SURVIVAL STRATEGIES

Focused sensing is always selective, it focuses on specific small areas. Its primary use is to do all the things which animals need or want.

Panoramic sensing is a receptive all-round awareness. It's a state of being open, ready and waiting. Its primary use is to guard against danger – it makes life safe.

Animals coordinate or alternate almost all of their focused activities with panoramic awareness. This is a balance. Their survival depends on it.

Most birds have a sensitivity to ultraviolet light; a quick panoramic glance enables them to detect any threatening life forms.

Land animals watch, listen, and smell, for short periods of time to detect movements or changes.

 

Panoramic sensing evolved and developed because it was the most efficient way of connecting us directly with our entire local surroundings.

Panoramic awareness is a very simple, everyday, and ordinary way of sensing. It knows no ideas, no choices, no cause and effect, no truth or lies.

Throughout evolution, it has been the natural way to switch off, stop doing or wanting anything, and be actively receptive for a moment.

Sensing in the panoramic way is a different way of experiencing life. It's a feeling of being with all we're sensing.

The senses are often seen as the door between us and the world outside us. In the panoramic reality, our senses connect us with the world. The feeling is : we are the door.

Whereas vulnerable animals usually alternate panoramic and focused sensing, predators combine the two. Predators watch over a wide area with the intention of catching specific prey. The predatory usage is governed by focusing.

We developed an astounding ability to think – to focus on memories and learn. We learnt how to shape flint tools, to make fire, and wheels, then cars, planes, and internet. Focusing can be amazingly clever and creative, and it gets things done. And gradually our modern civilisation developed.

Until nowadays, when our modern early education of focused sensing and thinking, undermines our panoramic abilities before they even start to develop.

And we don't recognise that all we do, think, and want, is because of focusing. We don't remember that there is another way of experiencing life.

After an amazing million-year long history of focusing for our survival, our one-sided strategy has now led us to a point of critical overload.

The 'free' cultures are fracturing into extremes. And all we can do is focus even harder on trying to find answers.

There is no common consensus since our cultures' traditional focal point, the Gods, were dismissed. Or – the only common censensus is the cell phone, a pocket sized replacement for heaven... and the focal points get even smaller.

Animals are the experts. Panoramic awareness is the natural counterbalance to focusing. They've been using this balance for billions of years – it is clearly part of a successful survival strategy.

And, the advantage humans have is that we don't need to panic, we don't need to jump and run away every time we see a cat or dog.

Yet our religious and politicians leaders, educators and greatest thinkers, demonstrate no understanding of panoramic awareness.

Panoramic awareness is an innate potential which we have collectively learnt to ignore, it is probably the only natural resource which humans don't exploit.

Human children are born with this way of being in touch with and sensing the world.

I can only dream about how it would develop if we trained it early in our children, simultaneously with focused reading, writing, drawing, and thinking.

I don't know where it could lead – how soon it would influence our fundamental sense of identity, or bring change to those already secure in closed mindedness or proud beliefs. But this would change individuals, relationships, and society in general.

And what possible harm could there be in doing what every other animal does to stay safe?

At present, this is a completely wasted opportunity for humanity and civilisation.

The Priority Pages continue with Warm-up Exercises

Back to THE PANORAMA SENSES Priority Pages