews’ arguments that philosophy of any kind cannot itself change behaviour: arguably, it necessarily distances us from reality, traps us in dualism and thereby creates the moral gap between ourselves and the biosphere[2]. In a panpsychist world the point is not to understand the more-than-human world but to engage in celebratory and co-creative relationship. It is not just about understanding the world differently, it is about a different quality of relationship. The ontopoetic world ‘is not necessarily a given of our experience but may need to be activated via practices of address or invocation’[3]. The practice of co-operative inquiry, along with other forms of action research, aims to draw on experience and theory to develop new and more satisfactory forms of practice.

A sentient world is one that we treat with respect, but more than that, we relate in a way that honours its sentient presence. Throughout our inquiries we developed practices and protocols for that relationship. We use the term ‘ceremony’ for practices that create the conditions for encounter with the world as living, communicative presence. This starts with our intention to approach River in a ‘right relationship’, not as just a flow of water through the land, but as a sentient being in a sentient world of which we are intimately a part. The attitude we seek to bring is one of ‘reverent curiosity’; we are not seeking a response to River for our own ego gratification, in some kind ‘spiritual materialism’[4]; but rather to honour River as a living being and seek teaching for ourselves and the wider human community.

By Brook, Wiltshire, England

Our motives are always complex. They probably start with a yearning, often subconscious, to be back in connection, a longing for belonging. They will inevitably include some desire for self-gratification. Hopefully they also include changing ourselves to become more fully part of the world; healing the relationship between humans and the wider world.

Ceremony is first of all a means of conditioning the self, creating a space that is not overwhelmed by the distractions of everyday life, quieting the internal chatter and worry about quotidian concerns. It is a practice of imagination, taking ourselves away from William Blake’s ‘single vision’, into which we have been encultured. Like pilgrimage, ceremony involves separating oneself from the everyday, performing particular actions that are not part of everyday life, finding a way through a threshold into a different way of being, giving thanks and returning to everyday life. And yet, paradoxically, such ceremonies can take are also in the heart of the everyday, as Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh points out in his reflection on washing dishes: “While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.” Ceremonial gestures help us to fully attending to River.

It’s conditioning the self: I think one of the things is doing something different, like lying down and doing a prostration or something silly, in everyday terms. You go outside of what you normally do—prostrating in the middle of Freshford is not what people normally do.

Ceremony may call on formal protocols, borrowed from traditional religions and Indigenous practices—always with caution about insensitive appropriation. But ceremonial actions may also arise spontaneously in response to what occurs in the moment. Ceremony is, a learned practice rather than a one-off action, a practice that can be seen as opening a threshold to a communicative world beyond single vision. Without the practice, you're not ready for the threshold; but even with practice, you must wait for the world to come to you. You still can't push open the door.

Ceremony may use words, spoken, sung, or chanted. But it is also a means of addressing the wider world through a ‘language of things’.  As Freya has put it

Ontopoetics is poetic inasmuch as the ‘language’ that a communicative world speaks is necessarily a concretized and particularized one, a code of meaning conveyed through the symbolic resonance of things. It is in such language then that our address needs to be couched, since it is in such language that the world is able to respond: it is able to speak things.[2]

If the world speaks to us in a concrete language, surely we should find ways to ‘speak’ in similar form, drawing similarly on the symbolic resonance of gesture and physical metaphor. The Aboriginal elder is said to throw a handful of sand into River to demonstrate serious intent [5]; we may follow this through our attentive presence, bowing, gift giving, and other practices. Once again, these actions may communicate with River; they will also attune the human to the concrete language of response.

Ceremony is thus about holding an intention to invoke a sentient world through imagination. This is partly spontaneous, partly practiced: there is practice, there is spontaneity within the practice. As Andrea puts it

You know, there's a practice, a discipline to meditation, practising the letting go and allowing ourselves to enter into that space. I feel that it’s becoming easier, with the familiarity of the place and space, the welcome feeling, so it’s like dropping into meditation… I think that's been a practised discipline of returning. It's a preparation, a trained preparation as well as spontaneity.

And although we may experience ourselves as invoking a sentient world through our ceremony, that world is always there. Andrea again:

Maybe it's still just about noticing, maybe she's been speaking all along. I expect she has. We're just too busy in our own business to even notice. You know, I don't know that we're provoking the response. I'm imagining always that response is always there, like we're always welcome, we always have been. We stopped noticing. I really feel that, I feel that we're the separation. It's not speaking to crow and crow speaking back. She's been speaking to me all along. I've just been utterly deaf in the busyness of what it is that I'm thinking and doing and being.”

We offered participants in the Living Waters inquiries suggestions of possible forms of invocation as a starting point. Among the practices we drew on and will explore in posts on Learning How Land Speaks are

Developing a relationship with a particular place

Greeting River, asking permission to engage

Calling the Sacred Directions

Walking River as Pilgrimage

Honouring Ancestors

Intensive Water Watching

Giving Thanks and Praise

Bringing gifts

For many participants, the inquiry group itself became a shared practice of opening spaces and moments of connection with the more-than-human world. With its shared intent, the formal cycles of action and reflection, the engagement with like-minded humans. Some participants liked this participation to a form of shared spiritual practice. We will come back to this theme too in future posts.

1.         Skolimowski, H., The Co-operative Mind as a Partner of the Creative Evolution, in Knowledge, Reality and Happiness, R.K. Mishra and B.M. Sagar, Editors. 1991math, Indian Institute of Advanced Study SHIMLA, in association with Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers: New Delhi.

2.         Mathews, F., Invoking the Real: from the Specular to the Ontopoetic, in For a New Naturalism, A. Gare and W. Hudson, Editors. 2017, Telos Press: New York.

3.         Mathews, F., Living Cosmos Panpsychism, in The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, W. Seager, Editor. 2019, Routledge: London.

4.         Trungpa, C., Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. 2002: Shambhala.

5.         Northover, J. Joe Northover talks about Minningup Pool on the Collie River. Kaartdijin Noongar-Noongar Knowledge 2008; Available from: https://www.noongarculture.org.au/joe-northover-minningup-pool/.