Another Way of Knowing

Encounters

“Encounters” are short stories about various experiences with what people nowadays often refer to as the “spiritual,” “mystical” or “miraculous” realms of life on Earth. Actually, there is nothing particularly mysterious about the encounters described here, as they are just the natural result of another way of knowing based on maintaining a clear (quiet) and receptive mind rather than always trying to name, analyze and otherwise grasp at and hold onto things. The idea behind this page is to give some idea of what we humans have lost as we became “civilized” and forgot how to access that other way of knowing.

The important thing to keep in mind while reading these “encounters” is that the people who had them were not somehow “special” or “gifted.” The fact is that these types of experiences and ways of knowing are easily available to each and every one of us. The key thing in each of the experiences described below is the willingness of the person to quiet the constant chatter that typically fills the minds of us modern folks.

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Alice and the Bees

[From Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd, Dell/Bantam Doubleday, 1974. In this excerpt, Alice is a middle-aged white Mormon from Salt Lake City who was also a chemist and herbalist.]

The tent was down and nearly folded when Rolling Thunder drove into camp with Alice. … Alice came down the path toward me, walking very fast.

“I’ll have this ready in just a minute,” I said.

“No, wait a minute. I want to tell you something,” she puffed. “I had the most interesting experience gathering herbs up there,” she said, “and I’m so anxious to tell you all about it. It couldn’t have happened without Rolling Thunder. I know, but I actually communicated with the bees. I actually talked to them and they understood.” She stopped short. “By the way,” she said, “why didn’t you go along? I thought you were going with us.”

“Well, I went with Spotted Eagle.”

She was thoughtful for a moment, remembering Rolling Thunder’s words. “Oh,” she said. “Well, let me tell you this. I was told to tell you first.” She was excited. “Rolling Thunder told me on the way back. He said, ‘Now you tell Doug first and then you write it all down.’ He said you should write about the mind and the consciousness things, and that I should write about animals and wildlife. Is that what you are doing?”

“Well, maybe. I guess so, sort of,” I answered.

“Well, you should. Anyway, we went to get horehound plants up there near the old ranch. Rolling Thunder knew right where they were. He agreed to show me because he knew I needed horehounds. As soon as we got there Rolling Thunder made his prayer and his offering. Then I saw that the plants were absolutely covered with bees. I’m deathly afraid of bees; it frightens me just to look at them and they always sting me. So I just didn’t know what to do. I was just ready to leave. Well, Rolling Thunder talked to me; he was so kind and gentle. He sensed what I was feeling, without my saying anything. He told me I was really not afraid of animals or any living thing. I only thought I was. And he reminded me how I had always loved animals and had taken care of them on a farm in my childhood.

“He told me that the fear of any living thing is based on misunderstanding. He said, ‘Now, Alice, I want you to talk to those bees. I saw how you talked to the dogs just a little while ago. You talked to the babies and to the mother and you said the right things in the right way. If you can talk to dogs that way, you can talk to bees, and they will understand. They won’t understand the English language, but they’ll understand your meaning just as you say it.’

“So he told me what to say to the bees. I was supposed to ask the bees to share the plants with me, to tell them I wouldn’t harm them, and to explain that I needed the plants for good medicine, but I would leave enough for the bees and for seeds for the coming year. He told me to say it loud and clear. He said he would be sitting behind me, and he wanted to be able to hear my voice. I did as he said, and, do you know, the bees actually understood me, and they moved! I just can’t describe how I felt. All the bees on the plant I was looking at moved. They all moved together to the back of the plant. I took only the front half of the plant which they had left me, and then I moved to another plant covered with bees, and the same thing happened again! On one of the plants, when the bees moved back and I started to cut, they all made the strangest buzzing sound. It felt as though they were somehow speaking, telling me to stop, and I was understanding. I looked at Rolling Thunder and he said, ‘There now, you see? You and the bees have agreed to share and now you’re cutting back too far. They’ll expect you, now, to do as you said.’ So I cut only the front half very carefully. Then Rolling Thunder came up to me.” She paused and she appeared to be filled with emotion. “And he said that this was a gift of the Great Spirit!” Immediately she turned and walked back along the path as quickly as she had come.

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Deer and Mice Tracks

I watched as my partner in an advanced tracking class exercise walked towards me, a small, pleased smile playing across her face.

“Found some good ones, eh?” I asked, grinning back to her.

“Yup,” she said. “Ready?”

“I guess…” I replied. “As ready as I’ll ever be, that is.”

I closed my eyes as she took my elbow and began to guide me across the desert floor to the tracks she had found. After about 100 feet she stopped and took my hand, then gently guided me until I was kneeling with my right hand palm hovering a few inches above the ground.

My eyes still closed, I took several slow, deep breaths as I tried to sink into a deep and receptive mental silence. Nothing happened for a few moments, then pale shapes started taking form against the darkness of my closed eyelids. I studied them for a bit, then thought to myself, “Ah, deer tracks. And it was traveling in that direction.”

I was about ready to pronounce my results when something else caught the attention of my still closed eyes - two parallel lines of small, scratchy marks crossing through the deer track at about a 35 degree angle to the deer’s line of travel. For a moment I was puzzled, then I realized I was seeing the tracks of a small mouse that had skittered across the deer track. My partner had gotten fancy with me on this exercise! It was bad enough that I was expected to identify a track through nothing more than holding my hand in the air above it, and here she had thrown in the unexpected surprise of not one, but two sets of tracks!

“I see deer tracks, moving in that direction,” I said, gesturing with my hand. “And I think I’m seeing mouse tracks crossing over the deer track in this direction,” gesturing again to indicate the path of the mouse tracks.

“That’s right!” she said. “You’ve got it!”

I heaved a small sigh of relief and opened my eyes to survey the ground in front of me. Sure enough, there was the clear, unmistakable track of a deer, heading off in the direction I had “seen.” And looking closer (much closer!), I could also make out the ever so faint tracks of a small desert mouse crossing through the deer track at just the angle I had seen when my eyes were closed.

I sat back on my heels and exclaimed, “I did it! I really did it!”

My partner, a visiting instructor from another wilderness school, smiled at me, “Of course you did it.”

“Yeah, well,” I hemmed and hawed, “I knew it could be done, I just wasn’t quite sure that I could do it. I mean, I’m the most unlikely person around to be able to do something like this. If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

And, of course, anyone can do it. It’s the natural birthright of each and every one of us.

~ oak

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Finding “My” Rock

I stood on the edge of the forest clearing, blindfolded and mentally cursing to myself.

It was a bright, chilly Sunday morning, the second day of a weekend “Earth Philosophy” class with Jim Lowery and Mary Brooks of the Earth Skills wilderness skills school. When I and my classmates had arrived for the class early Saturday morning, Jim and Mary had given each of us a small chunk of soapstone, and we had spent the rest of the day and into the evening on various exercises getting to know and “bond” with our rocks. (Yes, I know, that might sound unbearably New Age-y, but bear with me, you’ll see there’s more to this story.)

Early Sunday morning before breakfast, Jim collected the rocks from each of us. By that time we had all bonded so well to our rocks that we were reluctant to give them up to him, but he assured us we would get them back. Little did we suspect just how that would happen.

After breakfast, Jim and Mary said to get the bandanas we had been told to bring to the class, then led us the edge of the forest clearing. There they told us that our rocks were somewhere among the stubble in the clearing. Our task was simple, they said: Blindfold ourselves with the bandanas, then find our rocks.

So there I stood, blindfolded and cursing to myself: “This is ridiculous! This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of! How did I ever get myself into such a dumb situation! It’s impossible! And even if it’s possible, I can’t do it!”

And so I ranted to myself for several minutes. Finally I managed to calm down a bit and be a little more rational about the situation. “Well, if it is possible, you’re certainly not going to be able to do it in this frame of mind!” I told myself.

So I took a few slow, deep breaths and dropped into a place of receptive silence. I stood there, straining for some sense of where “my” rock was, but nothing came through and agitated doubt started rising up in me again. I mean, how the heck do you expect a rock to tell you where it is?

I squelched the doubt again after a bit of struggle, and again stood waiting, hoping against hope that somehow my rock would find a way to get through to me.

Nothing.

I was just about to give up in another torrent of cursing when something caught my attention. It was very slight and subtle, a sort of humming buzz that I sensed rather than heard and that ever so gently tugged at me. I became very silent as I considered it. Was that my rock calling to me?

After listening to it for a bit, I finally decided follow the buzz, given that there certainly was no other clue to where my rock was.

Slowly I moved forward. A few times I stumbled a little on the uneven ground, and several times I had to stop to re-establish a state of internal silence so I could sense the buzz again.

Then, suddenly, the buzzing stopped, just quit and disappeared. I stood there, forcing myself to be quiet, straining for any hint of the buzz.

Nothing.

Agitation sprung up again inside me. “I knew I couldn’t do this,” I fumed to myself as I tore off the bandana in frustration.

Then I looked down at the ground. There, between my feet, was my rock.

~ oak

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Oak Tree

In my mind I stood at the foot of a short path, at the end of which was a large, gnarled Valley oak tree. I paused for a moment, making the scene as real and vivid in my mind as I could. After a bit I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the hardness of the ground beneath my bare feet, and I heard the faint rustle of the knee high grass lining the sides of the path as it bent under the soft touch of a gentle breeze.

Finally I envisioned myself stepping forward, deliberately lifting my right foot, slowly moving it forward, then carefully placing it on the ground before shifting my weight onto it. Again I paused to take careful note of my envisioned surroundings, watching a distant black phoebe as she flicked her tail in time with her soft chipping notes for a moment before taking another step.

And so I “walked” down the path, until I stood before the oak tree, its dark, weathered bark only a foot from my face. I paused for a final moment, feeling the immense strength of the oak’s presence, making sure one more time that I was welcome, and then I stepped forward, into the tree.

I felt myself expand out to where what was now “my” bark met Air. Coursing channels through my trunk drew me upward, into branches and then leaves, reaching, reaching to Sun and Sky, and downward, deep into the holding Earth, searching roots growing ever finer.

I stood there as I had stood for a hundred years and more, quietly watching the ever coming and passing of the seasons. Trembling as lightening struck nearby. Exulting at the touch of rain beading on my leaves and trickling down my branches, eagerly reaching out to each molecule of water soaking into the soil. Patiently enduring the burning heat of summer, feeling the ants tickle my bark and the pricks of bird feet as they gripped my branches - nuthatches and woodpeckers and warblers grooming me for beetles and larvae; a house wren slipping in to feed its nestlings in the hole made when the wind broke off one of my branches; scrub jays and acorn woodpeckers trying to collect each and every one of the acorns I offered. Watching the deer on their early morning and evening foraging rounds that took them under my branches, feeling the pinch as they browsed on my new growth and munched my acorns, my offering to the future.

As the spring rains fell, I felt renewed energy rising, surging out to where new buds were forming, lengthening into new tender branches, young leaves unfurling to greet Sun. In winter I pulled back into myself, consolidating, patiently waiting for the time of long, sun-filled days to come again, when spring’s fawns, raccoon and fox kits, and other young life come to hesitantly sniff at me and explore the regions covered by my outstretched arms, while Hawk, Raven, and others of the Winged People drift in Sky above me.

Finally I sensed it was time for me leave, to venture out again onto the human legs and feet that can carry me away from where Oak stands rooted, unmoving. From my heart I offered Oak my immense gratitude for what had been shared with me - the lessons of Tree-time, Rootedness, Endurance, Patience, Acceptance, and so much more - and then I stepped forward, out of Oak and yet knowing there is no true separateness, that Oak has always been a part of me and I a part of Oak.

About a week later, as I drove to work one morning, I passed by where a sycamore tree was being “pruned.” As screaming chainsaws crudely amputated her arms, pain slashed through my upper arms and I filled with her terror and agony and the terrible fear of the other trees nearby that they might be next. Then both rage and a crushing sadness poured through me at the alienation and separateness that allowed the “owners” to see Sycamore as simply yet another thing to be cut and molded according to their whim and convenience.

I cried out to Earth and Sky, to Water and Rock, to the Four-leggeds, the Winged and Finned Ones, to the Many-legged and No-legged, and of course the Rooted Ones - what oh what do I do to help heal the forsaken breach that has arisen between we two-leggeds and the myriad other beings with which we share Earth? In the years since then, the beginning of understanding and an possible answer has slowly unfolded inside me, an answer that includes the web pages you are reading.

~ oak

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Talking with Daisy

I’d like to share with you what happened the first time I spoke to a plant. If I can do it, you can, too!!!

I had just finished reading Eliot Cowan’s book, Plant Spirit Medicine. Part of me was scoffing, “Yeah, right,” and part was eagerly saying, “I can do this!” I sat on the floor cross-legged and cupped my hands around a potted English Daisy sitting on the coffee table. (I held my hands, palms toward the plant, 2 to 3 inches from the pot.) Relaxing into a light trance, I shared my energy with the plant, told it how much I admired it, thanked it for living with me, and asked if it would tell me what it might be good for medicinally. The answer I received manifested as a stabbing pain in the lower right portion of my back. It was so intense it nearly startled me out of the trance! I asked: “You are good for back pain?” The pain immediately disappeared! The right brain was convinced, but the left… I checked in several herbal remedy books and learned that the Daisy, though not often used now, was once considered a good remedy for muscle aches and spasms!

~ MW

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Conversation with Mr. Cockroach

I woke in the middle of the night, thirsty. I got up and silently padded into the kitchen where my hand groped in the dark for the light switch. The light blazed on, and there in the middle of the kitchen counter boldly stood my nemesis for the last few weeks - Mr. Cockroach.

I flushed with irritation. I knew this cockroach well, you see - he and his mate, Mrs. Cockroach. They lived in the cabinet above the counter, in a split in one of the wooden cabinet braces. Every time I opened the cabinet door to get a plate or glass, I would catch a quick glimpse of them as they quickly scuttled to safety into the crack.

I confess, they annoyed me. I mean, they REALLY annoyed me. This was MY place, MY house! It was MY dishes they were leaving their little pepper grind-like calling cards around! I wanted them gone, gone, gone - now!

But I am one of those who believes that ALL life is important, even that of cockroaches, so I resisted the impulse to reduce Mr. Cockroach to a juicy splat on my counter. Then I got a bright idea - why not try to talk to him? Another part of my mind said, “Yeah, right. Talk with a cockroach? Are you out of your frigging mind?”

“Yes,” I said to myself, ignoring the naysayer, “that’s what I’ll do. I’ll talk with him and explain how this is my place, and ask him to please find someplace else to live.”

I relaxed my irritated shoulders (which had been up somewhere around my ears) and cleared my mind. Then I spent a few moments gathering together into my heart all of the regard, love, and even affection that I could muster for the brown creature sitting on the counter before me.

I think Mr. Cockroach knew something was up but he didn’t know what it was and got nervous, so he turned and started to scuttle away. “Wait,” I mentally said to him. “I would like to talk with you.”

He stopped, antennae waving in the air.

“Yes, it’s me talking,” I said as I let my love and care for him flow out of my heart towards him. “I really would like to talk with you for a moment.”

He turned around, facing in my direction again, then advanced to the edge of the counter, his antennae extended out towards me.

“How are you doing?” I asked. “It’s a nice night, huh?” I paused, keeping my mind quiet and receptive to any answer. Nothing came through from him aside from a sense that he was amazed that a human was talking to him and that I had his rapt attention, so I drew a deep breath and plunged ahead.

“Look,” I said, “I know you are no different from any living thing, including me - you’re just trying to make a living and get by like all of us are. I respect and honor that, and I wish you no harm. In fact I hope that life is good to you and things go well for you and your family. It’s just that this is my place, not yours. It’s really annoying to find your droppings all around my cabinets, plus I’ve heard that they can spread serious diseases to us two-leggeds. So I’m sorry, but I need to ask you to find someplace else to live. I’m not gonna spray you with poison or smash you or otherwise try to kill you if you don’t leave, although I do reserve the right to catch any of you that I find and release you someplace else, like outside in the garbage bin.”

I paused again, listening with my heart for a response. What came through was a reluctant sense of, “Well, allright, I’ll think about it.”

“Fair enough,” I thought to myself. To the cockroach I said with my heart, “Thank you so much for listening to me, I really appreciate it. Again, I’m sorry I have to ask you to leave. Maybe I shouldn’t be bugged so much by you living here, but it does bother me a lot and so I appreciate you listening to my request. Go in peace, my friend, and take care. Blessings on you and may you and yours be happy.”

I watched as the cockroach turned and walked away across the counter, behind the canisters. I got my drink of water, turned off the kitchen light, and went back to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I thought of was our conversation. As I walked to the kitchen to get a cup from the cabinet, I wondered if it would have any effect or if I was just nuts to think that one could actually talk with a cockroach and ask them to leave.

I swung open the cabinet door and looked up to where they lived, just in time to see a brown cockroach butt disappear into the crack they called home. Sigh.

The same thing happened the next morning, and the morning after that. By then I was sarcastically thinking to myself, “Well, so much for the great idea of talking with them.”

But on the fourth morning there was no cockroach scurrying for the safety of the crack. Nor did one appear the next morning, or any morning after that. In fact I never saw another cockroach for the 1-1/2 years I continued to live in that apartment, although I sometimes heard my neighbors complain about how many they had.

~ oak

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The Cooperative Red Ants

[An excerpt from the book, Rediscovery, by Thom Henley.]

The staff work all day to set up the four tipis for Rediscovery Four Corners in the high Colorado valley, and the Ute elders who oversee the project are satisfied. The tipis are aligned exactly north, east, south, and west: they each have their proper coloured prayer flags fluttering from the pole tops, and each tipi rests exactly equal distance from the others and the central fire pit. But now, as the sun sets on the eve before the camp opens, the staff find a large red-ant mound inside the east tipi. Obviously the children cannot bed down on top of fire ants, so the east tipi must be relocated: therefore the other three tipis will have to be moved accordingly. The staff will have to work all night to have camp ready for the first arrivals in the morning.

“Don’t do anything more tonight,” a Pueblo Indian elder and cultural director for the program says calmly, “I will talk to the ants in the morning.”

“Talk to the ants?” someone asks, unbelieving.

“Yes, they are our ancestors. They helped us emerge from the underworld by providing us with food to grow big and strong while they stayed small. They have helped me find my way many times when I was lost.”

The Pueblo man speaks with such conviction that he almost overcomes some of the staff’s scepticism. “Can you talk to them now?” someone asks impatiently.

“No, they are still active and will bite,” comes the sensible answer. “I will talk to them in the morning.”

The predawn light has not yet penetrated the eastern tipi when the Pueblo elder places a pinch of cornmeal beside the ant hole and rests his head on the mound as if it were a pillow. “Dear ants,” he whispers into the tiny hole, “I’m sorry to have woken you so early, but I’ve brought you some breakfast and I’ve come to ask of you a favour. We have made a mistake and put a tipi over top of your house. I ask this, not for me, but for the children who arrive today. Could you please move your house?”

The staff erects a tarp under a pinon pine to temporarily house those participants not able to sleep in the east tipi. The tarp is never used. Hours later, the ants carry the last of their eggs out from under the tipi edge into a new hole four metres away. The children move in on schedule.

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Derrick’s Yellow Flowers

I watched as my classmates in an advanced Earth Philosphy class slowly returned from exploring the surrounding pinyon pine forest. I was curious but said nothing as I noticed Derrick come back from his explorations carrying a small stack of clay pigeons (the round disks used by skeet shooters for target practice), which he carefully placed beside himself as he sat down, a sly grin playing about his face.

Earlier, the class instructors, Jim Lowery and Mary Brooks of the Earth Skills wilderness school, had led us through an exercise in which we had each slipped into a state of deep meditative silence, then envisioned standing up “in spirit” from our physical bodies and walking through the pinyon pines surrounding us. At the end of the meditation, Jim and Mary had then sent us out to physically explore what we had just visited in spirit to see how well what we had seen in spirit corresponded to what existed in “real” life. (None of us had ever been to that area before and, given the unevenness of the surrounding terrain, with its many small rises and gullies, it was impossible to see from where we had been meditating what the terrain looked like further than about 50 feet away.)

Now we sat in a circle, each talking in turn about what they had seen while walking in spirit and then when they had physically walked through the same area. We had each gone in different directions and we each reported the same experience - that we had found the same distinctive boulders, gullies, trees, and other landmarks in physical reality as we had seen when we spirit walked through the area.

Derrick was the last to speak. Like the rest of us, he described finding the same things in physical reality as he had seen while walking in spirit. The only discrepancy was that while spirit walking he had come across an area with some large, bright yellow flowers, but he couldn’t find them while checking in physical reality. “But where’s the yellow flowers?” he told us he had kept asking himself while exploring the area in physical reality.

Then he paused and got a big grin on his face. He picked up the stack of clay pigeons sitting beside him and turned them over. They were all painted bright yellow on the bottom.

The rest of us exploded in laughter. We all knew exactly what had happened to Derrick because at some time or another we had all had the same experience while in a meditative state, when the analytical mind leaps in to wrongly name and interpret something being “seen” in a meditative state. In Derrick’s case, he had seen yellow splotches while walking in spirit, so his language-dominated mind had jumped in and said they must be flowers, because “what else could they be?”

~ oak