My Secret Life as an Animal Tracker/Spy/Pathfinder/Sorcerer

“Within the effulgence of their new brain, mammals developed a capacity we call ‘limbic resonance’ — a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other’s inner states.” -Wikipedia

This blogpost post is about being led by mysterious unseen forces.  This aspect of life has largely shaped how my life has turned out so far.  In this post I will show a thread between my sense of connection with nature as a child, through time with the Roshi in Japan, into healing work, into life as a father and husband, and into teaching what I am currently calling internal process work. In the title I say “Secret Life”, as my more overt life is that of a goofball and jokester and silly papa singing songs to his daughters.

As a kid I had a connection to life and nature which I could not describe or understand. Connected in unseen ways, held, given hints about how things were.  Like a guide just out of the corner of my eye. And yet unmistakable, like a secret no one I knew was listening to. Even as a child I could know things before they happened. I felt a mysterious guidance on the edges of my life.

As a teenager, although I was successful in most everything I did, I felt out of touch, not connected.  I felt  trapped in a way of being which somehow knew of deeper aspects but could not live them. And no one around me seemed interested or aware of this deeper aspect of relating with life. I was a very serious child, an old man in a little body.  And I took care of the emotions of everyone around me with my hyper vigilance.

Gifted in sports, in love with movement, my awareness would open up at times on an open field running. But my body seized up one day.  I had hit a turning point. It had hit a wall in my way of interacting with life. My intensity had led me to a dead end. I had to find a way to allow this more connected way of being through me or I knew I would end up dead.

As I have written before, I ended up going to live in Japan in a Zen monastery.  There I found a place of creative physical training, like kindergarten, a blank canvas to explore how to allow this deeper connection to life through me as I moved through my everyday life, walking around and moving and working.  I needed a venue to explore how to meet and harmonize with life in a fundamental way. I needed a place with time to explore how to process life, process energy, process connection.

In the monastery we do physical labor and do a lot of sitting. There is time to feel what is happening. Even in the intensely structured schedule there is space to explore what is moving through us.  There are many many hours on the cushion. Our relationship to time shifts in this structured environment of waiting and exploring. We are bombarded by the immensity of the present moment, and if we are honest, it begins to permeate us more and more.

And there I found a teacher who could help me resonate more deeply with life.  He was connected with reality in profound ways, and through being with him and in that environment, through his connection to this more open and spacious relating with life, I was able to tune into my own way of ringing true with life.  This is a very physical and creative transformation process, and it takes time. But for some of us, we have no choice, we must realize it.  It is our only choice.  

I think what is important here is the type of curiosity which allows one to be led by mysterious forces.  Often in order to believe one can be led involves some severe illness, extreme experience, whereby our normal way of interacting with life has nowhere to land. This used to be what happened to someone who ended up being a healer or medicine person in a community. Their experience forced them to make contact with a deeper, connected aspect of life most people never touch. At wits end, and then something else lifts us up.

My own process of suffering, of healing, of encountering something true in the midst of that suffering, involved becoming very ill in the monastery. And in that place of nowhere to turn. Nowhere to land my schemes or manipulations or strategies, I found something else. It felt like a Rope of God. That line of entry.  The opening thread they talk about in martial arts.  The long silk thread talked about in zazen.  I found it drove me to interact with life framed by that truth. But finding it was not enough. Stepping out of that connection meant suffering.  Straying too far meant feeling clogged up.  It really is a life we become. A life of connection.  A life which molds us, tracks us, guides us.  People love to talk about faith, or about prayer.  But a life of Grace, guidance, listening to God, that is the life I’ve been led to continuously walk by necessity.

“Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” (NKJV) Ecclesiastes 12:6-7

Once we’ve touched that connection, we are continually framed by the connection. We can’t just drop out or we’ll be smothered by its flow. And this process takes many years of integrating and actualizing.

Actually I’m not an animal tracker.  I have no real training in that.  I like to saunter the trails of the pacific Northwest and remove the barrier. I like open fields. They feel like blank canvases to me.  I am walking but I am at the same time zeroing in on the feeling of the trees, the ground, the forest, my awareness turns inside out.

But somehow I actually do know something about tracking.

In zen we tracked the minds of the ancient lineage of Zen masters (Patriarchs). Koan training could be called a type of tracking.  I’m quite fascinated by the Kalahari Bushmen and their tracking. I can’t claim to be an expert in what they do, but in some ways they track by becoming the animal they are tracking. They find the hidden thread to the animal, are led by unseen forces. This is strangely similar to doing sanzen with the Roshi. In the sanzen room we become the Roshi’s state of mind.

Later, we work on koans and Jakugo, capping phrases, and these are a type of further tracking.

It’s hard to explain.  Having that sense that we really are living in a mysterious world I think is very important.  To be able to step out, to open up to being led, to feeling into things in a new way. To feel embraced and led by subtle feelings and energies and clues and seemingly impossible things.  To feel as if we really can encounter and interact with nature, with mysterious aspects. This I saw clearly in Japan. in order to deeply penetrate zazen, one must have no idea how it is happening, and learn to allow this bigger process through them. This takes a long time.

As I got more in tune with the roshi, he seemed to get more and more mysterious. His orientation, his mind, seemed more vast. More sublime. Seeing ghosts around the temple.  Feeling them. With the koans, feeling the zen patriarchs (Ancient Zen Masters) lead me into their states of mind.  My best friends were these old buddhas.  Allowing these mysterious forces to mold me, to guide me, I went from being a person just beyond the veil, to one living inside of a mysterious magical realm. And the Roshi knew I was there, and welcomed me there, even though I was just like a clumsy baby learning to walk. He allowed me the space to walk around in it and learn to slowly integrate and thrive there.  

So much of the Zen plot story in people’s minds is that one sees through reality, and then sobers up to a life without all of that unnecessary magic. I found the opposite. I found everything came alive.  Everything filled up.  I believe in everything now. I’m not sobered up.

I went to the temple with a lot of health problems. And even today I have to be careful with them.  But in a way I am so grateful to them, as they have kept me engaged, kept me always in need of finding this true connection. This true way of interacting. If I do not, then I am out of sync and sick.  So for that difficulty I am so grateful, as it has forced me to touch the vein of what is happening, stay connected, and not slack off.

And so, living in that mystery, in the middle of the whole mess, has given me certain gifts which need tending to.  If you touch into things deeply, you don’t need to be explained how they work. If you’ve again plunged deeply into the mud for the millionth time, maybe this time you’ve brought seeds to nurture.  If your training has taught you to interact with unseen forces, that skill can be transferred to other mediums. This allows a different type of intimacy with life.

The monastery was a great venue to get in touch with this bigger life. But then the real work of maturing and actualizing and creatively integrating must take place. Of relationships and offering ourselves to the world. Coming back to normal life from Japan, to marriage and kids and beginning carpentry jobs, I was like a secret shaman or medicine man, walking around feeling things I could not communicate to anyone. I had gifts to offer but I did not know how to communicate them with normal people. This was a lonely time.  

I ended up doing training in touch as a simple way to work with these unseen forces.  And even in my training, I found that my teachers could not lead me, they could not feel this other aspect, this deeper way of feeling what is happening. I was always waiting for them to go into that, but it never came up (except later with Bob Schrei). During this time I really missed the Roshi.

But as much as the Roshi helped to inspire me, I don’t think I learned this type of tracking in Japan. I think I was already doing it, already on to something for a long time, and the training gave me a venue to explore it more deeply. I think spirituality becomes so real as we go deeply into it. It goes from a world of ideas to the marrow of our every moment.

Nowadays, I track people in my office or in my distance sessions.  I begin to cone into them before they arrive, feeling into what they may need. Leaning on the edge of my awareness, letting it begin to process. When they arrive, I meet them, I try to open up and feel into them. When I am touching their bodies, I wait and wait, until something becomes interesting, and then the whole person, structure, self, begins to open up. We’ve encountered some long hidden place, and our rational minds couldn’t have gotten there. 

And in my distance sessions.  It took me a while to believe in them. To have the confidence to work with someone in Japan or India or Norway or Brazil. But my doubts are gone now.  Learning to get out of the way is so beautiful. 

I track my wife to see what is bothering her. And she tracks me. And that is a source of unexpIainable healing and vulnerability to which I am so grateful. I am a slow learner learning to love. I track my kids to see what they need. I am always tracking. I know who I will see at the grocery store before I walk in.

What is it to see with our ears and hear with our eyes?  What is actually happening? I hope this is a fascinating challenge for you to explore.

I’m tracking you as you read this.  I’m a fool and a goofball, and yet, something occurs to me, maybe in conversation, something in the field, something shows up, and a knowing comes through.  It doesn’t make sense. It’s absurd, and yet I’ve caught something out of the air. The thread is there.

I knew this was real from a young age, but time in the monastery, on the cushion, time wandering through the consciousnesses of the old buddhas, my never ending love affair with standing around and feeling and letting go of control ( I can think of no better example of this tracking), time being with people one on one nonverbally, slowly maturing as a husband and father, channeling essence in classes, has given me the courage to let go into that place of seeing and knowing.

In my classes and workshops these days, I have no idea what will come out of my mouth.  I’m no genius, but I deeply love the practices, and I am tracking this bigger life coming through me, guiding, feeling the people in class, even if it is over zoom.  Our ideas of time and space are limited.  We are so much more connected than we suspected. We are surrounded and supported in so many ways. I’m trying to get everyone to discover this inner tracking, and develop the confidence and faith to let it lead them off of the well worn path and into a magical natural life. Please please please have the curiosity to explore and discover in your practice. You have to take a leap away from trying to do it right all of the time. Please let go of ideas about it. It’s okay to be led by unseen forces. Try letting go into it. Let the subconscious take over, if only for short periods.

With this post, I am just scratching the surface of this topic. I hope it inspires some questions and dialogue.