Melbourne, Australia. Late September, 2012. Evening. The Southern Hemisphere is inching into spring, and tonight, daylight stretches, blithely resistant to crawling under the cover of the horizon. The sky opens its arms and pulls the daylight in for a prolonged goodnight hug: the two meet in a warm rainbow sherbet embrace of infinite gradient and depth.
Under this resplendent display of atmospheric affection, I run.
More accurately, I jog. I am appreciating how it feels to
move my legs, to warm my muscles and give my blood flow a good kick, but I feel
no particular need to exercise. I feel no urgency. For once.
Tonight, I jog slowly, merely with the intention of visiting a friend.
This friend happens to be a circular field of grass. The
Royal Park Native Grassland Circle. It is part of a park just outside of
Melbourne’s Central Business District. A surprisingly large park,
considering its proximity to the city center.
This grassland circle and I became fast friends upon my arrival in
Melbourne. When I first walked up to its edge, it opened up to me—much as
the aforementioned sky opened its arms to the sun. With openness, it
would seem, comes camaraderie.
There is a path running all the way around the grassland circle,
about three-quarters of a mile in circumference. The location is such
that when I am on one side of the circle, I look across and see, behind a wide
expanse of gently waving grasses, the glassy geometric spread of the Melbourne
city skyline. On the other side of the circle, however, I look across and
see only silhouetted trees and sky; I am in the African savanna, for all I
know.
As I run, I am cycled through views of human and non-human creation, in turn. Here is the perfect place to ponder the idea that has just been put forth to me in the Environmental Philosophy class I am taking at Melbourne Uni:
As I run, I am cycled through views of human and non-human creation, in turn. Here is the perfect place to ponder the idea that has just been put forth to me in the Environmental Philosophy class I am taking at Melbourne Uni:
Humans are not
separate from nature.
The thought sinks slowly, a stranger’s goggles dropped and
drifting down into the viscous ocean that is my psyche.
Of course we aren’t, says the voice of Science in my head.
We are animals. We are biochemistry. We are made of the same molecules as the
trees, the clouds, and—as the great Carl Sagan so fondly reminds us—the stars
in the night sky.
I jog along the path, peering at my “natural” surroundings—the
she-oaks, paperbarks, and gum trees, the native grasses and shrubs, the birds
that chirp and dive—and try to think hard, I am not separate from this.
I think the words, I see them in my head, but I do not feel them. I have this brain, after all, this centralized nervous system, with eyes and nerves that make me feel my body is a thing with boundaries. And I have this culture—oh, Western culture!—every aspect of which has conditioned me to think, perceive, and feel that I am not only separate from but superior to all other living and nonliving things in the world. Nature is the thing we look out at beyond the windows of our houses and cars; it is the unruly thing we drive into only as we exit our cities; it is the grass we walk on, in all senses of the phrase. Nature is a vast plane of existence beneath us.
I know that this way of
seeing is ingrained into our civilization’s DNA. It has evolved alongside our practices of
procuring food and protecting our communities, and it has solidified into
society-wide perceptual granite.
But I struggle against this
apparent finality, because in the past few weeks I’ve been given a taste of
something else. Something more vast,
more nuanced, and rife with undiscovered meaning. Someone has pointed to a tear in the fabric
of what I thought was reality, and now I am willing myself to look closer, aching and anxious to rip open my preconceived notions and see what, if
anything, lies beyond. I am Alice
peering down the rabbit hole; I am Lucy stepping inside the wardrobe; I am Aristarchus
of ancient Greece, thinking for the first time that perhaps Earth is not the
center of the universe—I am part of a tradition of humans both fictional and real
who have tested the boundaries of their perception, almost always with
astounding results.
I think back to my Environmental
Philosophy class. I’ve learned that in
Australian Aboriginal philosophy, we humans are not separate from nature; we
are an integral, indivisible part of it.
We do not stand above the web of existence; we are within it, engaged in
its continual spinning and unfolding. In
the Aboriginal tradition, many people derive a deep sense of place and meaning
not only from the world of human interactions, but also from the biological and
geographic spheres they live within. Through
the eyes of this philosophy, we humans are physically, morally, and spiritually
connected to every other living and non-living thing—not just through the touch
of our hands, but by the impact of our choices and behavior, both conscious and
unintentional.
This perspective strikes me
deeply, because it aligns with my knowledge of science even more than the
Western philosophy from which science itself sprang. Science tells me there are millions of atoms
and molecules moving across my skin every second. Science says there are waves of energy moving
through me constantly—I could be, at the most basic level, made up of
infinitesimally small waves of energy, and nothing else. On the larger scale, Science tells me I am
part of an ecosystem, a network of interconnected and interdependent species. But our culture, Western culture, completely
contradicts and counteracts any awareness we may have of our place within this
network. Our priorities—acquiring
status, power, and material wealth—take us far from cognizance of our energetic
equivalence with the rest of the universe, let alone our relationship with the
cohabitants of planet Earth.
What would it be like to
walk through the world experiencing something entirely different? What would I think, perceive, and feel if I
was raised in a culture of humans living as a part of nature, rather than apart from?
These questions echo inside
me, bouncing from one side of my brain to the other in tandem with the pounding
of my feet on the pavement of the running circle. My attention inverts, turning from the world
of internal thought to the one surrounding me, so vivid on that particular September
evening.
I let myself wonder—with no
small amount of playfulness: if indeed I am not separate from nature, from these
trees and grasses, this pavement even, how and where could I possibly feel that non-separation, that
continuity? What bodily interface could
I trick my brain into imagining as a river rather than a dam?
Well! the voice of Science perks
up again in my head. Remember that physiology class you struggled
through last year? What was the one word
your professor pounded relentlessly into your brain?
Flux.
Flux is the rate of transfer
of fluid, particles, or energy across a given surface. Or, as I like to think of it, it is flow.
Something flowing effortlessly through something else, as the physical laws
of the universe dictate. The human body
is a flux machine. Flux is happening all
the time, in every part of us, to move water, nutrients, and all sorts of other
molecules to wherever they are needed.
One organ in particular, however, sticks out in my memory as a location
of high flux; a place where particles must
be exchanged constantly, quickly, with next to no resistance: the lungs.
My focus is drawn automatically
to my own breathing, which is heavy, and labored—having moderate asthma, running has never
been particularly easy.
Most people know that as we inhale, oxygen molecules pass from the air inside our lungs across a
thin layer of cells and into the blood in our veins; and that the reverse
happens with carbon dioxide as we exhale.
This evening, however, I have a new and revelatory understanding of this
process.
My lungs are a river, not a
dam.
I had always, without much
question, thought of my lungs as a sort of urn.
A thing to be filled and emptied.
A thing with distinct boundaries—especially taut and strained when full. Now, I marvel at the great inaccuracy of that
perception. If my lungs are allowing air
to pass freely, instantaneously through my body, a much better comparison would
be… something like… a butterfly net…
At this point in my run,
something extraordinary happens. I can
attempt to describe it, but words will undoubtedly fail to capture the
magnitude of the experience. It was a
visit from a divine being—some magnificent, ancestral spirit of the land. Or it was some magic combination of
endorphins and imagination. Or both; I
don’t believe the two are necessarily mutually exclusive.
As I run, picturing my
lungs as a butterfly net, I suddenly feel entirely, astonishingly
weightless. I am gliding. I am floating. I am still pumping my arms and legs—I even
push a little harder, run a little faster, just to test the feeling. I am still breathing hard, but in my mind the
air is flowing directly into me, through me, without any struggle or resistance. It does not feel as if I have to exert even one
ounce of effort to expand and contract my lungs, and to move onward down the
running path. What is even more
miraculous is that the feeling is not fleeting.
Ten seconds pass… twenty… thirty… a minute… And I am still reeling in
the experience of weightlessness.
Along with this sensation
is a feeling of absolute groundedness in my surroundings, and in the present
moment. Never in my life have I felt
more here, more now. But in no way is the here and now static or still… It is quintessentially dynamic. Vibrant.
Energetic. Flowing. Everything is moving through me—but not like
wind passing through a net—no, the butterfly net analogy has been discarded in
my mind and replaced by something else; but I have no real object to compare
this experience to. I can only say that
in this moment I am a multidimensional conduit.
All that I perceive is coming into me, across every surface in my body,
pulled towards whatever is centrally me—my
heart, my brain, my soul—and coming out through me, slightly altered, in the
form of my consciousness and my actions as I move through the world. I am suddenly, sharply, overwhelmingly aware
of my own agency—the choice I have in the unfolding of every single moment. The smallest intentional movement of my fingers sends a jolt of wonder through me—I wiggle them one by one, touch my pointer finger to the tip of my thumb, clench and unclench them all at once. The fact that I can control these movements is, in this moment, a complete surprise, a positively stupefying phenomenon. I am filled with the notion that with this seemingly magical power, I can do anything. I have no limits. There are no boundaries. I admit to myself that this is rather how people must feel when they are on an acid trip. That I have achieved this state without, to the best of my knowledge, ingesting any such substance brings me immense amusement.
I am reminded of something
I read recently, from a book called The
Perception of the Environment. The
author, Timothy Ingold, recounts the work of anthropologist Colin Scott on the
native Cree people of northeastern Canada:
‘the term pimaatisiiwin, “life”,
was translated by one Cree man as “continuous birth”’ (1989: 195). To be alive is to be situated within a field
of relations which, as it unfolds, actively and ceaselessly brings forms into
being… The Cree word for ‘persons’, according to Scott, ‘can itself be glossed
as “he lives”’ (1989: 195). Organisms
are not just like persons, they are persons. Likewise consciousness is not supplementary
to organic life but is, so to speak, its advancing front—‘on the verge of
unfolding events, of continuous birth’, as Scott renders the Cree conception.
In this moment, I feel
myself on the unfolding edge. I feel my
own continuous birth, my own role as an agent in creating the next moment in
time and space. And I have just been
blasted with the notion that every other living thing is also an agent, on the brink
of the emerging universe.
I cast my gaze out like a
net, eager to bring even more into the conduit that is my consciousness. My
focus falls upon the delicate leaves of a nearby gum tree. Instead of an inert portrait, an array of
fixed objects, as I saw most plants in the past, I see a living, breathing organism—as much of a person as I am. The leaves, inhaling and exhaling the exact
same molecules that pulse through my own veins.
The branch tips reaching, like my own fingertips—both the tree and
myself hungry for whatever would give us more energy, more life.
I ran and respired. I floated and flowed. A part of it all. Coexisting more mindfully than I ever had
before, and perhaps more than I ever would in the future. I circled the park more times than I could
count. I ran farther and longer than I
had ever run. The daylight had, by this
time, fully retired to the opposite hemisphere, and darkness settled softly
into all the curves and crevices of the grassland circle. Even once I could no longer see the color of
all the living things around me, even once I resigned myself to running back to
my cold, lifeless dorm room, the extraordinary feeling of oneness lingered. That, and my awareness of choice. The Edge.
The exhilaration of leaning perpetually over that Edge, falling into the
unknown—yet knowing that I had influence over how each unknown moment
materialized, future into present into past.
Arguments about free will be damned.
I felt, and still feel, the sense of choice. That is all that matters.
Some experiences never
leave you. This one will be with me, in
some deep but essential corner of my soul, until the day my consciousness
dissolves back into that from which it came.
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