Cairns #54
End of the Long Days, 2008
The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth,
back upstream so that Earth’s evolving consciousness may explore the
headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E.
is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that
inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.
Dawn and I went kayaking
today. No swallows. No spotted sandpipers. Migrations must be starting.
Healing
After three years of
carrying the heavy responsibility of finding a place for Chrysalis to take root,
I was deeply exhausted spiritually and weakened physically. And with the leasing
of a wonderful facility for Chrysalis in June, I was able, finally, to put this
burden to rest. Without any reservation or apology whatsoever, I headed out in
July for a month of healing. I started with five days on the Olympic seashore
and then meandered down through the Cascades doing dayhikes. Last summer I went
up to the Canadian Rockies and on my first real day of hiking, I blistered my
toes and limited my walking for an entire week. This summer I eased into it with
greater wisdom and grace. Emphasis was on dayhikes of increasing length. I could
feel my leg muscles strengthening and endurance growing. As I walked, thoughts
would rise and turn. Here’s a couple.
Bartering
Someone once shared with
me the idea that it was important to barter our life for something. I
interpreted that as meaning that since we all will die, it’s a mistake to try
holding on to everything for oneself. Instead, it is important to find something
worth creating or caring for and to give your life energy in service to that in
a spiritually-important exchange or barter. That idea appealed to me and I often
found myself thinking of “barter” as I sat for long hours at Chrysalis,
feeling my cardiovascular fitness ebbing. I am bartering my life energy for
something important, I nobly thought. But as I walked this summer, I realized
this acceptance of bartering had mutated into an unimaginative surrender. There
is nothing noble about giving up one’s health. In the long run, I will have
far more life potential to give to something worthy if I take care of my health.
Many hours of sitting last year were not because I was working hard but from
inertia, tiredness at the end of the day that would have been better served
doing something fun or walking or sleeping or almost anything other than
continued sitting.
Follow Through on
Skipping
I love to kayak the
However, a few months
ago I was skipping stones in a quiet portion of this sidestream. The stones
skipped only five or six times. I consciously put more energy into the next
skip, especially into the final, flicking contact between the encircling finger
and the stone. The stone skimmed lightly and true across the water ten, fifteen
times. Beautiful. Followed by the realization that I had grown sloppy in my life
and, under some illusion of mastery, was getting by with less than full effort.
Ah, the ever-shifting
balance of effort moving towards mastery. And as I write this, perhaps the
mistake is to think that amount of effort has anything to do with mastery.
Perhaps, mastery is related to precision of effort. Focused flicking energy in
that final split second of contact is essential. Precision of aiming the kayak
exactly to the upflowing portion of the eddy.
Roaming Nail
This is a first foray with a theme I hope to develop
through a diversity of examples in a book I’m working on.
Many years ago I read a
bit about reflexology, a healing practice based on the premise that the sole of
the foot is connected with the entire body and that by working with the feet
(massage or acupuncture), one can have a healing influence throughout the body.
Foot massages feel so good that this premise appears plausible. But then the
articles would get into presenting diagrams of the connections between foot and
body and the whole concept spun into arcane complexity and so I left it behind
as something for others.
This last year, my feet
would feel tired. If I rubbed my feet in the evening, knots of tension could be
felt. Putting pressure on the area felt good. I couldn’t exert enough pressure
with my thumb so I used the eraser end of a pencil. It was more precise but
often it could still not touch those sore spots in the way they wanted to be.
Eventually I started using a large (easy to hold), sharp nail. I packed that
nail when I went on vacation.
After a long dayhike, I
would go into my tent in the darkening but still warm evening and lie down on
top of my sleeping bag, tired and with sore feet. I’d hold the nail in my left
hand, prop my right foot up on my left knee, and start a conversation between
the bottom of my foot and the lightly moving point of the nail. The nail moved
slowly because so many things could happen. Often, as the nail moved, it created
sensations that told me to change direction and go explore an area off to the
side. Sometimes I moved into a strong knot of tension. The foot would signal
that it wanted stronger pressure from the nail point. As the nail point massaged
the area, it created awareness of knots of tension in other parts of my body,
especially the base of my skull and at some point these knots would release and
I would sink back more fully onto my sleeping bag. Often times there would be a
strong, spontaneous inhalation of breath that felt really good. Sometimes moving
the nail lightly over the skin felt right, other times pushing hard felt
appropriate. Sometimes the nail would touch a place that evoked an
uncontrollable tickling response so that the within a split second, the foot
jerked away. Those were very interesting areas. I’d return the nail to the
edge of that area and try to enter it more slowly. Sometimes it took three or
four times before this sensitive area allowed the nail to slowly explore it.
Lots of interesting sensations rippled through my body as this sensitive area
“relaxed.”
At some point I would
switch to the other foot. Every time was different. Usually, a deep wave of
sleepiness would carry me away and I’d wake up in the morning, my feet feeling
alive and ready for another day.
I encourage you to try
this “nail work” but that is not the reason I share this story. A thought
that deepens every time I do this concerns the profound difference between the
complex book diagrams of relationships and this easy conversation between foot
and nail. The diagrams are compiled generalizations of practitioners. They form
the guide for a person moving the point over someone else’s foot. They are the
abstract substitute for a person not receiving the incredibly rich sensations of
the nail point gliding over one’s own foot. To be a reflexologist in
service to others probably takes years of study. To be this for yourself begins
the moment the nail point touches the foot and the learning and the treatment
spiral into one, deepening experience. When I enter into direct interaction with
the world, I connect with a vastness, a guiding richness of life that is missing
from abstractions and plans.
Amid the Turning
Tide
Certain slow processes
unfold so wonderfully that I can watch subtle changes for hours with no desire
to speed them up: the emergence of an adult dragonfly from its larval
exoskeleton, the way a stream carries sand as it flows across a sandy beach, the
way sunset merges into the emergence of the stars. The rising of the tide is a
similar example. Whenever I camp on the beach, I always end up sitting in the
tidepools as the tide comes in.
On my fourth day on the
Olympic seashore, I finally did something I’ve always wanted to do. As the
tide was rising, I went out into the tidepools and selected a
As the tide rose, I got
to experience on a grand scale the pattern that fixates me whenever I go into
the tidepools. There is the classic pulse of the waves, of course, fairly steady
but with its strength rising and falling. The sea goes quiet and flat for a
minute. A few minutes later a series of larger than normal waves come in. That
pattern forms the foundation of the experience. But the rising tide warps that
basic pattern in a fascinating way.
Waves are energy rolling
through the water. A wave rises and breaks when its circle of energy’s bottom
starts to contact the seafloor and rub off energy. At low tide, the waves coming
in start losing energy a hundred yards off shore. Waves collapse when they run
into a reef just below the surface; the innumerable rocky points split waves in
two directions so that the tidepools become a chatter of fractured waves
bouncing around in every direction. But as the tide rises, it lifts the bottoms
of the waves’ circular energy. They rub against the bottom less often. More of
the energy makes it further towards shore. Waves that once died on a reef surge
over it now. Waves that once split into two directions by a jutting rock now
flow unsplit so the directions of the waves change. Energies rise and directions
change. There was one wave that splashed drops onto the highest part of my rock
and made me think “if this isn’t high tide yet, this fun could start turning
scary.” My experience on the island was highly visual but my
dominant memory is of the swelling sound.
(I took this
picture close to high tide. The camera is sitting on the highest point at
the “back” of the island and I am standing about two feet back from the
front of the island so what you see is most of the island. What looks like part
of the island to the right of my feet is not part of my island but another rocky
projection about 5 yards away that went underwater with each wave.)
What I really wanted to
experience was the turning of the tide. I had experienced many turnings from low
tide to rising tide but what would high tide beginning to ebb look like out in
the midst of the waves’ confusion? Would I recognize the turning?
The nearby rocks
surrounding my island had all gone underwater some time ago – first when the
waves surged over them but longer and longer until even in the troughs of the
waves, they couldn’t be seen. I stood within the midst of a larger than normal
series of waves. For five minutes the sound of waves surrounded me. Then the set
of waves subsided into a minute of relative calm, of waves sloshing about. Near
the end of that minute, I saw it. About ten feet ahead of me, a few square feet
of water flowed in a direction independent of the surge and flow of waves. The
flow was small and lasted only a second but the motion caught my eye because it
was completely different from the wave energy that had dominated for fifteen to
twenty minutes. I interpreted that motion as a sign that the sea level had
dropped while the latest series of waves had piled what was now an unsustainable
mass of water up against the shore and, in the lull, a little bit was draining
seaward again.
Then another set of
waves came in and for several minutes there were only waves pushing about and I
began doubting whether that motion had significance, whether the tide had indeed
turned. But now I had a spot to watch. And when the wave set quieted, I saw the
draining motion again. Just as we don’t notice the shortening days until
several weeks after solstice, so there was no dramatic ebbing at the turning of
the tide. But then the ebbing gathered momentum and my island became part
of the tidepools again and I walked back to camp, remembering that sound of
waves all around me at the crescendo of the tide.
(I have posted pictures
taken of this tide in case you want to have some visual images of my
experience.)
One
Two Three
Four Five
Six Seven
Anemones
I came upon one tidepool
simply filled with large green anemones. Something about that tidepool made it a
perfect place for an anemone. If one assumes that larger anemones produce more
fertilized eggs, one can imagine that anemones in these perfect places have more
offspring than anemones elsewhere. This leads to the idea of natural selection
of a place. We are comfortable thinking of natural selection selecting some
individuals as more “fit.” With a little tweak, I can think of natural
selection selecting some places as more “fit” (for a particular species). I
try to imagine how this place selection would become manifest. I
anthropomorphically imagine anemones growing up with a memory of the place of
their mothers, a DNA-maintained memory
of what the world ideally could be like, of how waves ideally should crash into
the pool. Do we carry a similar memory of that ideal place where our ancestors
reproductively exploded?
Conversation with
Laura
Highlights from an
extended philosophical discussion with a Chrysalis teacher six days before
school started. She asked me what feelings I had about Chrysalis changing over
the years. Was I disappointed that where we are now is very different from where
we were at the beginning? After reflection I replied that I didn’t really have
a strong sense of what Chrysalis would look like when we started the school. I
had a sense of what I wanted the school to feel like but not what it would look
like. We set up the school to have the least pre-ordained structure and the
maximum flexibility possible. What appealed to me was setting up something
malleable that could be shaped by the accumulating experience of learning and
teaching, and by the world’s response to what we were doing. What would
emerge? What would the organization learn from this continual shaping?
As Laura and I explored
this topic, we came to realize that a great example of this institutional
learning is our mission statement. Initially there was no mission statement and
our first one was mine having to do with cultivating upward spirals – a
statement which most of the people involved with the school didn’t really
understand; so it wasn’t really a mission statement. But what has emerged in
the last few years is a statement that includes “encouraging the light within
each student to shine brighter.” That is simple, accurate, and powerful. Laura
talked about all the schools she has taught at that had mission statements but
she can’t remember them and they didn’t really have any influence within the
school. But she joked that our mission statement is “encouraging the light
within each student to shine brighter – and we really mean it.” She
commented that every staff member understands that statement and that it guides
them in their interactions every day. She thought it was why the teachers so
willingly work far beyond what is expected of teachers.
This led me to reflect
on the difference between a school oriented by test scores and by the light
within. If you are oriented by test scores, then most of the year you are guided
by concern/fear of something that lies in the future. There is no assurance that
what happens today will translate into that future goal. There is always a sense
of “not enough.” You don’t know what the questions will be on the test so
you must keep trying, keep trying to cover everything. The only “success” is
receiving test scores a few months after your students have left. But if you
orient by encouraging the light within, you experience accomplishment many times
a day. The first path can wear you down with stress while the second path renews
you constantly.
Money as Flow
Long have I thought of
my erosion control work as being metaphorically applicable to the flow of money
through our culture, especially in terms of slowing the flow so that more soaks
in high on the slopes rather than running off and converging into eroding
channels downstream. An elaboration on this image came to mind as I reflected on
a pattern Donella Meadows called “Success to the successful.” The way wealth
shapes legislation to increase the flow of wealth to the wealthy is analogous to
the way a drainage gathers more water. As it acquires more water, it flows
faster and gains the power to cut channels deeper which steepens the surrounding
slopes and extends the headwaters so that the system can pull even more runoff
into the drainage.
This led to a thought
that when we say the Universe is shaped by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it
means literally that the flow of materials in the direction towards less
possibilities shapes the Universe in multi-dimensional ways. Different flows
shape different dimensions but certain patterns emerge from all the flows.
Convergence is one of them. Water flowing over the Earth in the direction
towards less possibilities usually etches converging drainage patterns. Money
flowing through a culture towards less possibilities creates cultural patterns
of “success to the successful”. That’s just the pattern that arises
somehow from the Second Law. It’s quite natural. The important thing is the
rate of convergence. The evolved wisdom of nature tells us that slowing the rate
down creates greater abundance of that flow throughout the system and
metaphorically shows us how.
Thinking of money as
losing potential energy as it flows in the direction towards convergence leads
me to think of how, for people high in the drainage (not much money), it only
takes $1 to buy a shirt at a yard sale while for people at the bottom of the
drainage (lots of money), it takes them $50 to buy a shirt where they go
shopping. A dollar has more potential energy high in the drainage, can
accomplish more. It’s in the culture’s interest to create ways to slow down
the flow and the rate of concentration in the same way that it’s in our
interest to help the rain soak in high on the slopes where it helps things grow
that slow the runoff of future rains so that even more can grow.
© 2008, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
