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A
Fold in Time
"This has got to be one of the most
special places in the world." Freddy says in the calm summer afternoon.
The sky and mountains are mirrored in the upper reaches of the Baie de Prony.
The birds ashore are celebrating the day at the top of their little lungs.
"It is now, but if we were here
in the 1870's there would be the sound of the French guards and their
prisoners chopping down all the trees to provide the wood to build Noumea. |
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If we were here at the turn of the century we would
have heard the prisoners digging out the chrome and cobalt, chugging and tooting along in
their little ore trains." I sip the ice cold Number One beer out of the bottle. "The Moira would be covered in soot from all the fires," Freddy
waves her hand at the clear panorama of the bay. The miners used the remaining trees to
make railway ties. Then they used the smaller brush for fuel for the cute little steam
locomotives. The sparks from the locomotives eventually set fire to the whole southern end
of New Caledonia. |
"In the fifties and sixties the Aussies were
busily strip mining three million tons of iron ore from these hills. Think what that must
have sounded like. Bulldozers, trucks, ships, roaring, clanking and bashing about people
shouting to each other." From where we are sitting we can see the red open wounds
where the miners stripped the soil from the land. Nothing grows there now, the old mines
look like a Martian landscape. The last of the ships left here in September 1968, taking
the last of the people with them. Now the old mining village is a ghost town. |
"Must have been horrible to see it and hear it
all happening." Freddy finishes the last of her glass of beer, while we both sit
there listening to the birds, looking out over the calm, empty anchorage. "You know where we are?" she says suddenly, like she has discovered
we are not where we thought we were.
"Where?"
"We're in a fold in time."
"Think you're right. In twenty years this place will be
crawling with people again. Resorts, houses. Maybe even another mining operation." |
This morning we zoomed over the mirror
surface of the bay, over patches of ghostly blue white thickets of Acropora coral, and
into a mangrove estuary. The amazing thing was that the water in the estuary was clear.
Biologists believe that estuaries are supposed to be muddy, and the water turbid. But not
the water in the estuary here. We could see schools of saltwater fish happily swimming
along below the surface layer of clear river water.
We took the Avon right up the river to a lovely
waterfall tumbling over black rocks, tied it up to an old rock wall built by prisoners
last century, and walked along a red clay-like road made by the miners in the forties. We
walked the whole length of the river, right out of the valley and stood there looking out
at a panorama devoid of humanity. |
"I don't think we have ever been
anywhere, on land, where we could stand there and look out over a watershed of a river and
not see humanity." I muse as Walter Cat casually walks over me headed for Freddy.
"A healing experience," Walter flops down on her lap,
reaching his arms up around her neck and touching noses with her. "He likes it here
too. Maybe because of all the birds ashore. Did you see how tiny some of them are? Like
little feathery airborne mice. Teeny little feet. Walter would love one, wouldn't you
monster cat?"
Despite the obvious erosion from the old mining the river runs
crystal clear over green jadeite and gold colored rocks. Just having access to a clean,
clear river without humans mucking it all up is something special. "You know, there
are damn few rivers anywhere in the tropics, and especially in the Pacific Islands, that
are not polluted, filled with silt, and encrusted with people." |
A fold in time.
| At dawn we load up the Avon with towels, a picnic
breakfast, laundry and running shoes and head back to the river. Freddy wants to play in
the fresh water, I want to go for a run. We tie up to a tree below the waterfall and walk
along the river until we find a beautiful little pool made of jadeite. A little waterfall
jets from the pool and lands in a smaller basin perfect for sitting in to get a water
massage. I leave Freddy setting up and stripping down and head up the red road, moving
fast.
The road is rough, with rounded rubble and rocks. I concentrate on
where I put my feet as I run up a hill. In a few minutes I am breathing hard and my heart
is pumping at a comfortable almost full throttle. I keep it going at that speed, thinking,
as I walk and run, of The Caldron.
 Last night I asked the I Ching if the Cultural
Association that Yves has planned will help resolve the cultural problems developing here
in New Caledonia. What I was thinking of as I asked the question was tracking. Seeking
different pathways to respond to environmetal clues. The I Ching answered with the
hexagram 50. Ting, the Caldron.
.
A Ting is a ritual vessel used by the ancient Chinese in ceremonies offering sacrifice to God. The I Ching says, "Here we see civilization as it reaches
its culmination in religion." The Image is: "Fire over wood. Thus the superior
man consolidates his fate by making his position correct." (It was astonishingly right but I didn't know why at the time). The host
always served honored guests from the ting. The hexagram has to do with nourishing - the
wood serving as nourishment for the flame - the spirit. "All that is visible must
grow beyond itself, extend into the realm of the invisible. Thereby it receives its true
consecration and clarity and takes firm root in the cosmic order."
The I Ching also says, "if he succeeds in assigning the right
place to life and to fate, thus bringing the two into harmony, he puts his fate on a firm
footing. These words contain hints about the fostering of life as handed on by oral
tradition in the secret teachings of Chinese yoga."
I always pay attention when someone mentions the words hints and
secrets.
So I run along the old mining road on this bright sunshiny day,
trying to assign the right place to life and fate and stay on a firm footing on very
uneven ground. The Caldron and the River, Place and alignment all blend into a most
alluring pathway. I decide to just go where it leads. I mentally view myself running down
the road and move my viewpoint up, seeing myself from above, arms swinging, legs churning,
racing along by the river.
I become aware of the fact that I am made mostly of water. It is
almost as if a small chunk of the sea was running down the road. Then I begin to visualize
the whole water cycle. The evaporation of the water from the sea, the rain on the land,
the water coursing down the river (nice watery sound goes well with this), the estuary,
the sea, and back to the land via the air. What I do is to visualize this process with
myself - and awareness - embedded in the cycle as the water also flows through me.
Contact the Wind
I feel the wind as it blows over my skin. I contact the wind, become
the wind, move with it through the valley. I see the wind moving through the woods (well,
what passes for woods here). This heightens the feeling of the wind on my skin. I contact
the wind, become the wind blowing over the wood.
Contact the Wood
I feel the wood (I stop and put my hand on the trunk of a small tree
and feel the wood). The wind blows over the wood. I contact the wood - mentally feeling my
own body, my churning flux of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, as the wood. I become
the wood (easy, since I am really am the wood) and feel myself as the wind blowing over
and through myself as the wood. This sensation and awareness generates a remarkable new
awareness.
Contact the Fire
The wind ignites a fire. The fire is the spirit of life burning the
wood (metabolism as the oxygen from the wind is burned in my mitochondria). I feel the
fire - feel the spirit burning from the merging of the wood and the wind, rising upwards.
Now I can see the spirit rising up in the trees and plants all around me like green flames
fanned into life by the wind. I rush past them, a blend of wind and wood and fire. The
fire heats the caldron.
Contact the Metal
I feel the caldron. It is metal. The fire heats the metal. The
metal, in Chinese thought, is creativity. It is man- (mind)-made. I contact the cauldron,
become the cauldron. I am the creativity of mind heated by the spirit of life, consuming
the wood, fueled by the wind. The cauldron heats the water within it.
The water begins to boil. When the water boils it creates something
brand new and different. Steam that forms as bubbles. The steam rises to the surface of
the water and bursts out and upwards into the sky, leaving the caldron of creativity. This
is the moment of birth - of new ideas, of myself, of all life.
Contact the Creation
Contact the moment of birth, emerging from creation. The thoughts of
becoming condenses into water and flows down over the mountain of past thoughts, joining
other tributaries to become a mighty river flowing downwards through time. It is the
thread of awareness in chaos! I see it as the river flowing - with my own being immersed
in it, racing downstream past the rocks and shores of history.
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Contact the river.
Now I am leaping from rock to rock as I cross a tributary to the
river. I stop and splash some of the clear cool water over myself to enhance the moving
meditation. Then I run again, alongside of the river, leaping from rock to rock. But I see
myself as water running alongside of itself. A creature made of water emerged from its
cauldron of creation (the sea) so long ago to breathe air and walk on the surface of the
land.
I flow with the river of time, moving through the landscape of
becoming as mind awakening from the cauldron until I pass at last into the estuary and out
into the vast magic sea from whence I began. Contact the Sea. Feel the Sea within.
I stand now on the top of a mountain overlooking the whole
watershed. A part of sea uplifted by creativity to be aware of itself as it moves through
its cycles of becoming.
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I see an internal panorama
and explore it - tentatively at first - then with full abandon as I decide that this is
what the caldron is offering this morning in the way of spiritual nourishment. I see:
Phases of human becoming, human learning.
A matrix overlaid on the four interlocked elements of reality - to
be, to change, to have direction, creating by their intercommunications - the observer.
The matrix is represented by movement as the observer aligns itself
with fate.
To be is the direction forward or away as elements
and energy flow into and out of the focus of our being.
To change is up and down as we adjust our position
relative to other beings in our environment, dominating or submitting to control systems.
To have direction is right or left as we track our
needs.
The observer is the afterimage that carries us
through time.
We develop strategies to deal with these layers of becoming.
The first phase
To and from, happens during the first three years following birth.
During these years we learn to get what we are attracted to (towards) or get away from
what we fear (away). We learn these stragegies as an infant reaching for the breast,
retreating from lonelyness. We are totally absorbed in getting what we want and avoiding
what we fear until we look outwards and discover the larger world outside of ourselves and
our immediate wants and fears.
The second phase
Up and down, begins at about age 4 and lasts until age 10. During
this interval we learn about up and down. I am bigger than you. You are bigger than me.
Our basic strategies for dealing with hirearchies impint on our minds as we struggle with
where we fit in the vertical scheme of human behavior. It is here we are imprinted with
our strategies and awareness of our place in the natural scheme of the planet. Biologists
and environmentalists begin their careers between the ages of 4 and 8 when they look out
and are fascinated by "nature" for the first time.
The third phase
Left and Right starts in the teen years. Am I doing this right? Do
my friends like me? Which way should I go with this? Left and right decisions as we
navigate the forks in the road that carry us through the social monuments of our villages,
towns and cities.
The fourth phase
Begins with maturity. For better or worse, we have developed our
strategies to get what we want, avoid what we fear (to and from), we know our place in the
hirearchy of society (up and down), have dealt with the complex problems of social
decisions (left or right). The next dimention of conquest is time. Through time. Here we
strive to extend our being through time. By having children, building structures, writing
books, painting pictures, making music, doing something creative or heroic.
In times of stress, when we want something or fear something we
revert to the strategies learned when an infant. If our position in a hirearchy is at risk
we use strategies developed when we were between 4 and 10 years old. In a complex social
dilemma we rely on our teenage behavior to get us on the right path. In our passage
through time we are on our own.
Except.
There is another overlay. Standing here on the top of a magic
mountain at the focus of the Baie du Prony on the Southeast tip of New Caledonia, I see
another layer of four control systems built on those of our everyday lives.
The first harmonic
Our attraction and fear of this higher level of awareness. We are
attracted to or repelled by religion - metaphysics of all kinds. We move towards or away
from our higher self, God, Jesus (the gateway to this realm for those who open their
hearts to him), guardians of light, even mother nature. It hardly matters what
attraction we use, so long as it acts as a lens to focus our awareness on this higher
level of mind. When we move towards this higher level we are like an infant learning how
to find its mother's milk or learning how to avoid fear and lonelyness.
The second harmonic
Once in this higher level of awareness, we begin the process of
learning how to move up and down through the layers of awareness. We establish strategies
to move our focus up and down the rungs of awareness from our basic biological self
through our human awareness to the higher levels of consciousness, and back again, seeing
the networks of control systems that impact each of these levels more and more clearly
each time we do it.
The third harmonic
This opens the next phase of decision-making. The questions we ask
ourselves and others about how the higher levels of awareness might be used. Our decisions
deal not just with our own personal lives, but with the lives of everyone, everywhere.
The fourth harmonic
Is again through time. In this phase we discover and become the
Thread of Awareness in Chaos, our awareness reaching back through the learning of all the
molecular DNA in our cells - memory patterns that have lived since life began billions of
years ago - and ahead into the future as shadowy projections of becoming on the trajectory
of life.
I touch the thread
of awareness that weaves me from the
wind, the wood, the cauldron, the steam,
the water and the sea and become the mountain,
the river, the sea. And by their intercommunication,
I am.
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