BALANCING ON SOLID EARTH

Whereas from a focused point of view, we need to 'let go'; and from the panoramic perspective we need to see life as a whole; the bottom line is we need to learn a balance.

The idea of life being a balance, usually conjures up images of a precarious tightrope act in mid-air. I'm talking about a feeling of stability, balancing with two feet firmly on solid earth.

In order to survive, animals coordinate or alternate almost all of their focused activities with periods of panoramic sensing.

We need a purpose in life. We need focal points, but we need to learn to coordinate or alternate them with panoramic sensing.

Coordination or Alternation
Predatory animals coordinate both modes of sensing. Coordination is very clever, and it has a glamour which will inevitably appeal to some people. Advanced Martial Arts combine both forms of sensing. But it takes years to learn, it is complex and our culture doesn't need any more cleverness and complications.

The pure method is to alternate as vulnerable animals use it. This is also far easier to learn and start using.

SUMMARY from 2022

And now, we are overwhelmed by the self-perpetuating momentum of the repetitions inherent in focusing. We are overfocusing.

We're focusing so intensively, we don't notice that there's any other way of sensing.

Panoramic awareness is the natural, tried and tested, counterbalance to focusing, and the cure for overfocusing.

All ancient and modern therapies and meditations, try and help us to find our hidden potential, and help bring our lives in balance.

Panoramic sensing IS a hidden potential – and evolution's basic balance in life.

Among the many practical initial benefits of panoramic sensing, the key point is that thinking and wanting are dependent on focusing.

Panoramic sensing is useless for thinking or wanting, because as soon as we focus on anything specific – a thought or an object – we lose our panoramic receptivity.

Panoramic awareness directly counteracts and interrupts the never ending patterns of thinking and wanting which are causing the pace of life to overrun our modern cultures.

There are more subtle and spiritual explanations. Because it neutralises abstract thought, it allows the intuition to take over... to get ideas from outside the box.

Being in intimate contact with the environment without wanting, couteracts all the normal feelings of self-righteous and self-justification. In its pure form as vulnerable animals use it, it is a state of consciousness where greed and egoism are not possible.

And how can it correct civilisations' imbalance quickly? Because it's a human birthright, it's in our nature, it can be learnt in a few weeks instead of years (or lifetimes) of meditation.

We collectively ignore it – we have meticulous words for every part of the bicycle – even subatomic particles and abstract theories have names. As soon as we recognise something, we name it.

The Germanic languages only recognise the "peripheral" use of this way of sensing. Panoramic sensing describes what humans experience when they see a panorama.

But there is no word to describe the way animals use their senses to detect just the events happening, all the moving things, all the changes, with almost no awareness of the background panorama.

A Collective Blind Spot discusses our collective blindness – and explores some of the ways it is being discovered by modern psychology, and rediscovered in ancient practices.

The Lack of Name and Cultural Recognition discusses terminology.

We must balance our increasing stimulation and early education in focused reading, writing, and thinking with an early education and encouragement of the panorama mode.

This isn't a religion; we don't have to believe in it for it to work. It's a natural way of being – every animal does it. It is available to anyone and everyone. It is something we all have in common. Something which unifies all creatures, and people of all cultures.

I'm not suggesting we all space out in a new panoramic world. The value of panoramic sensing lies in coordinating or alternating it with focused sensing. Panoraming makes focused activity secure, safe and reliable.

It's been tried and tested by animals for billions of years – it is obviously part of a self-perpetuating and successful method to survive. Every animal does it. Every animal except humans.

Panoramic sensing opens up enormous new potential for securing our survival – as balanced creative human beings, in a balanced creative human culture.

This easily available natural resource is one of the few things humans have not yet exploited.

All other animals need to coordinate both ways of sensing, focusing and panoramic, in order to survive. Any animal species which doesn't do this would become extinct.

Please do the exercises yourself.

Back to Chapter Three : Civilisation's Habitual Ruts
Back to THE SENSE OF IT ALL Priority Pages