08/01/10 – Dream Canyon

The sky was overcast with a dark blue sheen to the ominous clouds. Rarely a ray of light would make it through, endowing the canyon forest with a cool light. The forest was mostly quiet today save for the few scurrying chipmunks and the occasional chatter of birds – chatter which resembled interested conversation about the hiker in their midst. The bluish tint to the environment hinted of the coming of the waters. I knew I didn’t have that long before the storm would descend.

As I sat atop the canyon overlooking boulder creek, I saw 3 small moving specs. Being 300 feet above the hikers, I saw only their general milling as they and a dog tried to ford the rushing stream over a log they had positioned for said purpose. As one by one, they crossed the log, they waived their arms from side to side to remain in balance while the white-capped river churned below them.

The dog was visibly upset for having been left behind as there was no visible crossing to be had. The hikers moved on, leaving their dog behind. I moved to a different vantage point along the upper cliffs. The shades of shale intermingled with the light green mosses and lichens gave this place a worn appearance. The spectrum of color washed the hills with mostly dark blue green evergreens, and the fluorescent shades of lichens. The air was teetering on the verge of cold, yet it was heavily laden with moisture – ready to congeal into rain.

Looking at the churning of the river I wondered why when water becomes upset that it churns with such madness – becoming white and frothy? Like crazed anxiety is perturbs the surface, revealing nothing of its depths below and hissing with its roiling and churning about. If I were to encounter someone in clinic who exhibits this, I would think that their turmoil in the present was a distraction against the real issues in the depths below and that all I was seeing was the surface superficiality. I’m not quite sure what this symbolizes for me as yet.

As I looked towards the west I heard rolling thunder – as if several large boulders were loosed and rolling down the mountain crushing all in their way. The storm announced itself with a shout throughout the stratosphere and the ground below that the coming of the deluge is nigh. This is why nature has been so quiet. All animals ready themselves and retreat from the tyranny that is to come. In the I Ching, the Chinese saw that the power of Thunder was likened to a vast arousing, an awakening, and taking action in an area of life in which Thunder echoed. It symbolized the thrust of wood energy creating birth between the gates of creation – the mixing of the Water element with the Fire at the Gate of Life. The exact opposite of stillness – it alerts the distant and frightens the near – not necessarily to retreat into hiding, but to take action and move from complacency.

Perhaps we as human beings need this kind of shock to our system every now and again to wake us up from slumber over issues we’ve not been taking care of. When we’ve not been watering our gardens, our minds, our spirits, our friendships, our relationships – a shocking symptom comes along like thunder to shock us into reality and instill some much needed fear that we’re not immortal and cannot do as we please without taking action to ensure our long term survival.

As the thunder rolled in the west, my eyes were drawn to the east. Something so obvious which was unclear to me before, had become clear. While I knew that vision and planning were powers necessary for all plant life to extrapolate a direction for its growth, I wondered how these powers translated from plants into creatures who’s growth is more flexible, self-directed, and not as fixed as plants themselves – for plants don’t have a vision of what is beyond their immediate environment. They grow where they are and don’t move about the place in the form of anything other than seeds – and as seeds, when they find themselves in a location – they make do with what they have available without complaining that the circumstances didn’t bring them into greener pastures.

Plants are ruled more by fate than they are by destiny – for their destiny is to be great – yet fate can deliver them into resources that aren’t necessarily favorable to them fulfilling that destiny. Humans and other animals live as nomads – using their powers of vision, planning, and cunning to locate the most favorable conditions to their self-expression. Again, our destinies are colored by fate – but we have the option to move ourselves, and not become resigned to our circumstances.

As I gazed on the receding landscape I became clearer on the issues of perspective, the future, and issues of clarity over life’s path. As the canyon walls receded away from me, they showed behind them the next canyon valley. Outlined by that mountaintop was the shape of the next mountain, and the next one after that. Each subsequent mountain in the distance became less detailed, more far away, less known, and fuzzier. While I could see across the canyon with great fidelity and was aware of each crevice and surface if I cared to caress it with my eye, the further I looked the less clear the shapes and structures would become. Where I could see individual trees ahead, beyond all I could see were forests on mountains, and beyond that, all I could see were mountains – even the colors receded from clarity to indistinctness – from patches of various greens, blues, and grays to washes of greens, blues, and misty grays off in the distance. The further I looked, detail turned into generality - predictable, to the unpredictable.

Is this not how our plans for our lives, our ideas, hopes, dreams, and destinies are structured? What we see right in front of us can be seen clear – and we can calculate our next step towards maneuvering around a canyon. We can make decisions and choices in light of our existing circumstances – but our visions into the future are general, indistinct, fuzzy, and shapeless. We are no clearer about our future than when we are looking at a receding mountainscape to know that the mountain ahead can be reached, nor what it will look like upon closer inspection. Will there be water? Will there be shelter? All we can say is that round the bend, there will be another mountain – but beyond that we can have no certainty of anything unless we’ve been there before.

As a species we spend so much time gazing into the unknown future, and even more time gazing into the past. The past gives us details, informs us of what to expect, and allows us to make predictions about what is likely to occur round the next bend. This is the key distinction between creatures that live in the hands of the gods, and those who seek to constantly define their own destiny. Those who rely on the past, and predict the future can thrive or be immobilized by it as all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of them. Those who live in the hands of the gods do not need to know as much about what is round the next bend and all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of the present moment. To our species, planning is more necessary to our survival than to other species who can rely on food and shelter always being present. The deer can live in the hand of the gods for it knows that the grass will sustain it, and the tree will shelter it from the rain. But us humans, we need to know where the deer will be staying for the night, so we need to map out its routines, and make appropriate plans for it, letting none go to waste, for we don’t know when we’ll be able to hunt the next one.

As hunter-gathers, we learned to make predictions about whether our pray would be round the corner or not, through experience, and following the tracks – but our survival was based on hope that the indistinct vision of our future would bear detail when we walked towards it – and that this detail would contain deer and elk for our survival. We can’t escape from this decision-making system that relies on past and future – but perhaps we can learn from the dear, and from the hunter-gatherer that decisions are based just as much on the present moment than they are on the past and the future.

As a culture we practice the art of prediction from morning to night. Our whole business of invention and science is the institutionalization of prediction. Technology is the art of thwarting the future by predicting it, and coming up with a solution to either make that future happen more frequently, or less frequently. Our educational institutions exist to teach us about the past so as to predict and manipulate the future. We’ve invented mathematics, physics, chemistry, and medicine all to understand the past and predict the future. Mathematics is our new fortune-teller.

Our need to control the circumstances and the outcomes of every action have us turn the beauty of the unknown mountainscape into maps to represent our territories and our future lands of conquests.

As practitioners of medicine we too are priests of affecting the future, we take a case history, create a prognosis (pre-knowledge), and a treatment plan to arrive at the prognosis. This is taking the work of the Tao out of the hands of the Tao and into our own. No wonder we’re all so exhausted. There must be a balance between planning and decision making and simply being?

The more planning and decision making we do – the more we try to outsmart the gods and take the mysterious mountainscape and paint detail on it – the more we become resigned and cynical to being surprised by life. We micro-manage our environment. We many have a sick planner if he/she is working on overdrive – leaving the person in a perpetual state of anxiety over the future, needing to plan ever-increasing levels of detail – and leaving the person uncomfortable in the present moment being just as it is.

Personally I’m not comfortable sitting at the top of the mountain of my life and seeing vague visions of who I will be, what I will do, where I will live, how will my practice work. If I plan it all out now, I know I will not have as much fun discovering it along the way – but, if I do plan it out more, I can rely on certain things to be there – and for the future to not be as scary. For right now, I’m enjoying sitting on top of a mountain, not knowing what is round the corner of the next bend and leaving it in the hands of the gods – in the hands of mystery.

I can learn a lesson from plants here – and be content in the soil I am growing in, for living in the hands of the gods is a wonderful and bountiful place, and doesn’t require my intervention if I trust that the mysterious mountainscape is mysterious for a reason. And because I’m not a plant – I know that I have a destiny somewhere round the next mountain – but perhaps I won’t be in such a hurry to get there.

As I look down on the hikers – there’s now four of them. The one in the orange shirt is the visible leader. He’s forging ahead, analyzing the territory, making decisions and plans about which direction to go next – back packs on their shoulders – no doubt they’ll need to camp to get out of the storm soon. The other three are meandering their way behind him. One directly on the first’s path. The other two on their own meandering path towards the same destination. Two have an objective and are more concerned with what is round the bend, and two are more concerned with what is present and available in the moment.

Modern day dogma, led by western purveyors of eastern thought, brings to the west the mysteries of the present moment. Books such as “The Power of Now”, self-development workshops of all kinds, meditation classes, etc – all call us to spend time in the present. As a species we have forgotten what comes to all of nature completely naturally – and that is the state of simply being in the here and in the now. But this practice or art of being present is really an art that is natural to plants, and animals, and not to humans evolved into today.

The following is excerpted from Wikipedia: The present is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly, not as a recollection or a speculation (artifacts of the mind). The present can be perceived as the 'eliminator of possibilities' that transfers future into past.

Hmm. I could spend a good many hours contemplating the last statement. But in essence – perhaps the reason we don’t like spending time in the present is that it leaves us feeling robbed of something else that we could be moving towards. The present seems to steal my future! The unspoken cultural conditioning is that I should be doing something about my future in every present moment. Just like now, sitting at the top of the mountain – I should be analyzing the elements, getting brilliant insights, and furthering my education.

I found that when I try, I get nothing useful. Its only when I stop trying and simply stare into space do things start coming up.