Children, Wildlife, and the Art of Shapeshifting

Birdbrain, by Lori Field

Long ago the trees thought they were people.

Long ago the mountains thought they were people.
Long ago the animals thought they were people.
Someday they will say, long ago the humans thought
they were people.

Native storyteller Johnny Moses

In his novel, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J.M. Barrie writes:

It is not only on the conscious plane you shall listen, but also on the hidden plane

To be present in passive listening without that there is any inner calculator, will say, that you look at your partner, your children, without having any conceptions about them.

A conception is perhaps of superficial kind, or it is lying dwelling, deep down in the subconscious. And in the Life Artist it is not enough to listen to the conception you have pieced together outwards. Also the conceptions you have innermost you must be aware of – your conceptions about the race, about the culture, the historical perspective in the conception you have about yourself.

So, it is not only on the conscious plane you shall listen, but also on the hidden plane, deep in yourself. In all the most distant corners of the mind, there must be created a listening presence.

Children´s nature is much more watchful, much more curious and eager to learn

Philosophy begins with, that human beings are wondering.

We all know, how curious children are.

Children want to know something and see much more, than the adults do, they catch sight of things, which the adults not even put notice to.

Children´s nature is much more watchful, much more curious and eager to learn.

They are lost in being.

It is therefore children have so easy learning maths, geography or whatever subject.

When we become older, our mind progressively becomes crystalized, it stiffens, becomes heavy and dull.

We stagnate.

We begin to have prejudices about everything and everybody.

The mind is no longer open, to any problem we have taken position in advance.

We are lost in becoming, or in the will to power.

That something is learned in philosophical sense presupposes a mind, which each time learns anew

The word philosophy means love of wisdom, or love of learning.

To learn in philosophical sense is a continual movement, a continual renewal. It is not ”to have learned”, and see on the bases of that.

Usually we see on the bases of a memory about what we have learned, and have experienced; memory is the starting point. This is therefore not to see, not to learn in philosophical sense.

That something is learned in philosophical sense presupposes a mind, which each time learns anew. There must be a creative emptiness. The mind must therefore always be new and ready to learn, just like a child.

For that reason it doesn´t interest the Life Artist to worship memory, but rather to observe, see and experience what really happens.

As a Life Artist you must try to be extremely aware, awake, so that the seen and learned don´t become a memory from which you see, and which in itself is a distortion.

You must see each time as if it was the first time!