It's so very easy to forget everything that happens and everyone involved is connected in some way. Most people, most of the time, fixate on one aspect of their experience to the neglect of the others. You could say this is a by-product of our human wiring that seems to say we're meant to handle only a limited number of things at a time. This may be true, but our choices and enculturation play a major part in what we believe we can handle at any one time. How we experience ourselves in relationship to others and our environment is under more of our control than we often realize.
If you look toward indigenous cultures, you'll find what appears to be a moment to moment awareness of much more than just the Self. One way of putting it is that the experience of Self happens within the context of a much greater whole.
In terms of their relationship with the environment, though it may not be fair to generalize, the orientation leans toward being a part of rather than separate from everything else that is. Animism, where most everything has a spirit of some sort, recognizes that just like everything else, the human has a spirit, as opposed to our dominant culture which states the only thing with a spirit is us. In Animism, ALL the spirits dance with each other.
Even in terms of time, indigenous cultures recognize this moment as the gathering place for every moment that has been experienced by the ancestors and the jumping off place for stewardship of the generations to come.
Most often, these orientations are present in indigenous languages themselves, which place the object first, rather than the subject, as in "The box was placed by me," rather than "I placed the box." There is both an implied relationship and a certain amount of mutual dependency implicit in this way of thinking.
The Lakota phrase "Mitakuye Oyasin" speaks to this orientation. Roughly translated, it says "all my relations." It applies to time, to place, to weather, to person, animal, stone, plant and on and on throughout every thing or event, living or dead in the universe. It says, "There is nothing that separates any part of this experience from another." We are all the expression of what is.
One metaphor for this is seeing the world through the eyes of the heart.
Poets have been speaking of the consciousness of the heart since there have been poets. A commonality that they all seem to speak of is that, when you think with your heart your vision embraces the physical, emotional, spiritual and lyrical; in essence, the complete dance of life rather than one aspect of it.
Anyone who has ever been a child or in love can recall vivid periods when experiencing the environment was all-encompassing; where the senses were opened and what they saw was more than what was in front of them. The experience of the moment included everything in the periphery, both internal and external, and "self" was a part of that, rather than the center of it all.
Can you recall times in your life when the seat of your consciousness was centered more in your chest than in your head? Where, rather than looking out through the windows of your eyes as an observer, you were an extension of your surroundings?
Today, science is showing us the heart is an organ that does far more than just pump blood. In embryonic development, both the brain and the heart are composed of atrial-neural cells; which means they each can function as either brain or heart cells. As differentiation occurs, the brain cells specialize into a strictly neurological function. While about 35 percent of the cells in the heart are devoted strictly to pumping related activity, however, the remaining 65 percent continue to function as neurological cells.
Seeing through the eyes of your heart - experiencing that sense of convergence in the moment -- is a concept you can test out for yourself. Spend some quiet time breathing into your heart. Continue doing so until you can feel expansiveness in your chest, your heart actually beating, or the blood pulsing through your veins and arteries. Stay in that place for a few minutes, keeping your awareness on your breathing and heart. Then, maintaining that attention, look into a mirror at yourself.
By just being open to the possibility, you will begin to notice a wonderful latticework of connection that includes you, the people you're with, and the environment that envelopes you, within the context of the time all these things are occurring.
Out of that, you begin to sense the subtleties of how the moment brings you all together. And when your intention is to promote healing, you will find more tools becoming available for you to use.
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