The sentient world is always present

An account of a visit to River and reflection on gateways and liminal spaces that open us to experience a sentient world. This is followed by some reflections on what kinds of practice make the opening of such spaces more likely; and on the nature of those ontopoetic moments when the world appears to respond to our call.

“All my relations,” I say to myself – and to the wider world – as the metal kissgate clangs behind me. I follow the footpath diagonally across the field, chanting with each step, “Walking the Green Earth. Walking the Green Earth”, a mantra I learned from the Buddhist teacher Joan Jiko Halifax many years ago. I walk past the two ash trees that sadly have succumbed to die-back, and in the middle of the field, pause, listen, look around. The morning is almost completely still and silent. Most of the trees have lost their leaves, but the beeches on the wooded hillside are still glowing in browns and oranges, picked out by the low November sunshine. I feel very happy to be here again, a place I have visited in ceremony so many times over the past years. I feel everything open up around me, as if somehow the place itself has developed as a gateway into the sentient world.

Past the second ash I leave the footpath and take an angle toward the River Frome. River is quite low in this dry spell, but the banks are piled high with broken branches, mud, and debris deposited by the recent heavy rains. At the moment I reached the riverbank, Kingfisher flies downstream, a whirring flight low on the water, kis iridescent feathers bright in the thin sunshine. “Well, I didn’t call Kingfisher”, I say to myself, “but ki has come, and that is certainly a blessing and a welcome”.

I reach my spot on the narrow peninsula where the two Rivers meet – with regular flooding it is seriously eroded – there seems to be more land washed away with each visit – and perform my usual ceremony. I bow to Rivers, introduce myself and ask for teaching, make my prayers to the four cardinal directions, then settle down to watch and listen. My discipline is to intently watch whatever catches my eyes or ears with an open mind and loving attention, and move on when I am drawn to something else: River flowing past; ripples and whirlpools; autumn leaves falling in flurries from the trees, then drifting on the water surface; a gaggle of ducks; the call of a crow.

After a while, scrambling and slippering, I make my way down to a muddy ledge right on the River edge – I move cautiously, I really don’t want to fall in. I take from my pocket the little bottle of water my friend, ceremonialist Annie Spencer collected from several Rivers for me. I offer this to River as a gift and pour out the water, watching the stream as it falls; the last few drops catching  my particular attention. River carries on, taking my offering with it, seemingly without comment. I very carefully return to the safety of my seat and again watch and wait.

Now my attention is caught by the reflection of the big willow tree on the opposite bank. The stream carries leaves through the still image, a gust of breeze ruffles the surface, distorting the reflection, then stills again. As I gaze, I am drawn in, the sense of inner and outer disappearing in a constant flow of which I am an integral part. 

Then I remember. I sat in this same spot nearly two years ago watching the reflection of this same tree. It was dark then, no bright sunlit River, but every photon of light seemed to light up River so the Willow reflected black on silver, black on mirrored black in the dark water. Bushes and trees formed a semi-circle of deep shadow surrounding the image. I struggled to describe this at the time, and I struggle again today:

As I gaze at this, I drop into a mystery: a semi-circle of darkness, formed by the shadows of trees and bushes on my left, taking in the opposite riverbank, returning to the willow stump on my right. This ring encircles a pool of darkly silvered water. In the middle, on the far bank, Willow Tree stands tall, winter-naked, dark filigree against the sky, throwing a delicate but distinct reflection in the mirrorwater, shimmering black against silver. And I sit in the middle, on the diameter. Quite suddenly, I have found myself in the centre what I can only call a sacred aesthetic or sacred geometry, which touches me with some unfathomable meaning and draws me into ever-greater presence. My mind still flutters with distraction… but I have arrived. I feel totally present. I am sitting again in extraordinary beauty, in this dark semi-circle of shadow with this delicate but distinct silhouette of the willow tree shimmering lightly black against silver… I sit there, arrested. (February 25 2022)

Even today in the sunlight, I feel something of the same mystery. This reflection serves as a gateway, a portal into a different sense of consciousness. It is not the consciousness of I-it, even on I-Thou, but of ‘One’. As so often, I am reminded of Siddhartha, who listens to the many voices of River and eventually hears “the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om–perfection”. It’s a story beautiful told by Herman Hesse pointing to what for me are only tiny glimpses.¹

I sit a while longer, then thank River for what has been a wonderful visit. the reminder for the peace and the and the sense of flow. I bless and thank the powers of the four directions. And as I give thanks a stronger gust a breeze arrives, ruffling the surface and blowing fresh cascades of leaves off the trees into River. While I was not sure that the Kingfisher was expressing a greeting on my arrival, it is evident to me that this is a gesture of farewell and an acknowledgement of my presence and of my prayers.

Reflections

The experience of this visit to River picks up two themes that have recurred during our Living Waters inquiries. First of all, the ‘gateways’ or ‘thresholds’ that mark a transition between reality as taken-for-granted in modern society and the world of sentient beings. As I wrote in an earlier post on Thresholds and Liminality:

These gateways do not seem to be directly open to the consciousness mind or to will. While there is work to be done in preparing oneself – through quieting the mind, holding an intention, or ceremonial gesture, one cannot make it happen. 

Part of that preparation seems to be the practice of returning to the same place, performing the same ritual gestures, developing a discipline of familiarity.

I am reminded again of Thomas Berry – my post Learning from Thomas Berry attracted a lot of attention and comments. Berry chose to enter a contemplative life in the Passionist tradition, and participated in the Divine Office, the daily cycle of prayer to mark the passage from darkness to light. He wrote

The psalms sung in these various moments of the day night-cycle celebrated the cosmological sequence of dawn, noon, afternoon, evening, and night moments these moments that gave to life its deep meaning.

He reflected that,

Despite all the trivialization observable throughout the Catholic tradition, something immensely significant was still available in this carrying out of the age-old effort of humans to bring human life into accord with the great liturgy of the universe.²

We don’t have to enter a contemplative life to engage in a regular cycle of acknowledgment. Such regularity counters the ongoing pressure of our culture to conform to a narrow materialist worldview – we are, after all, bombarded with conformist messages. The practice also opens a container for a different kinds of experience; it echoes the practice of ‘anchoring’ that is advocated by Neuro Linguistic Programming. Of course, one must guard that such repetition does not degenerate into mere habit; but this will often be countered by the unexpected response of the more-than-human world — as in the narrative above when the reflection of Willow reminds me of an earlier encounter; and the unexpected gust of wind.

The second theme reflected in these posts is that of ontopoetic response. As living cosmos panpsychism teaches, the world is not only sentient, with an inner life of its own, but is also responsive to us, open to arrange itself with poetic intent so as to ‘speak’ directly to humans in response to our call.

There are two occasions on my visit to River that might be seen as ontopoetic gestures: first was the flight of Kingfisher at the very moment I arrive at the riverbank; the second was the gust of wind that occurred as I closed my ceremony with an expression of thanks and appreciation. As I wrote above, while I discounted the flight of Kingfisher as an expression of greeting, it was self-evident that the gust of wind was an acknowledgement of my presence and of my prayers, and a gesture of farewell.

On further reflection I wonder about these conclusions. Is not such categorization – this was ontopoetic, this was not – more than a little ridiculous? I wonder at what I doing, allowing my rational mind to indulge in this way? It would be more fruitful to acknowledge that the sentient world is full of gestures and narratives, and that those of us socialized into a western worldview are far more likely to ignore what is before our eyes than to see what isn’t there.

Surely, we cannot but recognize those dramatic ‘moments when the cosmos seems to speak directly to the human self in a ‘language’ that is both apposite and intimate’ as Freya Mathews puts it. But I find it important not to remember that the world is ‘always already’ a communicative presence.

1. Hesse, H. (1951). Siddhartha (H. Rosner, Trans.). New Directions Publishing Company. 

2. As quoted in Tucker, M. E., Grim, J., & Angyal, A. (2019). Thomas Berry: A biography. Columbia University Press, pp.37-38.