Hopedance

Excerpt:

1

The Call of the Unknown

The main character of our story is a mouse. He is just one mouse among many other mice, without even a name. Each of us begins life in a somewhat similar place. We are born into a body, immersed in a family and a larger collective body, and ignorant of our true name—our true nature. The story of this particular mouse unfolds as a quest to discover his true nature. To do this, however, he must first free himself from his unconscious submergence in the mindset of the collective body. In the native understanding of the soul’s journey, he must begin to explore and integrate the powers of the four sacred directions of the Medicine Wheel, the wheel representing the Universe and its myriad life forms as an interdependent whole.

In the absence of a name, the mouse is described as just a “little” Mouse. His littleness stands out as an important detail. Little Mouse is little in two interrelated ways. On the one hand, he is little relative to the vastness of the world that surrounds him, a world of which he knows so little; on the other hand, he is little in relation to the unknown potential that lies within him, like a seed awaiting the right conditions to grow. The vastness of these two unknown dimensions of his life mirror each other and frame the life of Little Mouse.

In this regard, the story mirrors the human soul’s journey, expressing a paradox intrinsic to our existential situation. On the one hand, it speaks of our humble place in a vast Uuniverse that reaches far back into the beginnings of life and stretches ahead into an unknown future. It hints at the vast mystery that we find ourselves immersed in, the mystery of life itself, the miracle that there is something rather than nothing. On the other hand, the story calls to us to stretch ourselves beyond the small world that we know so well into the unknown possibilities of human consciousness. In this way, at the very beginning the story begins to weave together the inner and outer mystery that frame our Earth Walk.

The opening of the story finds Little Mouse “busy with mice things.” Like all the other mice, he is busy gathering and collecting seeds and nuts for the sake of his survival, for when you live off the land you must always be prepared for the harshness of winter. Rooted in a land-based indigenous culture, the story points to the reality that the basic needs of the body for food, clothing, and shelter must be met first before there is time for any other considerations. In spite of these material demands, however, anthropological studies show that indigenous peoples had more leisure time for socializing, play, and ritual than we moderns. Even so, the story warns the native listener of the danger of becoming overly caught up in the material concerns of life, at the expense of one’s spiritual life.

It is interesting that even in a pre-industrial world the tendency toward busyness was a feature of that life. Perhaps this tendency is common to the human experience, regardless of time and culture.

The busyness of a pre-industrial life, however, clearly pales in comparison to the reality of our fast-paced, modern, industrialized world. In many ways, busyness is a defining feature of our lives as we rush about from here to there in the midst of our own struggles for security and comfort. Our days are packed full with commutes to and from work, appointments, phone calls to make, e-mails to check and send, deadlines, planes to catch, children to taxi from here to there, and on and on, with little or no time to stop and observe what is actually going around us, let alone inside us.

We move through life so fast we can forget to really see, hear, smell, taste, or touch anything. As a result, our senses can become impoverished or even shut down. This is especially true if we live in an urban environment where we must shield ourselves from sensory overload.

But our senses are the windows of our bodies through which a vibrant, sensual, ensouled world enters—through which the many faces of Spirit approach us. Our senses form the invisible threads that connect us with life and whatever is other than ourselves. Ironically, even though our cultural orientation to reality is predominately materialistic, we have somehow left our bodies behind, except as idealized expressions of physical beauty or prowess. In the end, our weakened connections to a vibrant world and the stresses of our fast-paced lifestyle take a toll not only on our bodies but also on our souls.

Reposted from http://organicdigital.com/natural/book-excerpt/

see the book review at http://www.hopedance.org/media-reviews/books/1985