After recently reviewing my soon-to-be-released Natural Contemplation booklet, an old friend posed a question that many people might share:
“Are you saying that non-human beings feel their physical finitude as well as the Greater Reality – both at the same time?”
My response: Yes! They are acutely sensitive to the fear, while also sensing beyond it. They experience/feel fear and separation – with limited armouring – while simultaneously feeling the Greater Reality.
Senses of separateness and fear dissolve in a deeper, thought-free participation in Life’s Mystery.
Humans’ natural feeling capabilities are constantly overtaken by our chronic fear and thinking!
But among non-humans, it is entirely (or largely) a process arising within, or as, simple feeling – unswayed by intellect.
Free of thinking, feeling continuously releases the living energies through and beyond the fear sense – into Existence Itself, rather than contracting from Life.
Their natural response to feeling vulnerable is to yield into Life rather than withdraw from It.
All trees and plants, who are highly sensitive, feel a great deal. Without any thinking at all, they display diverse responses to perceived threats, as well as to benign interactions.
When we come near trees and plants, they readily feel us, including our moods and intentions.
Science confirms that microscopic elements of seemingly inanimate things, feel and respond to the energies of our varied attentions…
Animals, fish, birds, insects, or elephants respond – via feeling – to emerging threats from tsunamis or volcanoes, for example – or to fearful, angry people trudging through their forests, or splashing in their lagoons.
In general, non-humans’ dual sensitivity is more acute, and much more highly developed, than in humans – because they feel with more clarity, and think much less. And some don’t think at all.
Without armouring, they feel the dual qualities of conditional existence – death and Life – more-or-less equally.
Having the capacity to both feel, and innately participate, within the duality of conditional existence allows them access into “fearing no more”, or natural participation in “Sacred Mystery” – the Not-Two of Advaita, Brahman, and Tawhid – without thoughts or words.
– Stuart Camps
