Top Sory Box

February 2014

 

Steve McQueen in Montana
The Famous Actor and His Beautiful Wife Loved Livingston
Read article here
____________________________________

Jeanette Rankin and Belle Winestine
In honor of the Centennial of Women's Suffrage in Montana
Read article here
____________________________________

McQueen, the Back Story
Read article here
____________________________________

An Apache Outbreak,War on the Border
Chiricahua Apaches Defy and Fight U.S. and Mexican Soldiers
Read article here
____________________________________

Food Police a Real Possibility?
For Some, It’s an Idea Whose Time Has Come
Read article here
____________________________________


The Real Wolf Does Not Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
Authors Say It Is Pro-Wolfers Who Propagate Myths

Read article here
______________________

Letters to the Editor
Read article here
______________________


 

What Is It We Are Not Seeing?
Eventhough It’s Everywhere You Look

BY DAVID S. LEWIS

It seems we’re on the blind side of things. What occurs comes out of nowhere, often with power. Who can see the wind? But it pulls down trees, lifts houses, and you have to lean into it when it blows. Nor can we see the silent power that spins the earth and causes the sun to seemingly rise and set. Gravity, too, remains unseen, and still a puzzle to scientists, even as it weighs their bodies to the ground and drops apples from branches. And what about sound—it’s everywhere—the sudden loud occur-rence of which makes you jump out of your shoes? Electricity, another poorly understood scientific phenomenon, also emanates from the invisible, yet we flick on a light without a thought.

Then there’s fragrance (known to readily access scenes and feelings stored in memory), and then heat and cold—along with the grand daddy of all invisible forces in our worlds, the relentless but invisible coursing of thought through your own minds, and emotions. All invisible, but ever present.

We’re told there are other invisible rays crisscrossing our paths moment by moment, even entering and exiting our bodies and brains—ultra violet rays, rays from space, microwaves carrying the cellular babble of teenage girls and businessmen; then radio, television, and satellite signals.
We are, in fact, immersed in the invisible, yet it was the late Harvard professor John Mack who observed that modern Western civilization is the first society in history not to acknowledge and honor the existence of the invisible.

Animals have a connection to it. Ants become agitated before storms, as do creatures in general before earthquakes and other natural disasters (How do they know?). Dogs have been documented running to the window as their masters’ cars turn distant corners, drawn by some inner connection, or a capacity for love we only attribute to ourselves.

The invisible also enfolds the farthest depths of space, where it embraces the unknown, infinity beyond comprehension, beyond galaxies, never ending—how does that work? The invisible extends to and surrounds as well the depths of the subatomic neverland, only the effects of which we can observe, the quarking of quarks, the undulations of neutrinos, the omnipresence of single electrons, a realm as enduring and powerful as, and perhaps identical to, the mother reality that holds the stars in the palm of her hand. In this sense, probably in every sense if we could see, the invisible is invincible.

All the while, we pretend to have a grip on things, managing daily actions, and, on the greater scale of humanity, the affairs of the world—while our bodies and brains function in a million ways over which we have no power (except self-annihilation) and without any effort on our part, due to unseen dynamics we can only hope to understand.

It’s why people turn to Spirit, or feel American Indians must have known something about the invisible realm, living as they did outdoors all the time, seemingly free,  and without the heap of contrivances of modern times that divert us from ourselves and intuitive understanding: computers, televisions, cell phones, iPods, and all those street lights—which at night obscure the view of space with its spheres so distant that their arriving light is millions of years old by the time it touches our eyes, the stars themselves being long, long gone.

It goes on and on, challenging the mind’s arbitrary parameters. Look at any object in front of you, on your desk, on the breakfast table, this printed page. They are not as they appear, not even a grain of salt, nor the seed of an orange that becomes a tree, yet somehow invisibly coalesced with billions of atoms in a fraction of a square inch that houses vast amounts of energy. And if those atoms should split, you know what happens—as the effect exploding from the invisible radiates fire to the world, instantly consuming matter and then mutating genes.

So why let anybody tell you how to think, when they themselves  do not understand what they cannot see, even experts, who admit they are at a loss over everyday things like gravity and electricity? What could they possibly know, whether they be from the world of politics, the news media, academia, religion, popular consensus, or merely someone telling you how to live your life? Beware, because they would have you living in an imaginary box of your own making, hypnotizing you into believing that the box is real.

Institutions do this, corporate and bureaucratic, creating what Livingston philosopher Ed Turner calls the Corpor-ate/Bureaucratic Paradigm, a paradigm being an invisible but widely held concept of the mind. Turner describes this CBP as inherently heartless and ruthless. Be that as it may, it’s best not to hold too tightly to any paradigm, because doing so imprisons the invisible entity we call the soul, and because things change, and certain people within those heartless institutions are, well, people too, perhaps free thinkers, or enlightened revolutionaries in the making who will help make a better world, drawing inspiration and a sense of purpose from, you guessed it, the invisible.

But see how far we get away from what matters just because we can’t see it, while natural creatures allow themselves to be subsumed in it? Animals don’t seem to have our problems, because they’re not easily hypnotized in the traditional sense. And did you know that hypnotists say the most easily entranced subjects are those who are the most self-conscious, the most wrapped up in self-imposed preoccupations? In other words trapped inside the box of their own minds.

Not dogs, they’re just happy to see you, all wide eyed with their tongues hanging out, not caring how they look or smell, so that when something signifi-cant happens three blocks away (significant to them) they catch on, thinking Daddy’s home. It’s because they’re not self-conscious, so much so that they don’t even know they’re dogs. —Have you ever met a dog who knows he’s a dog? Not even the brightest know they’re dogs, because they’re thoroughly un self-conscious, and because they have no such paradigm. As inherently spontaneous creatures, they just feel and act without the self-talk in between (which is why they make such good friends) allowing themselves to be unreservedly immersed in the invisible.

It’s true, animals know without seeing, even as they receive invisible signals traveling on the wind through the olfactory senses the way we receive email, but more easily. What’s more, it’s common for a horse or dog to sense a human’s anxiety or fear, even before the human. Any fearful or anxious person who has ridden a horse knows this, which is why there are horse camps, here in Montana, where people work out personal problems that they’ve kept all their lives in an invisible reservoir within themselves, problems that reflect back to them uncannily in their dealings with horses, dogs, other people, and from the whole invisible world itself—it resides not only without but within, subatomic, in that elastic thing, that paradigm we call infinity.

 

 

Ads

comments

topics


 

 

 

 


         
  HOME CURRENT ISSUE ARTICLE ARCHIVES ADVERTISING LETTERS TO THE EDITOR CONTACT US  


Montana Pioneer, P.O. Box 441, Livingston, MT 59047

  www.mtpioneer.com

© 2007-2013 Montana Pioneer Publishing
No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

Site created by Living Arts Media.