Your Placing In Nature – The Sacred Area – Sit spot
June 24, 2008
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…
The Forest Alarm System…
May 25, 2008
I had this response from one of the members of the forum, after wrtiting an article about bird language…
Ancient Wisdon No23 The Forset Alarm System
“Hey Julian. I just wanna say that the forest alarm system post you put up is great. I now walk through the woods in a totally different way, using my ears a whole lot more. I heard blackbird alarm calls in my garden the other day and immediately new something was up, as they have a nest with juveniles around. I looked accross to my shed, and sure enough there was a cat sat on the roof.”
So I thought I would add a little story about what happen on Saturday…
I was up early walking in the forest with my dogs, Rixa & Tahoe…
I’m currently training them how to follow behind me off the lead so they do not cause too much disturbance out in front of me as I move through the forest…
We came out onto a main pathway after moving through quite long grass, and I noticed a robin alarming in a tree, it was a few feet above my head, so I assumed he was alarming at my dogs, because I can usually walk under a singing robin in a tree and have it continue singing…
I stopped and listened for any other disturbance in the are abut heard nothing, and as I moved to continue deeper into the forest, a Buzzard gliding down from my left, down and along this main trail I was on and back up into the forest a few 100 feet away…
I don’t see buzzard in the forest as much as out in the open fields, but it was very close, and I susspect the Robin knew it was coming and that’s why the alarms…
So I shall be adding Buzzards to my list of animals that robins will talk about in this agitated manner…
If you have questions about the bird alarm system let me know its one of my favorite subjects…
Take Care
Walk in Awareness
P.S. If your looking for a local Bushcraft Group or want to start one, check out the forum at:
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