July 08, 2020

Expedition 4 - Hyena Telepathy

9 minutes

Journal entry.

The best time to be in the leadwood forest is in the creamy light of a full moon.

All around the trees peg a scale of time beyond human comprehension to the earth.

It can be a strange thing to watch people from all over the world walk into the dappled light of the trees and fall silent.

In my days as a safari guide I would wait for the third or fourth day of a safari. I would wait for the hysteria to see animals to subside and then take people to the forest.

You see the forest can be experienced on many levels and I have come to believe that it will meet you where you are ….it will take you to the level of stillness, wildness or reverence that you have cultivated in yourself and then some. The deeper you are the deeper the magic of the forest.

The poet david whyte talks about the conversational nature of life. The idea that your life will never be exactly how you planned it to be but equally it will never be exactly the way life wanted it. for all our living days we are in a co-created experience with living…..some of our agency….mixed with life or god, or whatever you call its plan.

Inside of this we have action when we know to take it and surrender when we have reached the end of what we can do…. another dance.

We have the development of a contemplative mind ……the cultivation of a mind in which many things in the world can be true at the same time.

Being in nature takes you naturally into this kind of inner exploration. If your eyes are open in a place life the leadwood forrest you can't help but notice the relational nature of nature,

As dawn breaks in the forest a dark bull nyala lifts his head out of long brown winter grass to look at me.

Franklins begin to chatter into the dawn.

In the stereo all around me hyena started to call.

A hyena is the perfect embodiment of opportunism.

As he moves craftily through the bush he seems to have a single thought running through his head…… “what's in it for me?” ‘how could this situation beeeeee good for me”

If you have ever battled to put your own needs on the table……hyena is your guy. He's gonna show you how.

Im developing a strange technique for this podcast. What I do is go to a place like the leadwood forest.

I move through the terrain at different times of day. I take a big sniff of the Amazonian snuff called hapi which is a mix of tobacco and ashes of herbs. Then with my head empty of thoughts I open myself and move through the space.

Opening myself to a different way of knowing. It's like I'm trawling through the feeling of the place and each feeling is full of invisible codes that later when I sit down with my notebook will start to come out as memories, encounters, stories and insights.

You see like those hyena calls in the forest this morning took me to an image of the hyena. In my mind's eye I saw his slanted body loping away with the leg of a giraffe held across his jaws and a look of glee on his face.

Imagine your dog walking proudly around with a weed wacker in his jaws and you have a sense of how much this hyena had bitten off more than he could chew.

This little encounter in my imagination takes me to the clarity of knowing that a hyena has.

A hyena wants what he wants.

This idea makes me think of the hundreds of people I coached who have started having huge transformations when they started to ask clearly without agenda or attachment for what they want.

I think of how early on in my own journey this idea was totally foreighn to me.

I remember a whole night in a ceremony where I lay half hanging off the edge of a mattress and it never occurred to me to ask people to move over.

I had grown up in a world where resilience was the most needed skill…..you didn’t need what you didn’t have so get on with it.

I'm very grateful for that place in myself but I remember also releasing that one of the ways to create more of the life you want is to want and ask…..

“Will you move over for me? I need more space” could not sound more silly to me now but at the time it was the silly beginning to much big wants and asks that I was going to allow myself. It was a breakthrough to something new. A first step I could build on

What will keep you out of asking for what you want?

You limit what you think you deserve.

The desire to not be too much trouble.

The fear of needing things from other people

Your fear of being rejected.

Your assumptions about what other people will think of you asking.

If you think i'm being trite well then try it.

Take the next week and wherever you go……in your work……family……out for a walk. Start asking people around you honestly, clearly and without justification for what you want.

Start with will you………rather than can you.

Will you walk with me

Will you go out with me?

Will you upgrade me?

Will you promote me?

Will you hug me?

Pay attention to where you can just ask……..notice where you cant…….notice where you don’t because you assume you know what the answer will be.

Pay attention to where you hide from asking. Where you use shyness to be a victim

Now all of that comes from a hyena in the wild.

And this is where it gets mystical to me……

Track this like a tracker Something calls me to the forest as a sacred site……im there at dawn on a particular day to hear a hyena call……..this sets me thinking about how my life changed when I just started asking clearly …….transmitted via this podcast to you…….now you pick up the thread and see where it takes you this week.

Who is creating the way life is unfolding itself through a notion,…..into a leadwood forrest……via the call of a hyena…..into my ears……through imagination …….into memory…….back into voice…….into your ears…….into action.

Oh what great telepathy in a single field of interconnected consciousness we are playing in.

What could be more sacred.

Take action…….ask clearly for what you want and please report back.

4-0 out.

Boyd Varty Sacred Sites

https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/

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