“Intuition binds us together. Without it we lose our sense of purpose and belonging.”
-Malidoma Patrice Somé, a West African elder, spiritual leader and author
“In order to create something new human beings need to go into the unknown”
– Marina Abramović, the “grandmother of performance art”
“Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
My wife Julia and I are a musical bridge between communities. As The Levins, we bring Harmony-Driven Transformational Folk Grooves (TFG) into various settings to promote love and goodwill. One of the main benefits of this for us are the wonderful people we get to interact with. Recently, we played for a meditation retreat up in Hudson, NY. One of our friends there talked of her upcoming trip to Sedona, Arizona. She said she was excited about immersing herself in nature for eight days because in nature there is no mirror. There is an opportunity to connect purely to your being without having to uphold a manicured image.
Nature is linked to our inner nature which invites and allows us to go beyond our linear rational confinement.
There is a insightful documentary called Innsaei, which explores our inner nature. Innsaei is an Icelandic term for Intuition. The word can also be translated as The Sea Within, or To See from Within. In the film, it is pointed out that approximately 2% of our brain is used for logical, fact and figure, linear thinking. The rest of it is perhaps an aperture into what is unknown to us and yet constantly surrounds us.
The film noted that for eight generations Polynesians would travel hundreds of miles on the Pacific Ocean without navigational tools. They were able to use their intuition to read the depth of what was all around them.
“For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
Another movie which delves into going beyond our linear perspective of the world is Arrival, based on the book “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang.
In this film, space ships arrive on earth and a linguist is brought in to communicate with them to discover why they are there. The discovery and study of this new language is a wonderful metaphor for us dealing with our unknown nature. We see it as alien, but using intuition we can learn something that rewires our brains so that we can experience time as spherical. The solution, described as in Arrival as a ‘Non-Zero Sum Game’, requires us to share what we have with those that we see as our enemies or competitors to both come away with something that benefits us. The result is a win-win game.
Our capacity to trust our intuition and redevelop our sense of wonder allows us to go beyond the linear constructs of our lives with empathy and an optimistic savoring.
The lead character in Arrival, Dr. Louise Banks remembers the future and concludes:
“Despite knowing the journey and where it leads… I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it.”
The melody of our lives reaches out in tendrils to harmonize intuitively with everything we intersect.
Thank you for the fullness of our intersections.
Originally published at www.streamoflightblog.com on February 21, 2017.
Originally published at medium.com