The Patterning that Creates and Connects

We could perhaps get at the questions of this contemplation by considering the images above. The first image looks like flowers. The second image reminds us: There are no “flowers,” but there is bee-and-flower. The third image reminds us that the patterning goes beyond that too: Bee-and-butterfly-and-flower. And we can go on and on, recognizing the magic and mystery of interwovenness. Since these images come from Return to Freedom, the Wild Horse Sanctuary where I live as philosopher-in-residence, you may realize that horses abide in each of the images as well.

Our habitual mind covers over the patterning that creates and connects all sentient beings and all of sentient being. To our habitual mind—a mind of incoherence and a consciousness oriented toward conquest and the pursuit of goals and agendas—to that habitual mind, the patterning of life can not only remain hidden, but it can appear as noise. It takes a mind of Nature to sense the mind that is Nature—a mind of ecology to become liberated into larger ecologies of mind that direct the flow of magic and meaning in our world.

One must have a mind of springtime
to make it springtime with everything,
to open up with ecosensual awareness

and appreciate the swallowtail butterflies
in the peach blossoms, and the peach blossoms
in the butterflies, awakening the world from winter,

in bee-buzz and bird-song and green of grass,
and have been wet a long time
to behold the petals and leaves glistening with rain,

sparkling in the March morning,
and not knowing, not letting habitual thought
shine its incoherent light,

seeing misery in the bodies of the wet horses
which are the bodies of Earth and Cosmos
appearing as many, though they remain

in wholeness, in holiness, undefiled by a mind
that might miss the entire mystery, the magic
fully present in each apparent part.

Magic depends on relating to the patterning of Nature, from and towards its wholeness. But how do we relate to the wholeness of Nature if our culture, including our language, seduces us into fragmentation (in ways we may remain mostly unaware of)? In this contemplation we will consider some fascinating notions that help us to see how misguided we might currently be, and which may open us up to the kind of practice of life we need to follow if we want to realize the wholeness and healing that the mystery itself offers us.