Remember last week when I included Mary Oliver’s admonition?

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

I found myself fascinated with her simple instruction. It led me to thinking about what has been called the golden thread.

When I follow a thread of something that touches me, if I go deep with it, let myself feel into what it brings up for me—by association, or language, or just switching to more of a soft focus, I reach the end of my linear left brain thinking process. My perception shifts, my right brain begins to kick in, and sometimes I fall into the realm of what lies underneath, which I termed the real last week.

Stephen Buhner, in Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, describes it this way:

We find, always, when we follow golden threads, the metaphysical background of the world. As you focus more deeply on the feeling that touched you, your sensory channels will begin to open more wildly. It is then that you you begin to leave the human world behind, then that you begin to enter the imaginal world, then that you begin to find that, as Robert Bly once put it, “ the owl’s dark eyelids cover a luminosity our reason cannot grasp.”

How beautiful, to enter into the metaphysical background of the world.

I may have a vague idea of what I want to write in an essay for the next week. Then for days. I simply stay open for something that touches me, a golden thread that takes me on a journey of perception, until there is a breakthrough in which a trajectory emerges - or often just one sentence. I have learned to write that sentence down, even though it may not be clear or accurate, even though I may eventually delete it. It is the initial thread that will take me down the path. And it starts with paying attention.

Here’s a simple example using stock photography. Initially, I am drawn to the image of water. A photo such as the one below might prompt my thoughts on the innocence of animals, or the light on water, or what lies beneath the waves. If I pay attention, and notice my heart is touched in some way, or I become curious about a detail in the photo (or see the dog swimming in real life), I find other thoughts emerging.

And then I may find myself in a deeper stream of consciousness, where new creativity will emerge.

A different image, such as this dolphin below, might take me to wondering who else is down there around him, or how mysterious the world under the ocean is.

Sometimes a photograph from my own collection will speak to me, but more often it is an idea I hear, or a scene in nature that jumps out of me. Something that intrigues, or astonishes me, to the extent I want to tell others about it.

I won’t see or hear a moment that touches me if I am distracted with thoughts, un-grounded, or worried. I have to be present with my own body, and open to my world surrounding me, to begin to notice what is meaningful. While it seems simple, it is a discipline to stay clear and awake to what moves me. Yes, I can get distracted with scrolling or too many conversations, for me there’s a fine art to my staying in my body and being finely aware.

The reward, however is immense. The golden thread leads to the innermost part of us.

In the poem below, Rilke describes the metaphysical background of the world as the deep innerness of all things. This line recalls Bly’s words in the Buhner quote above: the owl’s dark eyelids cover a luminosity our reason cannot grasp.

You are the future,

the red sky before sunrise

over the fields of time.

You are the cock’s crow when night is done,

you are the dew and the bells of matins

maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes

that rise from the stuff of your days—

unsung, unmourned, undescribed,

like a forest we never knew.

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

Rilke II.22 The Book of Hours

We need direct experience of the metaphysical background precisely because it is a unique relationship within each of us, revealed to each of us differently. Here’s to our luminosity, the innermost nature of all things. Of course sitting in silence is another way to drop in deeply, what I have described above is one of many.

With love,

Sabrina

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Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness

You can reach me at sabrinapage@earthlink.net. I assist you in focusing on the deep knowing of your body, aligned with the earth and all life - embodiment - to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. Optimize your self-healing ability and embody presence and love by embodying your innermost nature.

My background includes having studied meditation, movement, dance, and astrology - with some of the leading individuals in their fields. Sessions are individually tailored to your current needs.

More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com

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