How We Relate To The Planet

[skinny]

Bit different, this one. Driving in to work this morning, I looked over the green hills of Greenhill Road, my usual descent into the city to work, as I always do. Today I was struck by how beautiful the landscape was. Now this is a mundane though relaxing journey for me 322.7 days of the year, but today it was a different mood all together.

I've had this happen before: an immense feeling of love for the land comes over me and I sense an overflow of emotion and I ache to share the response with others. It's a rapturous feeling. When it comes on, it overwhelms the mind and also the emotional centre (feels like it is in the chest area or upper stomach somewhere), and all the troubles, stresses and concerns of the day are swept away to insignificance by the flood of joy.

Today's episode was relatively low-key and quite short-lived, but it got me thinking about why many people have this experience, and yet also how sad it is that most do not ever get to feel any sense of connection to country.

I don't believe Jesus is the only way, that Allah is the only way, that Bodhisattva or Sunyata is the only way; I reckon it belongs to every person regardless of their cultural influence. I also appreciate that some others who are lucky enough to have this experience have wanted to make it available to as many others as possible, but it doesn't seem likely to work via a prescribed process or doctrinal delineation. I've had it within and without religion. Attempts to frame it seem to be futile.

My conclusion is that this extraordinary sensation of connection must be the essence of true peace. I'm no longer religious, but this is also how I felt during moments of perceived connectivity with God as a person of faith many years ago. I'm certain it is also at the bottom of what Ed Mitchell felt during his epiphany coming home from the moon on Apollo 14.

Mitchell said he understood in a moment of broad clarity dawning, that everything he was experiencing, the blue planet out the window, the stars, the local star, the spacecraft, his companions, all were one. Unified. The same. Not just built from the same stuff, but really truly one.

I'm interested in this experience of an inner/intuitive sense of connection to the planet. That's why it's here in the earth forum and not the religions forums. I'm sure there is plenty of research into the psychology of this experience. Ed Mitchell's notion of the holographic universe ties into the experience. It has been variously described in religious texts and the personal stories of spiritual leaders throughout history, however I don't think it can be approached vicariously, which is why I think religions fall short - a kind of false advertising born out of someone else's authentic experiences (Jesus, et al).

I'm more interested in the experiences of everyday folk like me. Anybody else got some insights from experience or knowledge? Please share them.

 

[Krepostnoi]

I used to think that, for me, this was related to a specific sense of regional belonging: I still remember the almost physical sense of returning home I had one winter, riding a motorcycle into the West Riding and seeing snow clinging to the soot-blackened sandstone that typified Leeds and Bradford (and probably elsewhere in the county) before the craze for sandblasting took hold. I also used to experience it on the tops above Hebden Bridge: wuthering heights country, give or take a valley or two, which runs a gamut from forbidding bleakness to sunlit welcome, depending on caprice. But each mood has its attractions. Or in the Yorkshire wolds, that magical, timeless* stretch of land inland from the laughably-named Yorkshire Riviera. In all these cases, you'll note this is tied to place: Northernness - with a capital N - makes up a big part of my sense of identity, my origin myth.

But I get something similar in Malaysia, too. The exotic whoops of the local birds almost act as mindfulness bells, reminding me that I am here, for almost any definition of "here" that you care to choose. And this isn't just on dreamy tropical beaches or in original rain forest, but in humdrum suburban housing zones, too. So I begin to question the extent to which the experience is, for me, tied to specific location. Certainly, where I am now (for all interpretations of that phrase), I experience such moments as profound gratitude for my existence, and, yes, downright awe.

A working hypothesis is that, as much as anything, it's practice, or at any rate awareness that such moments are possible. Perhaps the mental constructs I project onto places in Yorkshire predispose me, by instilling a sense of comfort and belonging, towards being able to access this sense of peace. And like any skill, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So having done it there, it becomes easier to access it elsewhere.That said, I have found Malaysia to be profoundly welcoming: it suits me and my family in ways that life in the UK, even in God's Own County, never did. So it may well be easier for moments of gratitude and awareness to reach prominence in what I suppose I must refer to as my mind. I rack my brains, and struggle to remember similar moments of peace and clarity in Russia, for example.

(There was one, in the cathedral in the fortress of St Peter and St Paul, in St Petersburg; this cathedral is the last resting-place for many of the Romanov rulers, and still plays a big symbolic role in Russian nationalist mindsets. Plus, of course, it's Russian Orthodox, so those are two major reasons right there why I should have found it an inimical place. But we happened across a concert being held of liturgical music by Rachmaninov, performed by a male voice choir, and that singing transported me: for a while there, I saw glimpses of the light, in the accepted sense of the term, although it didn't last past the end of the concert, and I don't ascribe it to anything more than the skill of the performers and the composer, in manipulating frequency and harmony to achieve particular emotional effects.)

Does any of that help illuminate your inquiry, Skinny? (Just yesterday I was reading the introduction to the Book of the Damned, and of course Mr Fort himself talks therein of different expressions of one whole - it strikes me you have started measuring at a slightly different point on the circle).

* Of course, it isn't timeless at all, it's as much subject to the demands of "progress" and modernity as any other arbitrarily chosen tract of land you wish to choose. I'm aware I project a confusing, complex set of mental images onto the visual data conveyed by my optic nerves.

 

[skinny]

Thanks Krepostnoi. It's certainly a very welcome response which exhibits features of the phenomenon I've experienced myself, especially this

I experience such moments as profound gratitude for my existence, and, yes, downright awe.

Profound is a word that I didn't use, but it is so apt.

I'm an atheist. I don't believe that these are engendered from an outside deistic entity at all. Unless you count in that idea the enormity of the It All of which we are part - perhaps a sense of unity with the Cosmos. I dunno. Even this fumbling attempt to nail it down verbally cannot get across that profound sensation of "wow this physical / emotional sensation indicates something deeply significant is happening". Even if it isn't, at least to the outside observer, it feels like everything is in its right place for that moment. I wonder if there are individuals who carry this experience of living at all times in their daily existence. Saints, buddhas and the like are claimed to have been able to carry it off with daily devotion, so who knows. I couldn't. I have little kids that draw me onto the concretes of existence every waking moment. But I hope they get to feel it too.

 

[Coastaljames]

Maslow's "peak experiences".

As well as genuine mystic insights into the irrefutable oneness of all. If you meditate lots and lots and lots, your world can be like this forever.

"Self-actualized people...live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world." Maslow.

 

[skinny]

a specific sense of regional belonging

I get that too, but it isn't the same as what I felt this morning.

I wanted to cry with happiness. The sensation diminished rapidly and I didn't need to, but I immediately thought "where did that come from?" It was so random. Out of the blue. No definitive external stimuli apart from the landscape and my reaction to that scene.

The exotic whoops of the local birds almost act as mindfulness bells

I got that in The Flinders Ranges two years ago - another place I've visited over 30 times. The final birdcalls of a long hot day in an isolated desert landscape set off those bells. Mindfulness bells - I like the phrase. I felt so damn lucky to be there to hear it - elevated somehow.

that singing transported me: for a while there, I saw glimpses of the light, in the accepted sense of the term, although it didn't last past the end of the concert, and I don't ascribe it to anything more than the skill of the performers and the composer, in manipulating frequency and harmony to achieve particular emotional effects

I've had these occur in situations like concerts where you'd expect a heightened emotional response to the external stimuli, often engineered to trigger the response, like the choruses designed for the Pentecostal songfests. My father is a clergyman, and he has researched knowledge of the methods they use (and is against them due to their phoniness). Today's event was not triggered by anything I can put my finger on. Therefore, it must have been an alignment of the synapses and the landscape which triggered an irrational emotional response. It was lovely.

 

[rynner2]

Although I do relate to several areas of the land as favourites, you won't be surprised to hear that it's mostly the coast and the sea that grabs my attention and sense of awe.

But of inland places, the Sahara desert greatly impressed me. Not so much the sand dune covered bits as the stony, rocky areas, which gave me the feeling of seeing the bare bones of the earth, naked geology that knows and cares little about life. It gives the human observer a sense of insignificance and humility. The wide ocean spaces can have a similar effect. And ocean and deserts can both kill you if the weather so chooses...

 

[skinny]

Why our brains love the ocean: scientifically measured responses

.... The Tohono O’odham (which means “desert people”) are Native Americans who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico. When I was a graduate student at the University of Arizona, I used to take young teens from the Tohono O’odham Nation across the border to the Sea of Cortez (the Gulf of California). Many of them had never seen the ocean before, and most were completely unprepared for the experience, both emotionally and in terms of having the right gear. On one field trip several of the kids didn’t bring swim trunks or shorts—they simply didn’t own any. So we all sat down on the beach next to the tide pools of Puerto Peñasco, I pulled out a knife, and we all cut the legs off our pants, right then and there.

Once in the shallow water we put on masks and snorkels (we’d brought enough for everyone), had a quick lesson on how to breathe through a snorkel, and then set out to have a look around. After a while I asked one young man how it was going. “I can’t see anything,” he said. Turns out he’d been keeping his eyes closed underwater. I told him that he could safely open his eyes even though his head was beneath the surface. He put his face under and started to look around. Suddenly he popped up, pulled off his mask, and started shouting about all the fish. He was laughing and crying at the same time as he shouted, “My planet is beautiful!” Then he slid his mask back over his eyes, put his head back into the water, and didn’t speak again for an hour.

My memory of that day, everything about it, is crystal clear. I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet it is for him, too. Our love of water had made an indelible stamp on us. His first time in the ocean felt like mine, all over again.....

If my brain had been being measured for activity this morning, I suspect there would have been a lot of areas that are usually low level or dormant lighting up during that moment. Something woke up that isn't usually sensed.

 

[Ulalume]

Great topic, skinny. Thanks for bringing it up.

I once had a (kind of) similar experience. It sounds overly dramatic to call it "life-changing" but it did change my perception of pretty much everything, and the understanding gained from it has stuck, even as the experience itself faded.

This happened the Summer I was 14, not too long after the solstice. It was nearing sunset, and as was my habit then, I was sitting on the backyard deck to look at the sky.

For a few weeks previously, I'd been feeling this undercurrent of something there, some knowledge that hadn't quite come to the surface yet. This sense of out-of-reach knowledge would come closer or draw back seemingly due to the place I was in, so I'd taken to wandering around in nature to try to draw it out. I'd spent quite a bit of time on the cliffs above the river and the river bank itself. The feeling was stronger there. The mossy rocks and the rapids seemed to bring it very close, but I still couldn't reach this thing I didn't know yet. I felt like one of the creatures in Wind In The Willows, but didn't hold out any hope that Pan himself would show up to solve the mystery. I still don't know why the feeling was stronger in those places. Maybe the water was hypnotic and I was working myself into a state of receptiveness, I don't know.

Anyway, that evening on the deck, everything was as usual until all at once my perception changed. Suddenly, everything was outlined in this brilliant orange-gold light. Everything - the trees, the deck, my own body - basically, anything I could see. All were connected to each other with more web-like strands of the same light. This effect seemed unrelated to the sunset itself; more importantly there was the understanding that came with it.

In a deep-down hard-to-describe way, I understood that everything everywhere was actually made of this light. Despite how things might look on the surface, it was all the same in its essence, and this light was the essence. it was all connected. Back then I wouldn't have used the term "oneness" because that sounded like hippy-dippy talk in those days, but I suppose that's what it was. The understanding just seemed more profound than anything a mere word could contain.

I don't recall how long the visual part of this experience lasted, but I do remember walking around in a state of awe for several hours afterward.

At that time, I was still attending a strict fundamentalist Christian school and had been trying hard to take their lessons to heart. One of the first things that had come to mind during this experience was that the church had been going about it all wrong, they had been missing the bigger picture. It wasn't that I'd taken this light-essence to be God, but it wasn't not God, either, if that makes any sense. I also knew they would describe this experience as evil and a sign that I had "opened the door to Satan". But I knew this wasn't true. It wasn't evil, it was as if I'd seen this incredible purity at the heart of all things.

While I personally regard this as a spiritual experience, I haven't been able to gather much enthusiasm for organized religion since that day.

 

[skinny]

Interesting article that relates to human connection to land and the effects of removal from venerated spaces.

http://www.psychoterratica.com/solastalgia.html


I studied this subject at uni over 20 years ago and explored how the Europeans who stole Australia have maintained a severe and deliberate disconnection with their adopted landscapes which to this day engenders cultural, environmental and social unrest. We are still ignoring the wisdom of the old ones who have an unbroken line of connection to their much venerated lands. My professor criticised my dissertation, stating that my yearning for a national approach to land management that follows Aboriginal philosophies was yet another form of cultural appropriation that is harmful because it misrepresents the truth of their reality and replaces it with a dreamed up relationship that has no basis in fact. He was right, but he awarded a credit anyway. I think he wanted me to keep pursuing the truth and he knew if I did I'd eventually lose the wet ideas I was bringing to his subject and maybe find something really worth writing about. I didn't then, but maybe I will now. I might drop in for a chat with him next week.

 

[Coastaljames]

Something woke up that isn't usually sensed.

Remember - our senses are basically inhibiting filters. They restrict input to the brain to protect it. Sometimes these filters can go askew and let too much in.

Drugs, meditation, sex, ritual, music, dance...all of these things can, to a greater or lesser extent, weaken or even remove these filters. I've worked long and hard on these methods and tehcniques for many years. As the poet Rimbaud wrote, "A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless and systematised disorganisation of all the sense". Sometimes, however, and for me the purest times, the senses can go askew for no particular reason of for one or many that can't be ascertained. Sometimes they are just weak. And they let more in than they are designed to. I'd suggest your account Skinny relates to this.

It's very beautiful and special. Often awesome in the purest sense of the word. Those who devote themselves to a life of Buddhist practise aim to make this state permenant for them. It is they call Nirvana. For those who lead a more mundane life then these moments come to us occasionaly, sometimes by our actions but other times not. And I think we should appreciate and learn from them. We should use them, as I wrote earlier, to learn that life is all one grand mystic consciousness. That we are one with it and it is one with us.

 

[skinny]

Wow. There it is.

Anyway, that evening on the deck, everything was as usual until all at once my perception changed. Suddenly, everything was outlined in this brilliant orange-gold light. Everything - the trees, the deck, my own body - basically, anything I could see. All were connected to each other with more web-like strands of the same light. This effect seemed unrelated to the sunset itself; more importantly there was the understanding that came with it.
In a deep-down hard-to-describe way, I understood that everything everywhere was actually made of this light. Despite how things might look on the surface, it was all the same in its essence, and this light was the essence. it was all connected.

Illumination of the physical and mental and emotional senses - a sudden brightness in the mind that touches the heart. Did you get that sense of overwhelming peace from the event, Lumes? Like everything was ok?

I don't recall how long the visual part of this experience lasted, but I do remember walking around in a state of awe for several hours afterward.

The immensity of the feeling is remarkable. I also had a good walk after a religious epiphany in my early 20s. Walked for hours in a state of reverie. I've always felt the need to share it too. Did you talk to anyone about it or keep it to yourself?

And the place where you had it - does it still ring with a reverberation of something special? I go back sometimes to the places I walked after the experience and there's nothing special about the place apart from my memory of what happened there. I do wonder if this is what the native cultures experience when they call a place in the landscape 'sacred'.

At that time, I was still attending a strict fundamentalist Christian school and had been trying hard to take their lessons to heart. One of the first things that had come to mind during this experience was that the church had been going about it all wrong, they had been missing the bigger picture. It wasn't that I'd taken this light-essence to be God, but it wasn't not God, either, if that makes any sense. I also knew they would describe this experience as evil and a sign that I had "opened the door to Satan". But I knew this wasn't true. It wasn't evil, it was as if I'd seen this incredible purity at the heart of all things.

While I personally regard this as a spiritual experience, I haven't been able to gather much enthusiasm for organized religion since that day.

Ditto. This is a widespread phenomenon and doesn't belong in the domain of the religious only. The fundamentalist crowd's capacity for misunderstanding and misinterpreting authentic spiritual experiences that digress from the formal dogma is so frustrating. Like they have a franchise on life itself. They can keep it. The only sense of a message I got from their God was "I've given you a brain; go ahead and use it and don't let the flock drag you back into the bucket. Get outta here. You don't belong."

 

[Coastaljames]

Like everything was ok?

Sorry to interject Skinny, Im aware your question was posed to our friend Ulalume however, I'd like to say there a reason that everything "feels ok" when one is having such an unfiltered experience. It's because everything is ok. Even if it's not ok- it's still ok. EVerything is ok.

 

[skinny]

Drugs, meditation, sex, ritual, music, dance...all of these things can, to a greater or lesser extent, weaken or even remove these filters. I've worked long and hard on these methods and tehcniques for many years. As the poet Rimbaurd wrote, "A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless and systematised disorganisation of all the sense". Sometimes, however, and for me the purest times, the senses can go askew for no particular reason of for one or many that can't be ascertained. Sometimes they are just weak. And they let more in than they are designed to. I'd suggest your account Skinny relates to this.

I think so too, CJ. I'll take the random eruptions over the forced routine any day. I've tried the systematised disorganisation method too and found it hollow - those induced peak experiences were entirely deceptive and covered a myriad of problems momentarily. No pain no gain I guess.

 

[Ulalume]

Wow. There it is.

Illumination of the physical and mental and emotional senses - a sudden brightness in the mind that touches the heart. Did you get that sense of overwhelming peace from the event, Lumes? Like everything was ok?


The immensity of the feeling is remarkable. I also had a good walk after a religious epiphany in my early 20s. Walked for hours in a state of reverie. I've always felt the need to share it too. Did you talk to anyone about it or keep it to yourself?

And the place where you had it - does it still ring with a reverberation of something special? I go back sometimes to the places I walked after the experience and there's nothing special about the place apart from my memory of what happened there. I do wonder if this is what the native cultures experience when they call a place in the landscape 'sacred'.


Ditto. This is a widespread phenomenon and doesn't belong in the domain of the religious only. The fundamentalist crowd's capacity for misunderstanding and misinterpreting authentic spiritual experiences that digress from the formal dogma is so frustrating. Like they have a franchise on life itself. They can keep it. The only sense of a message I got from their God was "I've given you a brain; go ahead and use it and don't let the flock drag you back into the bucket. Get outta here. You don't belong."

The place itself - not really, but the experience gave me a lasting sense of another level of...I suppose we can call it "reality". It's always there, everywhere, right underneath what is normally visible. So not so much the place, but the world in general.

Hard to recall now if I felt any special peace as it's usually defined, but there was a sense that this hidden reality was the thing that underpinned all of existence, and the things that occurred to cause us so much trouble in daily life were only temporal, having no more importance to this other reality than the neighbors gossiping over the fence.

Like you, I have responsibilities that must always draw me back to the concrete world. It makes sense that Buddhists and Quakers simplify their lives so as not to distract from their spiritual connection (I could do better in this respect myself.) When things get overwhelming, I can bring back this knowledge a bit by imagining looking down on the city from above and realizing we are all in little corrals of our own making. The corrals are only mental constructs, but we tend to behave as if they are real, material things keeping us in. But the hidden reality beneath doesn't care about our corrals at all. This is how I keep my sanity when there's a hundred errands to do, my mother's off the rails again and all the kids need new shoes. It's important to understand the constructs we've made for ourselves, I think.

Ditto on the church stuff as well. It began to seem as if they were adhering to these many rules for the rules' sake, forgetting that these practices were supposed to be a means to an end.

ETA - oops, forgot to say, I didn't tell anyone about this for years, though I did kind of hedge around the subject with the pastor. Did not get a good response. The person I finally told about it in full was an atheist, and I expected him to scoff, but it turned out he had had similar experiences while camping in the mountains. That's when I grasped that such things weren't predicated on a belief in god/s

 

[skinny]

Slight digression from the topic at hand. Lumes, can you share the name of the Native American clans that occupied the area of Victoria TX?

 

[Ulalume]

Slight digression from the topic at hand. Lumes, can you share the name of the Native American clans that occupied the area of Victoria TX?

In early times the region was shared by the Tonkawa and the Karankawa. Later on, the Comanche tribe was in evidence, as they burned the town in the 1840's. Other tribes may have passed through on their travels, but I don't know offhand. The Comanche tribe were pretty protective of their territory.

A little further inland, there were the Mescalero and Lipan Apache.

 

[skinny]

Much appreciated. I'll throw some questions your way later on about their relationship to the land. I'm ignorant of the US clans. But not now. I'm ready for bed.

 

[Coastaljames]

I think so too, CJ. I'll take the random eruptions over the forced routine any day. I've tried the systematised disorganisation method too and found it hollow - those induced peak experiences were entirely deceptive and covered a myriad of problems momentarily. No pain no gain I guess.

I'd definitely agree with that mate. The systematised disorganisation route can also be taken "naturally", but yes- takes more work.

And that's always been the key for me. Drugs will get you there. But...it's like taking drugs to be good at sports...you get there but it's cheap...shallow. I have had infinitely more profound and deep experiences since I stopped taking any drug whatsoever. It's a much purer means. For me, that is.

 

[Mythopoeika]

 

[skinny]

Have you ever had an 'earth' experience like those described above, CJ? Induced or otherwise? If not, any extrapolation of your breakthrough moments would be most welcome.

 

[Coal]

Interesting article that relates to human connection to land and the effects of removal from venerated spaces.

http://www.psychoterratica.com/solastalgia.html


I studied this subject at uni over 20 years ago and explored how the Europeans who stole Australia have maintained a severe and deliberate disconnection with their adopted landscapes which to this day engenders cultural, environmental and social unrest. We are still ignoring the wisdom of the old ones who have an unbroken line of connection to their much venerated lands. My professor criticised my dissertation, stating that my yearning for a national approach to land management that follows Aboriginal philosophies was yet another form of cultural appropriation that is harmful because it misrepresents the truth of their reality and replaces it with a dreamed up relationship that has no basis in fact. He was right, but he awarded a credit anyway. I think he wanted me to keep pursuing the truth and he knew if I did I'd eventually lose the wet ideas I was bringing to his subject and maybe find something really worth writing about. I didn't then, but maybe I will now. I might drop in for a chat with him next week.

That's fascinating (and book-marked for later) and kind of ties in with both Songlines and my own thinking that we evolved to use episodic and procedural memory as a means of managing access to resources and annual migrations.

I'd suggest that whether the Aboriginal relationship with the land has any basis in fact or not, it's real to them and it's part of who they are; to force them to not follow might be a far is a far worse colonisation.

 

[Coastaljames]

Have you ever had an 'earth' experience like those described above, CJ? Induced or otherwise? If not, any extrapolation of your breakthrough moments would be most welcome.

I've had lots I think. From large to small. I have to be honest I'm not that eager to talk about these things. I guess I worry that, for me, talking about such things will "pollute" them a bit with the mundanity of words and conscious thought. I like my diamonds unpolished. Also, and probably less pretentiously- I can't put into words as well as you and others have what we're talking about.

But, I guess I've worked hard over the last few years to try to get closer and closer to being in an almost perpetual beautiful state. It's been called madness in many people before. But...it feels wonderful.

 

[Vardoger]

I can remember something like that sensation when visiting highlands and seeing large snow cowered mountains a few miles away, like this one. It's a photo of Jotunheimen, a large mountain range in Western Norway.

 

[Coastaljames]

^ Good Lord...

 

[Naughty_Felid]

I lived in a place that I felt so connected to and a part of of it was pretty much a physical sensation. I felt the hills, rivers, valleys, etc was my home and I've never felt the same about any other place. I wasn't born or bought up there I only lived there a short time but I would love to go back.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I lived in a place that I felt so connected to and a part of of it was pretty much a physical sensation. I felt the hills, rivers, valleys, etc was my home and I've never felt the same about any other place. I wasn't born or bought up there I only lived there a short time but I would love to go back.

Where was that?

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Where was that?

that would be telling...

 

[Mythopoeika]

Awww. Spoilsport.

 

[rynner2]

that would be telling...

Well, it would, but that's the whole point of a message board!!!

You raised the ruddy subject - if you don't want to discuss it then don't mention it in the first place!

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Well, it would, but that's the whole point of a message board!!!

You raised the ruddy subject - if you don't want to discuss it then don't mention it in the first place!

I'm in a job that means I have to be careful protecting my identity, otherwise I wouldn't be able to comment on stuff. Anyone who knows me, knows about this place as I talk about it often.