Answer About Focus Whilst Tracking…

> I’d love your questions about this whole idea of being able to read
> the ground as if it was a book, telling you the story of the
> animals that passed in the last few days, and sometimes weeks…

I find it quite difficult to get ditracted i.e my mind wanders off.
The best solution I have found so far is to shut eyes and relax as if
meditating however of course this is not going to help with awareness
except sounds.. How do you really focus in on a ground scene and stay
attracted to it ?

Simon
The Netherlands

One way to deal with your mind wandering is to just focus briefly on the tracks, gather as much information as you can from a quick glance, give yourself the count to 20 then let your mind wander or focus on something different, what you hear around you for another count of 20, then notice the feel of the wind on the skin of your face and hands, reach out with your mind and see how much of the landscape you can take in all at once. Then return to the tracks…

Play with the count, play with the order you focus on differnet things, don’t get hung up on the tracks themselves, whats happeing around you is just as important as the tracks. imagine your the animal lwer your eyes tot he same level as the animals you think might have made the tracks, notice what they would notice, how would you feel if you were that animal in that situation at that time of day…

I got into the mindset of a deer once while in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, I was wandering along a small stream that was meandering through the forest. I eventually got to a place where the stream dropped quite suddenly, not exactly a water fall, but enough of a drop off that the water made enogh sound dropping down onto some rocks that i could not hear what was going on in the forest around as clearly as I could before…

I felt nervous and unsure and I did not want to be near that water flowing down onto those rocks…

The human me would have loved to be near that water the soothing sound of flowing water, but the deer me was exposed to preditors with impaired ability to hear what might be approaching was the thing that made me nervous and not want to be there…

I had a very profound insight into the awareness of a deer and what bothers them in that situation…

Give it a go, leave me a comment about how it goes, ask your questions…

Walk in Awareness

Julian

Your Placing In Nature – The Sacred Area – Sit spot

One of the most powerful things I have leart from the masters I have studied with is the concept of the sacred area or sit spot…

Really all this is is a place you can visit and spend some time there. It really good if you can go regularly, every day in a perfect world but what ever you can do is what you do. Going everyday is far more important that having the perfect place, so make it your garden, or a place you can walk or drive to in 5 to 10 minutes…

The whole point o finding a place and sitting there for 10 to 20 minute as often as you can (everyday would be perfect) is that you will get to know a single place better than anyone else will ever get to know it…

You will start to see patterns that get deeper and deeper the more you go there and watch. Its like layers of life will start to reveal themselves to you, or maybe you could look at it as putting together a big jigsaw puzzel and you get a few new pieces of the puzzel every day you sit there for the 10 to 20 minutes…

Like a jigsaw puzzel its not till you have all the pieces that the full impact of the picture presents or shows itself. that said the coolest part to me is that the puzz;e pieces never stop coming. So in a way the puzzel will never be complete there will always be some little mystery that needs to be solved, and the great thing is most of the myteries will get solved…

But again there will always be more new mysteries, it very cool, and there is a constant stream odf interesting things that turn up…

What I love about my sit spot is that my awareness keeps expanding as I get to konw different aspects of my place on the landscape, I get to cheeck in with that part quicker and quicker every visit, and every time I go I have time to investigate things I have not had time to look at or I start to notice subtler and subtler things that are happening around me…

On of my mentor talks about his sit spot and how he was forced to learn their by the man he was I guess apprenticing under, although he didnt really know it at the time, he just thought he was sitting out practicing camping and being asked questions by his neigbour…

But almost everyday after he had been to his sit spot, he got a call from his negbour askign what he noticed that day, he’d ask him about the things he kenew he would have noticed and at the end of the call he waould ask him questions about the things he knew were at the edge of his awareness, and tell him he’d ask hima bout it tomorrow and hang up…

What happened was that next time he went to his secret spot, he had a few questions to answer, and to answer them he had to be a little more aware that he was yesterday…

You may not have a mentor like he did growing up but you can become your own mentor and well get into that when I explain what journalling is…

Some other reason to sit somewhere your drawn to and like is that you will notice over time that your mind will begin to becoem more quiet, and from the place of a quiet mind, you will begin to see to notice to feel the ebb and flow of life around you…