Blown Away In My Backyard

A ferocious wind blew as I sat in the most sheltered part of the patio. Another “atmospheric river” was battering California, and the familiarity of the backyard scene of winter’s leafless trees and towering pines was wiped away by the intensity of the storm.

A meditation on a beautiful, sunny afternoon is salubrious, but a meditation amidst the elemental forces of nature is shattering. Everything you know or think you know, everything you’ve experienced and carefully built up, is stripped away. You can either surrender to the storm, or go back inside.

I remained outside. A half hour, probably more, passed unnoticed as I watched without the separative watcher the outer and inner movement. Suddenly a huge dark shape swooped in low in the backyard, immediately followed by another, even larger shape just above it. The first was a raven, the second a vulture.

I’ve only seen a few ravens, but they are unmistakable, since they make even the largest crows look like ordinary birds. The raven landed at the peak of the house in back, facing east, one eye looking down at me. Its massive, curved beak jutted out from its huge, black body. The vulture tacked against the wind and disappeared to the south.

The raven didn’t stay long, just a matter of seconds, but the startling presence of this smartest of birds opened a timeless portal into the ancient wildness and mystery of the Earth. Our indigenous ancestors lived with that wildness and mystery every day, and there is no greater cause of the emptiness of modern man than its loss in our lives.

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Essentially, meditation is the spontaneous departure from the stultifying known. However, one cannot try to leave the deadening world of the news, of experience, and of irrational knowledge. Effort of any kind only entrenches the known, and the sorrow that goes with it.

One can only observe with a quickness and intensity of passive awareness in which the reactions of the observer become inseparable from the total movement of thought and emotion.

There are two prevailing shibboleths about the human brain. The first is that consciousness is entirely generated by neural and cognitive processes occurring between our skull bones.

The second stems from the fact that because there is no actual separation between the human brain and the brains of the creatures that evolved along with us on the Earth, there is no distinction between the human brain and the brains of other animals. In short, every worm is “sentient.”

Regarding the first assumption, it’s true that the human brain generates the consciousness we know, the consciousness that flows from thought and conditioning. But when thought/emotion is attentively and effortlessly still, there is a completely different order of consciousness, which does not originate in the brain but in the essence of nature and the cosmos.

In short, the human brain has the capacity to be directly aware, without the intermediation of language, memory or knowledge, of the cosmic consciousness that suffuses nature and the universe.

I’m not positing a duality between thought-based consciousness and awareness-based consciousness, since the negation of thought-based consciousness is the emergence of awareness-based consciousness.

This is the transition we must make as individuals and a species, if we are to thrive as individuals and survive as a species.

Regarding the second shibboleth, the conflation of the human brain with the brains of the creatures with which we share the Earth has attained a reductio ad absurdum. It’s expressed in the introduction to an article in the Guardian today, “Do worms feel pain and are ants happy?”:

“Does a worm feel pain if it gets trodden on? Does a fly ache when its wings are pulled off? Is an ant happy when it finds a food source? If so, they may be sentient beings, which means they can “feel”, a bit or a lot, like we do.”

Beyond the absurdity, the blending of the human brain with animal brains (much less the ganglia in worms) denies the spiritual potential of the human brain, and does nothing to bridge the divide and end the decimation of our fellow creatures at the hands of man.

So where do these two truisms and tropes converge?

I propose that there is an intrinsic intent in the universe to evolve, through random means, brains with the capacity to commune with the cosmic Mind. If so, this capacity to “bring the benediction” is the highest potential and promise of the human brain.

Indeed, though undoubtedly there’s “intelligent life” in the billions of galaxies of the universe that is far smarter and more technologically advanced than Homo sapiens, the capacity to silently commune with the cosmic Mind is the highest spiritual capacity that any brain in the universe or multiverse can attain.

Once human beings make the transition from the dead consciousness of thought to the infinite consciousness of cosmic awareness, we will break the bonds of time and space. What we’ll then be capable of no one can imagine.

No other brain of any other animal on this planet has this potential, not even orcas, octopi, or ravens. That doesn’t make humans special; it makes one humble. And it compels us to put first things first. Take care of your brain.

Martin LeFevre: lefevremartin77@gmail

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