To Open

 Now, with the moon nearing full and the Air Tide rising high, is a time for opening awareness, for paying attention, the first power of a Witch.

The conditions of modern life compel a lot of filtering, more and more as the years go by and the information age whelms. We get very good at screening out what we have decided is irrelevant.

Years ago, I taught adult school ESL classes for Mien tribespeople from Laos. Those people were time travelers, among other things. The middle-aged adults had grown up a world rather like that of our ancestors a thousand years ago (I remember one man telling me about the first time he saw matches used, when he was a teenager). One striking thing about them—aside from some obvious things like gingerly picking up a pencil and turning it around to figure out which end of it you write with—was their awareness of everything around them. In class, they were easily distracted, noticing every sound in the street outside, every footstep in the hallway. I realized that they came from a world in which there were no irrelevant sounds. Everything they heard was significant. Another time we went on a field trip to a regional park, and they kept pointing out plants and asking their names, surprised that I did not know the name of every plant and tree we saw. 

We live in a world defined by the sounds we have learned to notice, the things we know the names of, the  ideas that we have not dismissed. It is a world that we would not be able to negotiate in any other way.

To open to growth, consciously open awareness. There is a familiar magical exercise of closing your eyes and for a short time hearing everything that is there it hear—street sounds, indistinct voices from a next door apartment, bird calls, the humming of appliances, the wind—whatever sounds your environment holds. Pay attention, and give each sound some meaning, no matter how fanciful or contrived. It is best to close your eyes because then, by opening them, you can return to the filters that you normally rely on—but you might want to make a record any meanings you have discovered, if they are meanings that mean something.

Another exercise, perhaps a bit scarier, is to open your mind to ideas and opinions that you have rejected or disagree with. What if there really is a God who sends people to hell? What if torturing suspected terrorists really is somehow necessary to national security? Maybe the Kardashians are actually interesting and important people, and you should bookmark their blog. You don’t have to commit to any of these ideas, or act on them. As Aristotle said long ago, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” But roam among the thoughts you reject, and see where they take you.