LISTENING-OUT FOR and SEEING THE CHANGES
(extracts from recent letters – and still developing – Feb 23rd.)Everything Changes
The first step, which is often used in meditations, is listening to everything or seeing everything. The second step is listening-out and looking out for quick changes. But then, unlike animals, not reacting, just continuing to be on the look-out.
Obviously this is not a hard rule. If a car horn sounds then get out of the way. If a flock of geese come over at night chattering to each other, then focus on it, it's lovely. If you see a sparrow, be friendly.
With listening, some people mistake it for intense focused awareness on something like bird song, rain, or music – or listening to silence. Very beautiful, but useless for animals. Listening-out describes two stages, the first is listening to everything as helpless as a child, the second is listening-out for specific things, which might happen, and it's easy to do with listening. By listening you can even force the thoughts to grind to a halt.
Seeing is difficult at first, because there is an almost irresistable, habitual urge to focus on anything halfway interesting, and then you start thinking.
Above the smell of wood fire and coffee, your dog is still able to smell an intruder. The fire and coffee are background, the changes are what is noticed.
The Sensitivity to Changes is obvious when Hunting
In it's hunting form it is a more limited field of vision, but looking for changes is even more obvious.
Buzzards looking for prey, choose an area to look-out for small brown things moving quickly, they're not interested in how the trees are swaying, they watch an open field where rabbits or mice could move. Kingfishers watch for ripples maybe colours under the water ... theres no point in looking at the trees if youre hunting for fish ... There is an amazing short video showing a kingfisher broadbanding at a stretch of water ... periodically focussing on 'things which might be' .. notice how the head must keep still, if the head were moving it wouldn't be able to see movements in the water.
This is an attitude of waiting – and to do it intensively it's also a form of focussing and trying to hear and see specific things – within the broadband field. For the kingfisher, this is a need and it's connected with impatience, humans could use it to be alert and find inner still.
Developing Pre-emptive Awareness
We all use our broadband awareness, usually when daydreaming, walking, cycling, and driving. When i'm cycling i often am conscious of about 60° of the broadband horizontal centre field. It is a first step away from specific focussing. A girl told me she regularly went on a hilltop behind her house and looked over the panorama, and this is very similar – ... i was told Gurdjieff teaches a "being gaze" – "including everything", i feel sure many mystical religious methods teach this.
This, seeing everything, is an essential step.
But i think how animals do it, (my teachers), the value of it lies in seeing the changes, the moving things, particularly the quick sudden things, not everything.
Everyday sounds like the wind rustling leaves in the undergrowth aren't interesting, it's when there's a sudden crunching of leaves that it's important. Its being on the look-out, checking things are safe.
And it's 'waiting' for things which aren't there yet. I'm describing a second ability within the broadband awareness, an ability to focus (abstractly) on something which has not yet happened, but might. Things which we're familiar with, things which repeat from time to time quite randomly –, the blackbird knows roughly how a cat, distant running dog, or careless human looks, and he's particularly conscious in a pre-emptive way, for these stimuli.
With listening it's easy to understand. It's easy to imagine how early man might use it, listening-out for a distant wild boar or sound of musk oxen herds or nearby tigers ... each has specific sounds ... bees, snakes ... cracks of a twig ..
Its the same with seeing. With simple broadband seeing and looking at everything, first you notice all the trees swaying and gentle movements, but then that becomes background and you 'quasi focus' within the broadband field .. whenever anything quick happens, the birds flying, the moths and flies, ... quick movements, flashes of light, (cats eyes), ... these are the things which catch your attention –, AND you are able to notice several things moving quickly at the same time. A good word to describe it may be a multi-focus.
Its Easy
The goal of combining seeing and listening, is easier than it sounds, – it's easy because it's natural. Listen-out for dogs, pigeons and children. Look-out for flies and birds. Anything quick.
The Peripheries
And the peripheries of our broadband field of vision become particuarly noticeable, because we often notice things first as they come into our field of vision at the peripheries.
For a horse with 350 degree sidewards vision, very often the movement must happen out of the central area – but with our maximum 210 degrees –, new objects often come in from the peripheries, and from above and below.
If a light shines behind you, you notice it at the peripheries of your vision.
This means that animals with a more limited central area of vision, when they are on the look-out, they are especially aware of the peripheries. And that's the reason it can't be called peripheral vision: The Broadband field of vision has a very important Periphery.
Listening-out for, and Seeing The Changes, and Feeling Safe
The blackbird flies away at the slightest sound or sight. The deer will stop what it's doing and look from 20 metres away, (perhaps slowly growing to trust us after years of being hunted). The hare will stay still for as long as it can and let a human walk by – but we can be sure at the very first sound, a shot of adrenalin goes through it's body and it is ready to spring and run.
Humans don't have these fears and to some extent this is because we have our abstract reasoning, we identify the sounds we hear; we have built warning lights for extra security; and we have built walls and locks and and have laws and moral codes.
Animals react as soon as they see or hear something sudden, they don't think what it may be, first they react. So, i'm wondering if the 'safe' feeling broadbanding gives me, is only possible for humans with their walls, i'm wondering if it makes me feel safe, purely because i can do it at the same time as knowing things are safe.
So, what i do, with my three external broadband senses –, though based on animal behaviour – i don't think any animal would actually do intensively for more than a few seconds, when alternated with their intensive focussed activity.
Special Note : The Peripheral Exercise
See the first exercise in Seeing and The Benefits.
This choice of my first exercise was a lucky break, because i found it made me happy. At first i couldn't work out if it was something to do with the different angles around the peripheries which was making me happy, or if it was just because i was doing something which was a crazy thing to do with my eyes ... whichever it was, it was making me happy, so i was curious about it.
Unfortunately it's to do with focussing, it's not necessary to go broadband first. It IS necessary though, to stop thinking, and to do this the best way is to use broadband listening! Then concentrate with your eyes simultaneously on the opposite peripheral focal points. You can do it by picking out the two opposite objects in your broadband field of vision, or while focussing on a boring focal point in front. If you can sit so you have two lights, at e.g. 15° up on both sides, it will help.