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Back to the body

Writer's picture: CroneCrone

There's a section in David Abram's Becoming Animal where he sees this shaman, Sonam, who is teaching him, turn into a raven and then turn back into a human.


Sonam tells Abram to stare at a wall for a few days; then to stare to a point just inside the wall; then to stare into a point between himself and the wall. Once he has shown dedication to that, Abram has to stare at a raven, at a point just below the head. There are plenty of ravens around. Then he has to stare to a point inside the body of a raven. Every time Abram tries this, the bird is disturbed.


After a while, he is walking and sees a raven flying and looks at the bird. Abram feels himself to be flying, he feels the wings and the wind.


Abram saw Sonam staring at ravens, and moving just as a raven moves, holding himself like a raven. And believes that Sonam positioned himself on such and such a rock in a certain place and moved like a raven such that Abram's senses were confounded and he saw the man as raven.


It could seem that Abram, who is a sleight of hand magician, is explaining away Sonam's transformation, reducing it into illusion. But I read it differently. To me, Abram is saying that the intense focus on another can take your consciousness, through an act of embodied empathy into becoming that other and that this is so powerful that it impacts the consciousness of the perceiver as well. So, the form is rendered ephemeral by the force of the embodied becoming self.


This is a more profound and to me more interesting mystery than some supernatural event.


I tried staring at Tane, but did not become robin.



He was preening in the honeysuckle.




I wonder, as he focuses intently on prey, if he, unlike me, can fully embody another consciousness?



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maplekey4
Dec 29, 2024

Interesting.

Good photos of Tane.

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