How do you feel in your body? Do you enjoy it? How does the way you move relate to the way your mind works? There’s no separation. Just as the universe is consciousness made manifest in physical reality – at least one kind of physical reality, which in itself is already insanely complex and diverse, let alone all the other possible dimensions lurking about within this one, or through intergalactic wormholes, or on the other side of a black hole, or laughing at everything from within black matter … so our bodies are consciousness, as countless messages sent from our pores, our internal organs, our senses and subtle perceptions. Our bodies make up consciousness, our minds feed off the physical sensations as well as the hopes and dreams within and all the infinite possibilities everywhere; but our minds can also roam endlessly, beyond physical limit and mortal frame.
Might as well enjoy it, hey? Walking should be a supreme pleasure. Being a self-aware primate, with the infinite potential of human consciousness – what an opportunity! Yet we too often allow the forces of socialisation to limit us. I’m an Aussie male, which means i have been entrained to keep myself pretty rigid; don’t dance with the hips (that’s ok for Latinos but not us) and definitely don’t walk with a rolling gait, as if you really enjoy it. Too gay! But I’m here to challenge the status quo, question the dominant paradigm, give it to the man (ooh that might be too close to the bone – ouch I’ve done it again!) … I’m here to Give It Some Mince! “Let the way that you move celebrate your life on Earth,” say I.
Now you all know what I’m talking about: walking. Walking like you mean it. Mince in Aussie slang is a kind of homophobic insult; it means waltzing about like a fancy pansy, probably with a limp wrist … but what if it feels good? When you get into your primate body and move about as if you mean it, you might find yourself using some muscles and moves that feel right, yet look … different. But if you are going to be true to what you are – “consciously evolving stardust, rising up out of the earth” – then you need to “front up in your body”, beyond socialised fears and tensions, so that we can “get a sense of our embodiment, as a part of the self-aware universe.” Coz “we’re living in an unrepeatable moment right now. Right Now!”
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Put some bounce into the way that you cross that floor
Yeah give it some mince
Feel your way into your body and let’s explore
Give it some mince
Pump that walk, yeah
Let the way that you move celebrate your life on earth …
And give it some mince
Front up in your body, yeah
Give it some mince
Walk that talk
Get some pep into the way that you cross that floor
Yeah give it some mince
Sense the way that your body opens out through your pores
And give it some mince
Pump that walk, yeah
Let the way that you move celebrate your life on earth …
And give it some mince
Front up in your body, yeah
Consciously evolving stardust
Rising up out of the earth
Get a sense of your embodiment
As a part of the self-aware universe
And give it some mince!
Front up in your body, yeah
We’re living in an unrepeatable moment, right now
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I’ve always felt that the world is alive and aware of us. It’s almost as if, as a child, i could feel intelligence in the sand, on the breeze, soaking the earth with rain and pushing up out of the soil as plant life. Thankfully, i’ve never outgrown this feeling.
But lately i’ve been wondering how the world would feel, if it were able to sing? What came to me, after spending copious hours on the beaches of south coast NSW, was a set of lyrics that expressed anger and frustration at the endless stupidity of the human race, as well as love for self and all, wrapped up in a sound that could best be communicated in rollicking, rocking, big electronic sounds inspired by the punk DIY ethic, the industrial nature of modern society, the grunge explosion and everything in between. This seemed like the kind of music that could carry my lyrics of dark ecomysticism and cutting social commentary; especially when i was lucky enough to be able to record such songs with incredible musicians capable of improvising their own way around this sonic scape of mythic dimensions.
That band is called SEVERINS. And lo, they do rock, my friends, they surely do. The forthcoming album is titled RECONNECT.
The first song in this set is called “What The Ocean Feels“. The lyrics are inspired by the oceanic shorelines i live and breathe every day. I wrote some of the words watching them, some diving into them, some while underwater, and some while running alongside them. These words spring freely out of the foamy waves crashing upon the beach, just as Aphrodite is constantly reborn, just as the white-maned horses of the sea god thunder down upon our shores, writhing in passionate embrace of their elemental existence, celebrating what they are without limit, destined to rejoin their kin in the sky even as they rise from the depths of The Ocean to greet us on land. The Ocean wants us to love it, to revere it, as the home and great regenerative fount of life … but it is angry, it is roiling over as it also must spew forth the rubbish we dispense upon its beauty, which rolls out of the rivers and despoils It. Please listen to it sing, give thanks to The Ocean, and share the love as widely as possible.
When you’re in there, with those strong feelings, of confusion and angst, thrown about by waves of emotion or distracted by random thoughts, plagued by doubts about your lack of an effective game plan for life or just plain down … it feels like chaos. Imagine yourself in one of the darker corners of this image, or being tossed by one of the waves as it crashes off a spiralling wing of energy, or crushed as one finger of force presses down upon your local environment or mind/body. Your experience is all-encompassing, complete, true to the life and death of this existence, right now …
But there’s always another side. There’s always another dimension, an aspect of the experience that forces you to evolve, or asks you to be patient, or simply washes over and leaves you feeling … OK. Refreshed perhaps, or even just relieved. At their best, such experiences inspire us to reaffirm our faith in the goodness of the universe. Very often, they leave us feeling that on the other side of chaos there exists an underlying order, a way that life unfolds that we could not possibly have imagined would turn out for the best. Or, at least, could leave us feeling enlightened, awakened, deeper or stronger or just … more fortunate.
When you come out the other side, what seemed like a chaotic jumble may turn out to look like a beautiful piece of art. Or an infuriating waste of time. It might seem like a period of testing, followed by an experience of thankfulness, which goes beyond rational comprehension. No matter how we interpret events, fractals remind us that the beauty of life and the world, the earth and the stars and the subatomic dimensions and all of life in its unfolding, is there at the end … because it is always there within: within each twist and turn of life, each crushing defeat or seemingly cruel turn of fate.
So if you find this post feeling anxious or confused, angry or ignorant, sad or lost, have faith. Some kind of order follows; some kind of pattern appears; something will always return to make you feel thankful for your life. Faith isn’t just for the religious – in fact, it’s another case where religions have stamped their authority over something that is innate, natural to each of us. It is an archetypal experience, to use a Jungian term, which arises spontaneously in anyone who survives something they can see the brighter side of afterwards.
Link up to a fractal doing just that and boom! There you are too.
When we think about the lack of action on climate change, as well as the ongoing rush to strip the planet of ‘resources’ and thus continue the devastation of the environment regardless of our obvious need to take care of the earth, we can easily slip into despair. Seeing as world politics including Australian ‘leadership’ seems to be going in the wrong direction, blind hope is not going to help us. So what do we do?
Aside from turning to the good things that are happening in our communities – and there are plenty of them! – we can return to the breath. Leave the societal realm behind and breathe into the body. This gets us back to the experience of awareness, of the one state we can definitely change for the better – our own body and mind. Deep breath awareness not only relaxes the mind and thereby reduces stress, it can also lower our heart rate and create space so that we are not merely reacting to the world at the moment, but exploring a space of freedom and creativity as well. We can also give some air to feelings that have compounded around the issue that has wound us up; we may feel sadness and grief, frustration and anger … this is a good opportunity to can allow ourselves to be human, to have the feeling and then to let it go (don’t rush!).
In the body, when we have breathed through our tension or anxiety, we can find comfort; we can recognise whatever needs to be changed, what it takes to be in our power, to be ready for action, to stand for what’s right, to be poised as an animate being capable of self-awareness … and when we have reignited these potentials, we can go further, breathe into the depths of the mind/body beyond the personal self, to the core truth of being human, which is that we are also more than this; we are interdependent beings, open to the elements through breath and ingestion, made up of DNA shared by plants and other animals and mitochondria and clay and water and salts …
Through breath we can find psychological freedom and return to the intertwined mystery of human being: we are consciousness embodied in self-aware primate form, both completely dependent on nature for our lives and also capable of experiencing ourselves beyond the limits of time and space. This is the paradox of being human; we are only here and now and also always more than this. Just like light and consciousness, metaphors for each other … but that’s another story, for another time.
For right now, return to breath, rebalance the self and remember the more-than-self, and return to the world ready to fight the good fight for another day. Beyond all else …
If we have finally hit the point where we have to admit that our esteemed leaders are not listening – to us, to climate science, to the voice of hope for a peaceful, healthy earth – then it is probably also a good time to let ourselves synch in to a new way of evolving. I’m going to try to outline this in under 300 words, by using dot points, to illustrate that we are still capable of profound possibilities in a digital age hurtling towards some very uncivilised outcomes.
We are here.
This means our ancestors survived and evolved successfully, across a myriad of different environments, and we can do the same. But to do this, we need to …
Adapt to reality.
Our planetary climate is heating up, drying out in many places and flooding more in others, making every micro-climate more challenging. But …
It’s business as usual at the top.
Business and politics are following the military/industrial complex model of colonisation, appealing to the lowest common denominator of our worst tendencies like greed and fear, and consolidating their power over divided peoples at the same time. So …
We have to do two things at once:
We have to get organised, hold the powers that be to account, demand action that combats climate change by taking care of our environment and treating all people (as well as animals, plants and places) with dignity and respect – all of which sounds very boring but necessary; and
We can get back in touch with our ‘deep time’ selves, as well as our fleeting sense of being alive in this very moment, right where we are, in this mind and body. This could be the fun thing that balances out the serious stuff with a blend of timelessness and existential awareness: that realisation that we are consciousness embodied, a deep time experiment in primate bodies, with the capacity for self-awareness, able to perceive complex problems and solve them with win/win solutions, social animals with personal identities and mystic abilities and the ABILITY TO SEE THE ENORMITY OF THE UNIVERSE THROUGH INSANELY POWERFUL TELESCOPES AND IMAGINE OUR PLACE IN ETERNITY ALL AT ONCE!
OK, i got a bit excited there, but watch this video and be reminded of how incredibly, unimaginably vast the universe is. And that’s just the physical one we can sense with our limited beings. Life is beyond words. Let’s party like there’s nowhere else to go*
*The universe may be very large but we can’t get anywhere else in it. The scales are too big. This is home.
NB: sorry i went over 300 words. But hey, get off the internet and read some Virgil or Shakespeare. That’ll test your attention span 🙂
PS i tried to talk about this video once during a public presentation in Hong Kong and CHOKED ON MY TEARS! Egad. I’ve performed better, but at least i found out how i really felt about the universe – cosmic!
