I remind readers that on the 23rd, I posted what I hoped would be the beginnings of a sort of forum, inviting your responses in the form of comments. (Putting this out just before Christmas probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, so now I will compound it by putting it out just before New Year’s.!)
A sense of place: An Experiment
A sense of place
[This is an experiment to see if we can foster conversations on this blog. Jane Coleman proposed a topic and Jane Peranteau, Christine Sampson and I each promised to give it a paragraph or two, and then I would put it together and post it. It is our hope that others will feel inclined to add comments via Reply or, if that doesn’t work, by emailing me so that I can post on their behalf.
[Hint: Write your remarks in a word program first, and save them. Then if they get lost in the process of trying to post them, you only have to pull up the saved file and copy it to me to do for you.]
From Jane Coleman:
I was thinking about the year I went to Yosemite National Park and went hiking for several days. I noticed that my memory had a certain feeling about it, something unique. It had its own signature and resonance and mood. I could call it a signature, and yet it encompasses all these things.
As I considered that event, I also recognized that all the places I’ve ever been have a certain signature about them. They each feel a certain way. The memories have colored them. I would equate that to the way I recognize my friends. Each has a unique feeling about them, their unique signature, some something that I would recognize no matter where.
Your thoughts?
From Christine Sampson:
Ok. Here’s what I got.
Carnival! The joy! The excitement ! The things to do, to observe, to participate in, to ignore, to discover! My life in retrospect. The faces, the places, the actions, the inactions, the dismissing, the accepting, the relishing. Each individual act, moment, created and placed by forces beyond the conscious mind, to allow exploration and growth and knowing and wonder.
I sit in the warm sunshine feeling very feline. Thankful. In gratitude.
A cacophony of all visible and invisible, to be sussed out and savored in a flash or at leisure.
From Jane Peranteau:
After sitting with it:
Our response to experience leaves emotional trace elements, like snail trails, in the mind. Pathways that create scaffoldings of self-knowing.
Are these the same as filters?
Yes. Because pathways change what we allow in and what we don’t. They change us in terms of our choices. You can have a pathways series that builds a filter or serves an openness.
The feeling you have for a person or a place determines an openness to them or a caution or a closed-ness. Succeeding experiences can change that–e.g., as we forgive or are forgiven, receive insights and revelations, or continue to be enhanced by further experience.
Feeling is always informed by everything we know, which is everything we are. It is not experienced separate from reason or science (e.g., science can track feeling’s movement through the body and mind) or knowledge.
Would it be fair to say that the signature each of those places and people have is your love for them? The uniqueness of signature recognizes how love is not a blind blanket emotion but fits the characteristics and traits of who is loving and what is loved.
[Good question, Jane C. A big question. It incited a trail of sudden awarenesses that led to insights along the way, each having the potential to be its own pathway. Frank, I see what we’re doing as another extension of what intending ILC makes possible.]
From Frank DeMarco:
It has always struck me how different places have a different “feel” that is more than mere aesthetics. When I was a boy, the fields of my father’s farm were quite different from city streets, say, or someone’s lawn. The woods that were behind our house and across the street had a special feel that I loved. My life had trees well before it had books! And places devoted to a consistent endeavor seem to me to acquire their own signature, as well:
• Churches, or any place where many people have prayed over many years
• Libraries, suffused with the auras of readers and, it seems, writer
• The grounds at The Monroe Institute, specifically, where for more than 40 years people have come to explore their unknown potential.
And these are just “ordinary” places! We haven’t even touched on what are called sacred sites.
When I consider the phrase “A Sense of Place”, knowings happen, whether from an emotional space, a sense of my history, or memories stored. Given that I have moved only three times in my life, each time to a different state, I don’t bounce around much. I prefer stability, perhaps due to my birth sign’s characteristic of putting down roots. This alludes to the time spans, thirty-one years in the first, thirty-two years next and twenty-five (so far) in this last. Virginia feels like home, and I am comfortable here.
All of my states are in the east, despite traveling to the north- and southwest, enjoying the big skies and a different color scheme. I became very aware of the different energy on reservation land, pueblo land, mesas vs peaked mountains and glaciers. To me, the Rockies felt too big, too strong, and too masculine. I found the more rounded, softer-feeling Blue Ridge Mountains more suitable to my comfort level.
There was a different esthetic from the east, although from my perspective now, not so unlike in energy, but the concepts were different. I found visiting Sedona was a more upscale version of Casadega in Florida, which I had visited, or Lily Dale in NY which I had not. Meditations, rituals at the Great Medicine Wheel, flashbacks in the kiva, all added to the familiarity of my surroundings. It no longer felt like home, but it confirmed my having had experiences there at some point in my lifeline journey.
The homing instinct is strong, and I missed the green of the east, so returning from any of my trips was bittersweet. The desire to be home did not outweigh the sense of expansiveness that I felt in the west, but inevitably the busyness of life and responsibilities would blunt that glow. I am grateful for my experiences here, there, and everywhere.
I’ve felt resistance to this conversation; interesting, since I’ve often wished we had more interaction here. So I have had a number of discussions with guidance; here’s my understanding so far.
Guidance, on the original post:
The post title “A Sense of Place” can be instructive if you see ’place’ as the Universe … thus ‘sense of place’ symbolizes your purpose for living, the meaning of life for you. Use all your (known/recognized) senses to sense/connect to that place, recognizing that these senses (and what is sensed) will grow and change as you do. Work to grow other senses (that you’re presently unconscious of) that connect you to the Universe and your place in it.
Me, on my resistance:
This line (attributed to Virgil) becomes more and more meaningful: ‘Death plucks my ear, and says “Live, I’m coming.”’ Thus my attention is drawn toward the non-physical ‘place’ I’m increasingly aware of, and to ways I can better sense that place. This is not in lieu of enjoying this physical life, living in the delight and joy every day brings! As TGU says about many things: not or that, both together. Maybe Virgil should have quoted Death as saying “Live! I’m coming …”
My thoughts on the ‘experiment’: Probably not the conversation expected, but very real and useful for me!
Excellent Jim and well received guidance!
I use an inner discernment binary sense response for truth finding. It is a magnificent sense when developed to the degree I have. I am sure many other senses can have similar expansive developments.
Good to hear you’re feeling into your resistance too, as that is a key indicator on how to achieve balance, going along with the AND inclusion as well as the BOTH well rounded aspect of the spectrum you find yourself in. Sense the extreme you may be in, and move towards the center to explore the other side, including the polar opposite.
Cheers!
Sense of Place?
Sense. Basically we have to rely on the human senses, say all 6, given our difficulty including other beings who might otherwise contribute to the conversation. Sight (light), sound, touch, taste, smell, and the more debatable 6th, that I’m labeling, “refined perception” ok?
Sense of what?
Place. Basically, we have to rely on Time/Space coordinates; latitude, longitude, height above something and a date on a calendar, perhaps clock time.
Zooming in. Yesterday, tromping through wet fall limp leaves, sniffing fresh rain on soft earth, seeing clear imprints of a lone deer in soft earth, purposely leaving one place for another, both of us rendered a specific sense of place at a slightly different time.
Zooming out. Kilimanjaro, Mt Fuji, Everest, Half Dome, the Giza Pyramids, the Kaaba in Mecca, Vatican City, the Wailing Wall, Machu Picchu, Lahaina’s Banyan tree, the Magic Kingdom(s) and the rest of the wonders of the world.
When we Sense Place, it, and we, become new entities, not diminished but enhanced in an additive exchange. Leaving a footprint does not diminish us. When sensing place, we leave an imprint on each other because the Place Senses us equally. Photons are exchanged. A photon from a Pyramid terminates on a retina or pixel behind a camera lens. The giant stones of the Pyramid absorb photons emanating from our face. Imprints. Additive imprints. In some ‘Places’ billions upon billions of imprints.
Walking alone, silently, over soft snow through Auschwitz, silent moans and wails impinged on my ‘refined perception’ sense as the bleak remains of the camp absorbed my weltschmerz weighted photons.
Zoom out more. Lovely Luna, piling up billions of imprints every day as billions of us absorb photons from her face, and she, ours. Both greater for the additions.
Why stop here? Brilliant blue bauble, Gaia, a mere dust mote within Sol’s enormous heliosphere, is a Place being Sensed vividly and not just by humans. Zoom again. The Milky Way Galaxy, some 100,000 light years across containing 400 billion Sols is a Place being Sensed. Wait what? It’s just one of trillions of galaxies that are still within our observable Universe?
Sense of Place? Pick a Place, anyPlace, Sensing it to the heart’s content. Both will be bigger and better for it. The participating photons (and electrons) involved do not mind and are in no way inconvenienced. They do not experience time.
“Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Thanks. If you would like, I can copy this and make it a guest post, so that more people will wee it.