Opening the doors of perception

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

- William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Nature awareness is developed in three ways. The first way can be likened to learning the vocabulary of a new language. Together, we have leaned the nouns and verbs of some of NJ's various ecosystems. We've even started to use some of that vocabulary in cogent sentences. The second phase can be compared to reducing the murky, turbidity of churning water. This we explored a bit during our introduction to the sit spot practice. There we learned to calm the mind, lessen our mental chatter, and sit in stillness so that our presence was less disruptive to the world around us. We also began to see what nature is up to when it's not so concerned with us clomping around. In this meetup, we will investigate the third phase by starting to address the perceptual habits that quite literally limit what we are able to see, hear, and experience out on the landscape. We will look at those unconscious patterns that reduce our visual field to "narrow chinks" and explore ways of blasting out our sensory caverns so as to include more of the natural world. You don't know what you have been missing, but after this meetup, perhaps you will!

This event will be mainly in a classroom format though we will be doing about a half dozen exercises to better demonstrate the material. Please bring a beach chair or something else that's comfortable to sit on. Also, please download this picture to your phones. We will be using it for one of the exercises and the cell reception isn't great over at the park.