Toward a Wild Consciousness

It’s true, what they say, about this world being a miraculous multidimensional mandala web with layers of relationship and musical flows enfolded within it. Silvery threads with sparkling luminescence, beads of crystalline radiance strung along, crisscrossing, zigzagging in a seemingly endless explosion of life... all of it conscious... all of it bright... all singing its unique part in the Great Song of Existence.

To sing, to write, or to dream is to track... to follow harmonies hidden enfolded and to bring some magic up from its depths, into expression. Creativity and imagination are powerful doorways into wild consciousness... as creativity is life force. Life is always endlessly creating and expressing realities.

The greatest thing we can experience in this life is true Empathy, or what I call Wild Consciousness. To shed the mental framework and thought patterns of civilization, or ego, and to truly experience the Consciousness of the Other. To experience the consciousness of the other is to taste of Oneself, is to drink from the Whole. To lay down the illusion of Separateness is to enter the silvery luminescent singing Web. To sink below the surface of the waves to see the rich world our roots are sunk deeply into at all times.

The rest is illusion, and in my opinion, a very uncomfortable illusion to live within. It is as if most humans are walking around in Paradise with virtual reality goggles on... playing a distressing nightmare... missing the perfection of life entirely.

To come down out of the virtual reality, we must face the guards at the gates... who reinforce the civilized framework. They wear many faces and speak in many voices. They use our fear of the unknown, fear of being different, alone, and less than, to turn us back towards the caged mind. If we choose to journey on despite the voices screaming their bad advice, to risk our entire framework, we will find ourselves in Heaven. On Earth.

But awakening comes with immense responsibility. When we open ourselves to experience the Consciousness in All Things, an embodied need to live in harmony with the more-than-human world is also revealed. Our joyful soulful expression is dependent upon hearing the song of birds overhead, being enveloped in the colors of the forest, eating food that lived well, breathing clean air, and drinking wild water. It becomes painful to turn on lights powered by mountaintop removal and nuclear power plants, to fill our bodies with the food of caged animals and mono-cropped vegetables, drink chemical-laden water piped from dammed rivers, and to wear clothes made of plastic, sewn together by machines or oppressed people whose families have been torn apart on the other side of the world.

And if we are awake to this pain, how can we sing a harmonious song into the Web of Life without making changes in how we meet our needs?

And so... to awaken is not simply a matter of shifting one’s mindset. It is for real. Everything we do, think, and choose impacts everything else. We must live it. We must embody true Empathy in order to live Awake.

And so too, true rewilding is not only a matter of acquiring skills, of meeting one’s physical needs outside of the industrial system. If one’s actions spring from the civilized mind, no matter how free they seem, they are not wild. They can easily become another system divorced from the flows of the Whole. To be wild, actions must spring from immediate relationship - of heart, mind, and body – with the whole – with the other Beings we relate with and depend on.

I do not let “experts” tell me how I should dress, how I should harvest my food, or what is the right approach to life. I do not follow rigid rules and protocols. I simply allow myself to be a creature of the forest. I quit pretending to be something separate and allow myself to open and meet the consciousness of the “other”. I do not connect to nature. I am Nature. From this place of wild consciousness, I let my body, I let the forest, tell me how to meet my needs and how to be in that moment. And the voices of fear are often there in the background, inviting me into forgetfulness and busyness. Still, I continue on.

If we cannot look at an Oak leaf and see its life force, feel its consciousness, and experience its needs, then we are not free.

But we can be. The immaculate wilderness is awaiting our return.

For the wild in us all.

Delia