Direct Experience, Understanding and Meaning.

Of crucial importance to my sensing of life, and my work as a performer, writer and polemicist is the concept of the existence of innate sensory acuity (skills) in all living beings that enable the cognition of change in the immediate and extended environment and thus the generation of appropriate responses, from the micro-bacterial to the largest living entity, in a constant sensitive precise feed-back loop : natural karma, if you will.

Starting from there, realising that this is also the nature of the natural child, perhaps one can begin to sense the implications of POWER, regarding the way such power is exercised in our society, the consequences of which we are all too sadly familiar.

In that the omission of that natural feedback loop that permeates natures processes is one of the key dynamics of POWER, we can look at how we treat children, in cultural terms, and how that culture impacts upon the personal, in our homes, our streets, our communities, with each other.

The more we understand about nature’s details through the medium of science, the more we realise that there is much in our language, and in the tools we use to discern nature, that is inadequate to the task.

Indeed in a recent issue of New Scientist, January 24th, the editorial explicitly acknowledged this. “ It is now accepted that the tree of life is something we impose on nature in an attempt to make the task of understanding it more tractable.“

As was the fact that the model of Darwinian Evolution as a linear process is also inadequate : ‘evolution’ or unfolding of life is non-linear, and works sideways, backwards, upwards and downwards as much as forwards.

What runs concurrent with that realisation is that the interconnectedness of all life forms is incredibly deep, is profoundly detailed and precise and that that quality is indeed the basis of life’s regenerative powers. We can in various ways, sense or know that quality, yet our scientific understanding does not yet describe the fullness of that quality.

Both of these understandings, of the use of sensory acuity and the interconnectedness of all life, form a large part of indigenous land based peoples ways of living. And this begs the question : from whence did these peoples ‘gain’ this understanding?

Put it another way : is there a direct experience of life, of nature, of habitat, one which our enables such understandings to accrue as a body of knowledge and thus inform the behaviour of living beings? What is that process of direct experience?

These are questions of supreme importance, for if there is such, then it is in that direct experience that the resolution of our problems will be found.

Taking this basic premise, (as I do) one can begin to understand the psychosis of POWER and how that leads towards cultures that impose beliefs, that cut off children from their innate sensory acuity, that justify harm as long as it protects or projects POWER.

I draw from my own personal experience as a dysfunctional adult for personal prima facie evidence of this. I have in the past justified my bullying of people. Even to the extent of blaming the one I have harmed for being the cause of the harm. In that I was no different to the US Government, the local gangster, the abusive spouse, the bigot. The personal is also the transpersonal. The personal is also the cultural. The personal is also the political.

I also draw on personal experience for evidence of that sensory acuity, of the near amazing ability to ‘jam’, to flow, to find exactly what is needed for my own life.

I have never been comfortable with the idea that I hold a particular skill, a unique power, that is not available to all. I have never been comfortable with the concept of innate human superiority. Thus when I receive ‘praise’ for these ‘skills’ I share as a musician or performer or facillitator I am always uncomfortable … almost embarrassed…. For me that is not the point of the performance - for me the point of the performance is to share something deeper than skin or skill. To reach to the life force quality within, to say 'we recognise each other'.

Many of my friends who perform and inspire likewise feel this combination of embarrassment and awareness. All these people have, like I do, a great sense of loving self as part of nature, a natural comfort in ones skin, that is in conflict with the culture we are born into, and of course we are often confused by the cultural paradigms of stars and audiences……of hierarchy…. and power. POWER.....

And that is the subject of my song "The Heart Song", which is third track on the reverbnation player to your right! Enjoy!




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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