Sentience & The Shadow Self
Cashmere
Sentience & The Shadow Self
Ever since my soul cat Cashmere disappeared last September I have wanted to write about how we humans traverse the world of sentience. Generally sentience is associated with animals, referring to them as sentient beings who are finely tuned and highly perceptive to the feeling world. Sentient beings for those that are open to them, offer an unspoken exchange of feelings that deepen our experiences and can heal. So what about sentience in the time of COVID that kept pulling at me to write this blog?
The animal kingdoms are doing their best to reclaim their place with us while we humans are struggling with wearing facemasks. With smiles and giggles covered up in public we are positioned to allow or perhaps train our eyes to do more of the talking, communicating more deeply and yes, well, experiencing sentience. Which, in turn gives us the grand opportunity to return to the feeling world . . . . . Hold up tech (no seriously tech, even the preppers are holding up)!
Earth healing et all, perhaps there is even a bigger picture of thank you to COVID within this realm of now? Could there be a reckoning with humanity and technology?
To honor feelings is to honor them all, uncomfortable ones included, for it is in these moments of feeling less than, fearful, miserable, angry, doubtful and depressed, etc that we touch base with our shadow self. As far as I can tell it is only when we individually and collectively embrace our shadows that we can begin to see beyond them and the gifts they bring. Gifts of learning to value, trust and respect just how far all (you, me ) of us have come in this time of great pain. What we (you, me) are learning now about our personal selves and our big beautiful humanity is what I hope will propel us forth as we carve out our new ways of being, of seeing, of listening, and of responding. For as much as we zoom, face-time, houseparty or skype most of us have learned that our biggest desire is to back away from the screen and simply to be with each other. I feel you bro definitely carries more weight than it did several months ago. It seems now more than evah we must propel crazy random acts of kindness forward (thank you Bill) to anyone and to everyone and yes, to also give to each other in not so random and unexpected ways -- even if it’s only a for a moment of our (yours, mine, theirs) pure, selfish sanity. Why? Because guaranteed it will make us (you, me, them) feel human, aka feel better, as in appreciate these are the essential qualities of being human. Try as tech might, might we agree COVID is encouraging a global sentience? And perhaps with this encouragement are we being asked to preclude technology from defining or negating our humanity? I wonder.
Fearless feelings are healing feelings. Eyes wide-open. We all can be sentient beings now.
Stay True World,
Maggygrace