The Dream Of Tomorrow

This is a picture of me demonstrating the use of a tracking stick. The tracking stick is a simple tool that helps the tracker to stay on the trail of a certain individual. I show you this picture as I woke up this morning with this image in my mind. The phrase that was connected with it was “Thought Tracking”. So I did. I found that there was no significant sign that could trace back to the origin or reason for that thought or image to be on my mind. I concluded it came from my subconscious. I probably dreamt about it last night.

This is often the case with solutions to problems, creative ideas etc. and I rarely ignore those kind of thoughts and perceptions. In this case, the image helped me to realize that “thought tracking” has become very natural to me but that it might be interesting to write about it for others who may never have contemplated it as it can be very useful and even life changing.

Thought tracking leads to and feeds of Awareness. Ironically I wrote about it in my last post without really registering it as a tool: “Awareness comes with questioning your beliefs and finding (tracking!) the source of the thoughts that created them.”. I should also have mentioned that it is, in fact, a great tool for increasing/training your Awareness. I did not do that as I wrote about it more in the sense of a state of being. The thought I woke up with this morning is that you can actually become more aware by consciously tracking the source of thoughts. Over time and with increasing Awareness the process will become more and more natural, subconscious and automatic. My intention with this post is not so much to promote thought tracking as a tool for Awareness but as a verification tool before action. Admittedly these subjects are very much related.

We all know the concept of mind mapping. This technique is often used to drive a concept or idea forward. Mind maps are also very useful to back track the ideas and thoughts that gave rise to some final conclusion. Basically its a nice way to make notes. Typically a mind map will give you an insight in the logical and relational context and dependencies of an idea. The map will give you a verification of the soundness of an idea that supports your actions on it.

At first glance you may think that “thought tracking” and mind mapping are basically the same thing. For me they certainly are not. In mind mapping we record our thoughts in a forward direction. We map the thoughts, events and concepts and connect them certainly backward and forward but the whole idea of making the mind map is moving towards some realization, resolution and/or action. In thought tracking we work the other way around. We know the action we are about to take but now we are going to back track the thoughts leading up to that point. More importantly, we are going to track the sources of those thoughts. To demonstrate I will give a short example.

Say, you are working in a team to solve a problem for a customer. You come up with an idea that solves the problem for the customer and costs the company little money. The idea is carefully scrutinized and all agree. Even at a later date your mind map clearly supports the action. The mind map, however, will not tell you the whole story, not your personal story. Because when you track the sources of the thoughts you may find that initially your motivations for the idea you came up with are connected with irritation over a colleague who maybe caused the problem or usually comes up with the solutions to such problems. You may find that the source for you thoughts are connected with ego gratification. That does not mean the idea is invalid or bad but it may include some side effects that are negative for the colleague in question. Do you score points over him/her? Will it change the perception people have of you and your work at the colleague's expense? If so, can you still claim your actions are purely for the best of the customer and the company?

It is a fact of life that we all tend to do this and that we probably never can completely eradicate these things. Ego and pride are not bad things. They are part of our being (even survival) and are important motivators. We just need to make sure we do not mix positive ego with self serving, destructive and revengeful behavior. Don't help to get a pat on the back from others. Help to help. Feeling good about yourself afterwards because you helped is positive ego.

Going back to the example, thought tracking would most certainly alert you to these less positive sources of your idea. These things you will not find in your mind map! It would give you the opportunity to revise your idea in such a way that it eliminates the negative fall-out. The result would be an even better solution that would earn you genuine respect from your colleagues. Even the one you had a problem with. You would have opened up for positive changes in your relationship with him or her instead of creating even more resentment.

Thought tracking requires complete honesty with your self. The truth will not always be what you want to know but it gives you the opportunity to perceive without judging and use your heart to question your beliefs and create new ones. At first it will be a very conscious action that you may even find a bit annoying or intimidating (your ego will fight you all the way!) but eventually you will find a calm and harmony from which your true self emerges. You will have deepened your Awareness considerably. Your positive ego will thrive just because you feel good about yourself. You will not need it affirmed by others. But, more than ever, they will!

Certainly in the beginning when thought tracking is still a conscious action for you it can be hard to take the time to do that when you want to blurt out something impulsively. Typical examples of such situations are in meetings and on social media. It is in such situations your impulsiveness can have the most harmful effects. Here is a very well known mnemonic that can serve you well in such situations. It does not go as deep as thought tracking and it should not be used as a substitute. It should be used as a quick filter, a shortcut, that if it doesn't help at least it certainly doesn't harm.

Before you speak or act THINK!

T = is it True?

H = is it Helpful?

I = is it Inspiring?

N = is it Necessary?

K = is it Kind?

I hope, tonight, I will dream of a world where we all track our thoughts and THINK before we speak and act.

Peter Friebel

The Answer That Can Only Be A Question

Q: “How do I become a tracker?”

A: “By deepening your Awareness”

Q: “How do I do that?”

A: “Tracking is a good way to do that”

Q: “Hmmm. What exactly is Awareness?”

A: “Yes”

Language is a beautiful thing. It enables us to communicate thoughts, emotions, facts etc. We can use language both ambiguously or not. Lyrical or factual. We can take words literally or read between the lines. But sometimes we falter. Sometimes we get questions we simply can not word the answers for and it sucks. Especially if the question is by a student for the teacher.

I get that a lot. The above Q&A is a common one for me as I teach tracking and Awareness. One could raise serious doubts about a teacher that claims to teach a subject he has a hard time defining. In general I think that holds true but in this particular case it is just the nature of what is asked. Every time I get this question I have to think (and laugh) about the 'The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything' from The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The answer to that question, it turned out, was forty-two. The problem was that although the question had a simple no nonsense answer, it became obvious that we did not know what the answer meant because we do not know what the question means.

Taking away the context awareness simply means knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. That is why I always capitalize the word when I use it in the context of our natural Awareness. This natural Awareness is a vitally important concept in the philosophy of my classes but, as noted before, pretty hard to describe in words. So how can I teach something that is so hard to describe?

Those of you that have taken a class with me will know that I do not actually have to teach Awareness. We all have Natural Awareness but we do not all use it to the same extend. What I do teach are ways to have you experience Awareness. You will gradually understand what it is and be able to train it without ever needing to find words to describe it.

This would be quite an unsatisfactory article if I did not at least try to give an idea of what Awareness is. I know that I will fail at it in one way but also that, because you all have Natural Awareness, I may succeed in activating it just enough to get you to form your own idea about it.

Imagine a new born baby and how it perceives the world. Literally everything it perceives is new. The world to the baby is just a blur of colors, light, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile impressions. Over time we start to categorize all things we perceive. In particular we start to separate all other things from ourselves. The ego self is developing. We start to connect things we perceive with thoughts and those thoughts will eventually become beliefs. When we have enough beliefs we are no longer perceiving entities but judging ones.

Almost all of our beliefs are based in fear. The fear of death, the demise of the ego self, is the most powerful driving force in our lives. Yet, at the same time, we intuitively know that the self is not separate from all other things. That in fact we are all one and the same. We have the ability to feel what an other person feels and because of that we will even give up our own life to save a loved one. The ultimate sacrifice. So strong is our connection. We have empathy. We have love. We also have empathy for our pets but here we are beginning to falter. It is unusual for a person to have empathy for a tree or a rock. What is the difference? Where does the connection break up? In our beliefs!

In our lives we form beliefs that serve and further us. In our current culture, connectedness with trees, animals and rocks does not serve the ego self. These beliefs make us judgmental too. A “tree hugger” is not often a term of endearment. It has distinctly negative connotations. The term contains a judgment based in beliefs that are often forced upon a person by society and its norms. It does not serve the person at all to ignore them.

It seems we are torn between two forces. One is the need for the ego self to act and react in a way that serves it the most. The other is our deeply felt connection with everything around us and a universal love. The latter has resulted in spirituality and religion. Again the ego self managed to separate something!

With the above in mind I can try to give some idea of what Awareness is. Awareness comes with questioning your beliefs and finding (tracking!) the source of the thoughts that created them. Many of them are sourced from the sub conscious (intuition!). Awareness comes with changing back from judging to perceiving. Perceiving the whole of reality without separation or judgment. Awareness comes with embracing empathy, intuition, creativity and harmony. We can all do this! We needed to do it to survive in the wild. We still need to do this but we have forgotten how to and, instead, let our ego selves run the show. Because of that we are missing out on an awful lot of life.

Oh, so what is tracking then? Tracking is being mindful of relevant things in your Awareness!

If anything, it seems that the answers can be found only in eternal questioning. That is why I am a tracker!

Peter Friebel

Sparrowhawk Surprise

Trackers often talk about bird language. That is because birds are great indicators of what is happening in an area and they now their locality intimately. My own experience of bird language is largely intuitive. Before I ever heard the term 'bird language' I already used the calls and behaviors of animals to get information about events in my vicinity. I think bird language is in fact just another term for Awareness. Deepening Awareness and experience will slowly teach you bird language. It will also become obvious that it is not just about the birds but about all the animals you are aware of.

Sure, of all the animals about, the birds are the most vocal and often the most numerous so they dominate the propagation of an event with their calls and behavior. It is pretty interesting to see that the only species that does not generally take notice of and understands bird language are the humans. Well, we do but we have learned to ignore it to the point that we have almost forgotten how to revive it.

The fact that I am at the moment researching bird language specifically and more formally is caused by the fact that I am preparing advanced tracking and awareness courses. As is the case for many aspects of aboriginal tracking, things that I normally do intuitively and largely without too much conscious thought, are pretty difficult to recognize, formalize and teach. In the end it is all about Awareness and learning from experience.

To this end there were two books I looked forward to read. The first is "What The Robin Knows" by Jon Young and the second is the third book in the Discover Nature Awareness series of books, "Bird Language", written by my friend and colleague Geoffrey McMullan. The first book I am studying right now. The second, I hope will come out soon as I think that one will be closer to the bone for me. I do not personally know Jon Young but from his book I gather he is an avid birder and the same is true for Geoffrey. I, on the other hand, am not. I love birds and examine their behavior and individual traits every day but I could not name most of them to safe my life. It was funny that Jon Young in his book wrote that he had never met anybody who did not have the urge to immediately identify a new bird as soon it was observed. Well, I can't wait to meet him just to create precedence. My focus is more on the individual animal. I do of course recognize the species I meet but not by name. Starting in Young's book I was slightly overwhelmed by all the names of all the birds he talks about. In the end I simply told myself that this book could also be written without naming the birds as I intuitively know bird language is not about the specific calls each species makes.

What bird language is about is the intention of the calls: marking territory, calling a mate, aggression, begging for food and most interesting for the tracker, alarms. All animals, including us, will pick up on these intentions once we open up to them. We do not need to know the specifics. We simply get it as we are part of the mesh that is Nature.

So, This afternoon I was trying to identify these various intentions from the numerous birds around my house. I feed birds so there are plenty about, all trying to get sunflower seeds. Mostly small birds. There were birds singing but they were beyond my own plot in the forest. That makes sense as singing is territorial and my garden is clearly a no man's land where all birds need to accept each other somewhat if they want the seeds. That does not mean they are quiet. They make a lot of companion calls, constantly checking up on the others. What I was hoping for though is that a known cat would walk into the garden. I was sure that that would generate alarm calls. It did not happen. What did happen was far more intense.

All of a sudden a great tit made an alarm call. All the birds flew up and landed in the bushes around the place where the seeds were. The squirrel that was eating only one meter in front of me jolted but did not move. In fact he was the first to continue eating but he clearly understood the warning. Slowly the birds returned to the heap of seeds and started eating again. That one great tit was still edgy and constantly looking at a certain tree. I tried to find what he had seen but I could not. Ten minutes passed and all was forgotten. Until, suddenly, the squirrel looked up from his bowl and looked at me as if to ask: "did you notice that?". The birds reacted not. The squirrel wasted no time and ran away into the bushes. At that moment I felt, in a split second, an enormous tension building up. Just as when you get a surge of adrenaline. I was in peripheral vision so I had a wide angle view of the garden. In this view was now a very fast moving object. I noticed what it was first when it hit straight in he middle of the seeds. It was also first at that moment that the alarm calls screeched through the air. It was like an explosion of birds all flying away from the seeds. What was left was another bird, a sparrowhawk. Although I could not confirm it I think he got a small bird as he took of a few seconds after landing and perched in a nearby birch for a minute and then flew of. All song had stopped and his path could be followed by the alarms he caused on his way.

I wonder, did the great tit notice the sparrow hawk ten minutes earlier? How did the hawk manage to so surprise all the birds but not the squirrel? What was the squirrel's cue?

Interpreting intention and unraveling concentric rings. That is bird language, a tool for all trackers. It is the tongue of Nature and all living things know it by Heart.


Peter Friebel          

Widen Your Vision

Social media should be great. They enable us to connect with like minded people and to share our thoughts and opinions. But by ratings, followers and likes, automatic filtering of most popular posts etc, social media became an arena. They became the battle field of ego and the hunting fields of self gratification and self actualization. This has made almost all posts a "like" hunt and when the most horrific pictures and videos are misused to shock us into thinking about real issues a minute or two, just enough to inappropriately click 'like', something is really wrong!

I am not going to discuss the system itself. Although we have created the most effective automated mobbing tools with our social media, it is our own conduct on these platforms that creates the mobbing. It could just as well have turned out to become the most giving paradigm for human connection and communication. What I do want to discuss is some of our conduct.

I am just as touched by images of famine, animal abuse and war as the next person but I do not find it appropriate to use this misery to get likes. Sure, sometimes a shocking image can shake you out of a stupor but be honest, what do you actually do about it? Watch the video? Shed a tear? "Oh soooo true! I have to share it!" After that you probably go about your usual business. If you are really engaged by the issue you may actually donate some money to the cause. But you didn't really change anything for yourself did you? You hope that sharing it and donating money causes others to act for change. The only impact on your own life was a few minutes of shock or sadness.

Before, It was a joy to open my Facebook page and read all the funny and interesting things my friends had created and shared. Today it is with trepidation I open Facebook. Not only is 90% of all post something that people shared instead of created themselves, an alarming amount of the content either ruins my day or literally makes me hurl. But safe us all if somebody shows almost a nipple! It gets censored before you can say "George Orwell" as it may damage the frail minds of the kids that are not allowed to use the system anyway.

Now, again, I do not want to discuss the system and I do not even want to discuss the reasons behind our lust to share misery. It is enough to notice that many of us care about a lot of things and want to give vent to their outrage, sadness or indignation. I am not different myself but I have recognized it in myself and hated myself for doing it. Not because the issues do not deserve the attention but because the way we give attention punishes only ourselves and does nothing to actually change something!

What does it help to see a brutally mutilated elephant while in my own country local authorities, time after time, authorize the hunting down and killing of large predators to satisfy some trivial commercial interest while there are only very few predators left? Even if nothing locally can compare, what can I do about the elephant except cry for it? Well, one thing I suggest we can do is think about why all these things happen. Poachers in Africa are incredibly poor. Sure, many are very criminal too but often only out of desperation to provide for their families. How did that come about? If you start to analyze these things I think you will very soon unravel a pattern: Most of the problems are either directly or indirectly linked to our so called modern way of living and its enforcing culture. The total exploitation of the world's resources benefitting only a few, almost always has a significant part in the causes behind many atrocities in the world. On the plus side, this means that we can actually do something about it!

Instead of sharing the wretchedness we could share a positive attitude and energy to turn things around. Instead of sharing a picture of a dead wolf show a video of a good journalist grilling a responsible bureaucrat on how this can happen at the same time the scientists say exactly the same things about the tigers in India as the wolves in Sweden. Instead of showing a picture of a dog after being dragged behind a car, show a picture or video of the many organizations working with nature based therapy to fight Nature Deficit Syndrome in our kids so they actually value life instead of destroy it for fun.

There are almost no more horrific images put on TV and The Internet than those in the promotional spots of WSPA like organizations. Again they shock us but do they change things? They focus on the needs of the organization to do its work but not so much on the needs of animals and life in general. Instead why not show a trial on TV of the person who dragged the dog after his car skinning it alive. Show the judge giving him a 2 month sentence on probation and later show an interview where that same judge and some politicians are forced to justify that sentence against another one where a person gets 40 years for smoking a joint. Make people want to change things instead of contain things. Share the positive actions undermining the occurrences instead of shocking us into revulsion.

I realize that many of the solutions will seem almost unattainable. That is why we need to radiate positive energy and not negative energy because they are both equally contagious. Once you start changing something in your life that is positive and beyond the ego you will find others helping you and joining in.

I am lucky as my own work deals with changing the attitudes people have towards the living world. I am able to donate time and knowledge that can change things. Granted, in the end its just a drop in the ocean but think what can happen if we all provided a drop.

We should share evidence of the interconnection of all things, share images of the wealth and knowledge from diverse and alternative cultures all over the world, share stories about animals being animals in a world that just simply exists. Not for the benefit of the human animal alone but for life itself.

Lets start by sharing our efforts towards change instead of the gruesome evidence of our paralysis.




Peter Friebel





  

Good Or Bad? (Or A Little Story About Environmental Ethics)

Lets start with some definitions:

• Ethics is the philosophy of morality.
  
• Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and languages.
• Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong).

For me there are three fundamental problems with ethics:

• In a non-scientific or casual context "philosophy" means "the most basic beliefs, concepts and attitudes of an individual or group" and not a rational study of problems. This means that in casual use ethics is no longer a study but the most basic beliefs, concepts and attitudes of an individual or group regarding good or bad.
• "Good" (or right) and "bad" (or wrong) have no absolute definition but depend heavily on cultural norms.
• The most basic beliefs, concepts and attitudes of an individual or small group are more generally referred to as principals. While ethics have a more general and altogether wider connotation. This means that ethics are commonly perceived to be the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes regarding good or bad within a society without, of course, taking into account the non-absoluteness of good and bad in a global or universal perspective.

I do not know about you but that kind of sounds to me like ethics are in fact commonly understood to be the contemporary code of conduct within a culture. This is of course no news. Ethics vary between cultures and in time and are often the reason for strife and even war between cultures.

What went wrong with the word "ethics"? It lost its scientific meaning. We now speak about "ethics and morality" while in actual fact ethics is the study of morality. Business hijacked the word to emphasize that against all odds their practices are now ethical. In politics the word is used in countless contexts and meanings.

There is one very interesting question in ethics (even scientifically) and that is: What is the domain for which morality is defined? What I mean is how come a concentration camp is obviously bad but an industrial chicken farm not? Clearly there seems to be a domain for application of morals that does not include chickens because if they were included, industrial chicken farms would be even more appalling than concentration camps. To confuse these matters even further we seem to have a double standard regarding animals. We do have some form of laws and sense of good and bad in food production but if a normal dog owner would apply those laws on his dogs he would be arrested for extreme mistreatment of animals.

The fact that our ethics falter when animals come into the picture is actually not that surprising because the domain I mentioned earlier is very exclusive indeed: In our culture it only contains human animals. We struggle to resolve all kinds of conflicts of interest when we need to apply morals on human and other animals at the same time. If we consider all non-human entities, including animals, plants, and even inanimate objects or phenomena we seem to just not care at all.

There is a field of philosophy called environmental philosophy that studies this problem. In this field there is a concept called environmental ethics which describes the relationship between human beings and the environment in which they live. Before even looking at some of these ethics approaches, I personally think the problem is already contained within the description of what environmental ethics is. There seems to be a persistent urge to separate humans and the environment. The reason for this is that it is a single culture that has written everything scientific and this globally dominating culture does not recognize humans to be an intrinsic part of the environment. Ironically that is exactly one of the things that distinguishes the various environmental ethics approaches: "The possibility that reality may not be human centered" (sarcasm intended but some scientists actually write crap like that)

I have throughout this article made clear that all of our "ethics" are cultural and also that in particular one single dominant culture seems to be based in the worldview that humans are the center of reality. There is of course another type of culture although now quite endangered. This is the culture of aboriginal peoples, the hunter-gatherers. They have never seen themselves as anything else than part of the Earth and recognized moral worth in all beings and all things.

A modern term for that in the context of environmental ethics is Deep Ecology or The Libertarian Extension: Human-rights are extended to non-human animals and possibly even the a-biotic and inanimate. Deep Ecology argues for the intrinsic value and inherent worth of the environment and that humanity has no right to compromise the environment except to "satisfy vital needs" (see my article called The Answer). Ecological Humanism (Eco-humanism) also falls under the Libertarian Extension. This is the argument that all ontological beings have ethical worth on the basis that they exist.

In contrast, another approach to environmental ethics is Shallow Ecology or Conservation Ethics: The only value that non-human animals and plants have is extrinsic, instrumental to the benefit of humankind. They are a means to an end – conservation is important for the welfare of current and future generations. Interesting to know is that Conservation Ethics formed the underlying arguments by Governments at Kyoto in 1997 and the agreements reached in Rio in 1992.

Obviously aboriginal cultures do not analyze these concepts. Mainly because to them the interdependence of mankind and the environment is blindingly obvious. To them humanity is an integral part of the environment. They embed their environmental ethics at the foundation of their culture and spirituality. Theirs is a spiritual version of Deep Ecology that we today call Animism. I call this philosophy Tracker Philosophy.

With all this in mind, are we good or bad? Is that what you reason or feel? Maybe we should change our culture to make it truly right ...

Peter Friebel

For Old Time's Sake

I still know Old Time
His ticks were silent and eternal
And no less were his tacks

He moved for us
and by us, through us and
Indeed in us

We felt for him
and by him, through him and
Indeed in him

We were all the one
A moment of space
An expanse of time

And nothing more can be!

Are you hungry?
    Yes! We need to leave this pond, we need to move down the creek, down the river!
Are you not mad? What gives them the right to make us suffer?
    There is no right or wrong in this. We will not suffer if we move. Tomorrow we will know new times

I do not want new times! This is my pond and my creek. I feel a master not a slave!
    But all that is follows the flow of Time. And Time is nothing without our being. Surely to detach you can no longer be all the one?
You can be the dust in the winds of Chaos. Henceforth I will be my own!

Old Time passed
He knew nothing else
We were nothing more

And only nothing more can be!

Who goes there!
    It is I, your brother! I heard of your droughts, your wars and your suffering and came to share my quarry and counsel. We have found a far away land of bounty. Will you not relinquish your mastership of this pond and join us in living with the Earth?
    I need not the pity of a savage! You have gained neither riches nor rewards in all your life of fleeing Chaos. Sure, I have known hardships on my path of glory but my war is holy indeed! You and yours will wander your precious Earth until that day I need it for me and mine!
    My riches and rewards are many and profound but they have no longer any meaning to your poisoned mind. I did not come in pity or contempt but it seems in pity I shall leave. May one day, Old Time willing, you find your time and peace o brother of mine.


New Time ticks
In relentless fury
Away the seconds
Of man's restless lives

He moves against us
and without us, behind us and
Indeed ahead of us

We suffer for him
and because of him, through him and
Indeed in him

We were all the one
A moment of space
An expanse of time

But we have no more time!

Who goes there!
    I am nobody you still know. I followed a river, a creek and a vision and it brought me here to this pond. Why? I do not know. If you want me to leave I will.
    No please! I am tired and sick. I am angry and alone. I have no peace in my heart and my spirit is weak. My own visions have perished in time. Just for once I long to hear something new. Old man, would you tell me of your vision?


My vision was of a small creek that trickled through a majestic land. Its water came from the humid air that rained on the leaves of this lush place. It came from the water running down the mountains and hills. This creek flowed out into a small river which flowed out in to a big river which flowed out into the ocean. In that ocean the stories of all of creation could be heard. The water evaporated and moved back in to rain out on all the lands of The Earth. For eons this was the case. The eons were created by the rhythms of this flow of life and life itself was created by the rhythms and cycles of The Earth. Until one day from a single river the color of the water changed. Within a tiny part of a single eon all the rivers starting pouring out a black ooze of despair stained with the blood of life into the ocean. Almost all the fish died of this pollution. One of the very last fish decided to see if there was anything it could do to save its kin. After a full year of swimming up the stench and garbage it finally arrived at a small little pond. It found a bitter, old and frail man. This man was crying and his tears, when they hit the water in the pond, turned the deepest black imaginable. "Why are you crying?" the fish asked of the man. "I cry because I have never done anything else. It seems that I need to cry and suffer to make sure that I do not suffer more the next day. Still every next day it is worse and every next day I cry more!". "What is it that makes you suffer old man?" the fish inquired. "Our suffering lies in the fact that what ever we try to create a living for ourselves it always gets disturbed and destroyed by Chaos. We have tried for ever to overcome this but we always fail. There is always something new. Most of the destruction is now directly caused by us trying to prevent it. Now we are almost extinct". The fish thought about this for a while.  The fish had only one answer to give: "You talk about creating a life. We never thought about that in that way. We always assumed a life was given  to us. For eons and eons we have accepted this life without question. There seemed no need. What we did was trying to find out what our lives meant to others. We found that the lives we were given were a direct result of the lives given to other creatures. We all lived our lives because all the other creatures lived theirs. We were both the beginning and the end of the flow of life. We were all the one! Suddenly, though, we started to die. I came up all the way to this pond to find out why before it is to late. On my journey I saw that all other life was dying too. Now I have found the reason. A creature who has forgotten the life he was given, who has forgotten the life he was giving. A creature who thought he could beat Old Time and master Chaos. For every tear you shed something dies and because they die you will never succeed in living either". "But", the old man said, "what can I do about it? I am but one man". "Just Stop" said the fish. "Stop crying, stop suffering and start living the life we all gave you so you can give us our lives back". The old man thought about this and finally said: "I do not know how to do that. We are not animals. We will all die of hunger and cold". The fish looked deep into the eyes of the old man as if it was making sure that something that should be there was there. "Follow your instincts" the fish said. "Find teachings in Nature itself. Ask an animal and ask a child!. The children of your race are not poisoned yet. Ask them to help you remember Old Time. When you have remembered, teach teachers and let them travel down this creek, down this river and along the ocean to teach their kind what it means to be all the one. Do it for Old Time's sake". The fish then disappeared into the depths of the pond. The old man watched with surprise at a small crystal clear patch of water spreading in the pond. "Just because I stopped crying for a while?" he thought, his gaze following the course of the creek. "Yes, I must leave this place and time".


We are all the one
A moment of space
An expanse of time

And nothing more can be!

Hello? Where are you going? You are welcome to stay as long as you like and tell me more about your vision!
     Thank you but my vision is over. Be well and remember, o brother of mine!


And we are all the one

Hello little girl, how come that squirrel is playing with you and not scared of you?
    Why should it be scared?
Little girl, will you and your friend teach me?


I met Old Time
His ticks are silent and eternal
And no less are his tacks

He moved for me
and by me, through me and
Indeed in me

I feel for him
and by him, through him and
Indeed in him

We were all the one
A moment of space
An expanse of time

And truly nothing more or less can be!


Peter Friebel

Free Your Spirit

This month I am leading the on-line course Nature Awareness 1. During this course I teach nature observation skills and methods for waking up our natural awareness and the tracker inside us. We have loads of on-line discussions about philosophy, states of consciousness and much more. One of the concepts we cover is being in the heart or heartspace instead of being in the head or headspace.

In our modern culture people seem to be in the head most, if not all, of the time they are awake. In the head we are ready for physical action, in a constant state of stress. We go through the day in tunnel vision and are fairly closed off to subtle perceptions and our intuition. We pursue goals so far removed from our original function that we do not even notice that we are forgetting to experience the world around us. Time has taken the role of awareness. Instead of naturally being aware of our environment and the people around us we need a schedule to keep connected.

Anyways, yesterday we had another interesting group chat on these subjects. Today I got a question from Anna, one of the students in this course. The question was simple enough yet interesting but I could not in my wildest dreams have foreseen  the impact answering it was going to have on me. What happened was a bit the same as what I wrote about in a previous post called 'The Answer'. Here again, my answer contained another message. A much scarier message.

First, here is the summarized question: Do you think dogs live more in heartspace than in headspace?

As I believe that heartspace is the natural state of consciousness. I thought I had a short answer. I am pretty sure my own dogs are very much in heartspace when we are out mushing or in almost any other situation I interact with them. The only time I would say they are not in the heart is just before the start of a tour or if they are fighting. Predators, after the stalk, when they initiate the attack, will be pretty much in the head too. I started to falter a bit with my answer though.

If you are stuck with your foot in a railway track and you see a train approaching you are in a great deal of stress. I have read that people in mortal peril become ultra aware as all senses kick into overdrive and time perception changes to the point that a second can feel like an hour. I have no doubt animals experience the same things. This state is certainly headspace but in a very natural context. I started to see that the question must be about dogs being in an unnatural headspace.

The type of stress and flux of thoughts I associate with headspace is more like: pure logical reasoning, self gratification, anger and all other emotions, feeling insufficient at work or in your personal life, being unable to find the time to keep up with all your social media, feeling the pressure of having to earn money and many other worries.  The list is endless and you all know what I mean. It is all about chasing the trivia in life we call civilization and culture. Normally dogs do not do that. Yet, there are all sort of animals, including dogs, that have issues. I felt there was something I was missing.

I rephrased the question as follows: Do you have an example of animals behaving in the "headspace" way described above. I asked myself the question because I felt I had an answer. The problem was just that I did not see it yet. It took a bit of time but finally the answer came and it was an ugly one:

The only time I notice the type of behavior in animals that I feel is equivalent to what I describe to be 'being in the head' is when the are in captivity!

Technically our dogs are in captivity but they have learned to see their human captors just as their pack and are pretty happy with that. I mean more the tiger pacing his cage or the elephant neurotically shaking his head in the zoo. They display this behavior because they can not flee their fears, they have been deprived of there freedom and connection with the natural environment. They are cut off from the essence of being a wild animal.

Now for the scary bit. If that is true for the tiger and the elephant what about us? Are we living our so called modern lives in the head because we are in captivity? Are we denied our true purpose? If so, we have at least one advantage over the zoo animals. Our cage is only constructed by our own imagination or rather lack of it!

Free your spirit now!

Peter Friebel