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 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.

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.

New-age gurus teach self awareness and self realisation; previously, God was something bigger than just us. Nowadays, even the focal points of our beliefs are getting narrower.

All ancient and modern therapies and meditations, show ways to help us to connect with and find forgotten or unrealised parts of ourselves, and help bring our lives in balance.

Panoramic sensing IS a forgotten, unrealised part of ourselves – 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 you focus on or want something specific, a thought or an object, you lose the 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. The more it is used, the more it has this effect.

(Focusing usually, but not always, supports and stimulates the repetitious momentum of thinking and wanting.)

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.

Feeling alive and being in immediate contact with the environment without wanting, eliminates feelings of self-righteous self-justification, egoism and greed. This is a form 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 about a week instead of years (or lifetimes) of meditation.

With our early education in focused sensing, thinking, and doing, we inadvertently suppress our panoramic awareness from an early age.

We should have rediscovered it by observing animals. But animal trainers and researchers are only interested in animals' abilities to focus and learn tricks, solve puzzles, develop memory, and abstract thought. They want to know if and how animals can learn human abilities.

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 (and humans) can 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 repeats this, adds other reasons for our collective blindness, and explores some of the ways it has started to be rediscovered.

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.

For animals, this is a constant reminder of how it feels to be open, and safe, at the same time. How ironic that they can't really enjoy it, because of their fear of predators like humans. How ironic that humans, now that they don't need to fear for their lives, have forgotten how to use it.

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.

We're not using all our basic and natural sensory abilities to experience the world and our lives. We have a limited experience and understanding of life.

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.

As individuals, we can't expect to develop any realistic and reliable relationship with life, without using the panorama mode in our daily lives. And no modern culture can expect to survive without it.

The Priority Pages continue with Our Animal Gurus

Back to Chapter Three : Civilisation's Habitual Ruts
Back to THE PANORAMA SENSES Priority Pages