Track Your Life with Boyd Varty - Episodes Tagged with “Tracking”

The Great Dance

Boyd Varty — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0200

There is a beautiful feeling to driving into the middle of nowhere, and frankly anywhere west of Hukunsi is the middle of nowhere. The land is vast and empty. White desert sand, tall camel thorn trees, rolling plains of dry grass, that just goes on and on and on. The temperature gauge on the vehicle gives a casual outside reading of 46 degrees at three in the afternoon.

We bump along dirt roads into a wildlife concession roughly the size of Switzerland that not a single tourist visits. This land is not even game reserve, it's simply the Botswanan wild lands.

Mentioned in this episode:

The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them.

Learn more about the work of Kalahari Research and Conservation Botswana.

Timestamps

3.57: Bushmen culture and lifestyle
5.33: The persistence hunt
11.12 - A remembering
13.51 Coming out of the portal

Resources:

Online Courses:

Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course.
Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat.

Discover Boyd's books:
https://boydvarty.com/book/

Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi

Join Boyd’s community:

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Stories are attention

Boyd Varty — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0200

If the truth is stranger than fiction, then the art of storytelling is not to make something up, but rather to really see what is there. Reality, if you look close enough, is almost always hilarious.

Storytelling is about providing context and meaning. It's a discipline of attention, a way of helping others understand the world around them.

Mentioned in this episode

Listen to Boyd’s epic account of 40 days and 40 nights spent alone in a treehouse in the wild eastern part of South Africa. https://boydvarty.com/about/40-days-40-nights/ Learn more about Londolozi

Timestamps

(02:04) Barry, the Buffalo
(08:00) Safari storytelling tradition

Resources:

Online Courses:

Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course.
Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat.

Discover Boyd's books:
https://boydvarty.com/book/

Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi

Join Boyd’s community:

Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode.
Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter.
Follow Boyd on
Instagram and X
Visit Boyd's website for more.

Expedition 3 - Shadow Tracking

Boyd Varty — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 15:00:00 +0200

Journal entry.

Tracks of huge pride of lions cut off a beautiful white sandy road onto a game path.
Here the pride walks in single file laying a perfect trail.
The path opens into a small clearing next to the crusted mud of a dried up waterhole.
Next to a huge termite mound with a giant brown ivory growing out of it the tracks tell the story of a giant lion love ball. They have lain down here… lying up against each other…..cubs climbing on mothers heads and biting each other's ears. The flat grass and imprints of tails tell me that they slept here some time yesterday afternoon.
They probably moved as the sun went down so they have a whole night ahead of me.

I was not planning on tracking but this is life in the wild. This is life as a tracker you must let yourself create with the moment.
It’s a large pride and to a tracker this magnetism is too strong.
I walk a half circle around where they lay to find the direction they set off on …… quickly I am onto their trail as they head into a deep thicket.
Through the night a herd of elephants have moved through the area covering over many of the tracks.

Then a herd of zebras followed the elephants cutting the hard ground on top of where lions padded past.
Quickly the majority of the tracks are gone.
This can be very common in tracking. You can go from this is going to be easy to this is impossible in a few steps. Like life. Like any time you set out on a new path.

Now I must follow as a shadow tracker…..to follow these lions I must become a student of vagaries, a follower of faint impulses and weak imprints…..i must drift through the terrain every reactive… ever alert…..moving on invisible lines that those tawny creators may have taken through the thick terrain. Anticipating

If I want to see each track or be sure I'm on their trail I will make myself crazy.
Here quite suddenly the need for certainty is an impediment.

The shadow trackers energy is that of drifting….as if in a world between worlds…..noticing…..moving with attention…..but with the world in a soft focus around you.
Somehow letting go of thinking about how lions move and being empty enough to move like a lion.
It is a lost kind of attention in modern life.
It’s the skill of riding a tide like a jellyfish.
Or catching a thermal like a migrating bird……it’s the skill of being in the right place to be shown and taken.

I tell you this now awakeners because that unexpected lion trail was teaching me how to follow the trail of my own shadow.
The shadow is the part of you that has never been allowed. It's your dark twin, a narcissistic, bad, even evil part of you that got stuffed away so you could belong.

It's your most unsocialized primal desires. There is biting and talking without asking.
It’s the back side of years of being good to get a cookie.

But your shadow denied will run parts of you with unconscious force until you can meet it as a friend. I say this now cause we are in the time of shadow….and we must work in ourselves to work in the world.
Your shadow given a seat at the fire becomes more self….. strong boundaries, unfuckwithable personal power. a person with a well integrated shadow is not interested in being nice or liked they are interested in being true.
There is a grace to a person who has found the dark in themselves. A compassion that can look at a tyrant or a weakling and know that is in me too. But strangely a person who has met their shadow stands up to tyrants and is able to ask for help where they are weak

Shadow tracking… is for if you want to get to know yourself more deeply.
It will liberate so much primal energy if you get to know that dark part of yourself.
To find the shadow you must give up certainty and need to know it and drift with an open awareness.

Notice the people who make you most mad and uncomfortable. They are holding your shadow.
Pay attention to your restments.
See what you fantasise about.
Notice where you are compulsive.

That which we repress bursts out at strange times or runs our lives without us knowing.

Do not try to understand the shadow. Do not try to identify it outright. Not like a shadow tracker drift in the half land where it lives. Become aware of it.

Ask yourself……that person I can't bear why ?……they are narcissistic, loud, self centred. What are they holding so you don’t have to.

That’s the part of you that is repressed.
Ask that resentment…… resentment what are you asking for?
Rage what do you want. ?
Disgust what you need?
Let the answers be truly uncensored and ugly.

As you drift towards the guarded outlines of your shadow with this soft eyed attention you will find themes.
You may be annoyed at someone who always puts themselves first cause you never do. Until you explode and leave so you can do what you want.
You will get to know what your anger is asking for.
You will come to understand how your patheticness is a place where you couldn’t get the help you needed so you acted like you never needed anything.

Oh shadow tracking is not an exact science it’s a kind of background attention on actions and intentions and thoughts and reactions.

Maybe you just had a conversations with your boss….or your partner…….you find yourself after the account running an enraged conversation in your head with them…..about how they don’t fucking get it.
Ask that voice what it needs, what it wants, why it's mad…..that's shadow tracking.
Your shadow integrated becomes more presence in which you can show up with no need to be liked. It’s a power through self knowledge and understanding of the truth of you.
It’s the part of you that tells someone clearly what they are not getting in the moment with no fear.

Work is the shadow is to balance yourself in real goodness. The awareness of what lives in you and the choice in how to consciously be with that all.

I exit the thick terraine after about thirty minutes of shadow tracking…..below me is a dry river bed where thick riversand covers the ground….i use the sand to cut back onto the tracks….the entire pride crossing the dry water course and suddenly I am back on their trail with absolute clarity. Now I follow the imprint of toes and lobed pads across beautiful terrain.
I follow at pace the energy of the shadow tracker is gone. I move with purpose and clarity.
Alone for miles in any direction.
In the beautiful clear light of the morning.
In a ravine I hear the lions growling. These are the sounds of feeding. The lions have killed a kudu
The pride feeds with brutal intensity. Biting and clawing at each other as they ingest chunks of bloody meat. I watch through binoculars from a distance the savagery of the feeding each man must fight for its place at the kill.
After they feed quit suddenly all aggression is gone. They lie around and groom each other with gentle care totally in tune with the full range of being a lion.

Every day the wild is my teacher.
It takes me on adventures. It takes me inward.

Slowly I walk back to my land rover watching my shadow beside me

4-0 out.

Boyd Varty Sacred Sites
https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/

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Notes on Reentry

Boyd Varty — Fri, 15 May 2020 14:00:00 +0200

Notes on Re-entry

Bedrooms are strange. I look at the thatch roof with gratitude and a touch of contempt. Before I get to that I would like to tell you something that happened on the last evening. I was on a crest, the land fell away and 3 rhino we feeding in a clearing. It was beautifully serene and I felt so still. I was ready to leave the tree. Far away from me a lion roared and I had to go and look.

Quickly the clearing gave way to a sandveld bush. I let myself stop thinking about where that lion may be and let my body go where it wanted. Purposeful action towards and unknown purpose. The lion was my purpose. Purposeful navigation towards and unknown destination. I don’t know where I’m going but I know exactly how to get there.

It takes so doing to walk in a straight Line through a thicket but it takes some doing. One quickly gets subtly off course. Eventually the bush gave way ti riverine vegetation. A little bit before sunset I suddenly broke out of the thicket. IN front of me was a thickly reeded marsh that gave way to golden grassland. My body stopped and my mind felt incredibly quiet. Something inside of me said this is the place. For a time there was nothing but stillness. I thought I had gone mad but then across the reed bed a dark maned lion rose across the golden grass.

I was taken by joy, the presence. For six weeks in the tree everything I was searching for was there in a moment. The mystic, the tracker, the lion and me.

I tell you this because everything is astoundingly different. It’s really hard to describe how to walk back into your life with more awareness.

Lockdown is a state of mind.

The truth is we can’t really plan. We don’t know where this thing lands or ends. There is so much uncertainty as to how to proceed. The art of re-entry from what a tree teaches us is to go slowly.
Track moment to moment. Make everything in your day an event, mindfully tending to it.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
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Day 38 - Push

Boyd Varty — Sat, 09 May 2020 02:45:00 +0200

If you think 6 weeks is long you should try two days. The moon rises here have been truly epic. Last night as it rose a small pearl spotted owl was perched on a Marula tree silhouetted for a moment. An astounding truth that the moon controls the tides and fertility in its cycle. The night was so bright I didn’t even need a torch.

You know you are so hungry when everything looks like food. A huge pancake, a wheel of French cheese and a ripe peach. It’s not that I’m tired but rather how you would feel at the end of a long experience. It’s a head space. I really want to shower, I really want to talk to my friends. Drink pints at the taps and get cut mercilessly before they turn on each other.

It’s the things that play on your mind like warm anticipation. You can’t do that early on as it would just derail your whole sense of presence. It makes me think of Renias and how any tracker worth his salt is just wired this way.

On a prior retreat the tracks had been tricky but were fresh. Part of the art of guiding is being able to read where people are and know where to push and when to let them go. Renias, however couldn’t leave the tracks. It offended something in his nature to let the lion tracks go.

A few days ago I left the trail of the lion when the sun climbed high in the sky and the light grew flat and white. I needed to go back on the track and be certain the trail was lost over the border which it was. Courage is knowing when the hold on and knowing when to let go. I need to be here all the way until the end.

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Day 37 - The Two Paths

Boyd Varty — Fri, 08 May 2020 04:00:00 +0200

Wow we made it to day 37. In so many mythological stories there is an idea that when you were born a twin was born with you. It was thrown out the cot and becomes your wild twin. It’s a scallywag, an outlaw, a rogue. IT slips chocolates to your nieces and nephews before supper. It’s willing to act outside the bounds of the rational. It doesn’t give a hoot about what anyone else thinks and can be relied upon to do something totally essential. It knows how to grieve, it does not control the longings of the heart.

Jung had this idea of there being two paths. The right path and the left path. The right path is the one of society. A structured path forward that is laid outside and with its pursuit comes a position in the world with pursuit and structure. The right path is beautiful. The left path is different. It is the path of creation. You look into the world and you don’t see anything that is for you. It’s like living towards a feeling of aliveness. It requires a lot of reaching for the wild twin. Joseph Campbell says of the left path, it’s a challenge because you will not be respected by society by you will be in our own authenticity.

Right pathers do very well until the age of 46. Then they start to wonder if its what they really wanted. They come to a place where they feel they are missing something of themselves.
Left pathers struggle to ground themselves in the world, the options are paralyzing, the money is tight. Some can’t get through the drift of constantly drifting. But those who learn their process emerge around 46, after a harrowing run, fully alive and autonomous.

I’ve always wondered if there is a path between? Where both pathers got in touch with the other somewhere in between. The only way a central path becomes available is through mentorship.
Rates of download can be incredibly high between people who have integrated aspects of the other path.

Mentorship is truly magical when it spontaneously occurs. Often in true mentorship there is no explicit instruction. Real mentorship is a shared presence. I was lucky to be mentored by Alex and Renias until I would go out tracking a lion thinking about what Alex and Renias would be doing in that particular situation. To be either a Mentor or a Mentee takes inner work. We can cultivate the ground in ourselves to create more sharing in our work and community. To be a mentor you need excellence, confidence and a map of having done it. You need to have a passion for what you do that is beyond you. A love for the art form itself. This requires a personal sense of abundance as you will give away some of what you have. This can be a challenge but when I have been shared with like that I knew something sacred was happening. The source never needs to really claim its the source.

The Mentee needs humility, to be real with themselves as to where they are at and respect of what has been given. The role of a true Mentee is to learn it and evolve it. That is the responsibility bigger of you.

So what does it mean to be wild. It certainly doesn’t mean doing whatever you want and asking to nobody. Dimensions of self come from attention. You have unconsciously found and expressed your talents and gifts. You have met your wild twin and are friends. It means your nature is not clouded by layers of other peoples rules. You have to pay attention and listen to what is being asked of you by life. The more you do your inner work the easier it gets.

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Day 36 - Never Punch a Monkey

Boyd Varty — Thu, 07 May 2020 02:00:00 +0200

In the silence by the fire I suddenly heard growling. It was so constant I thought it was a generator on the breeze. It was the sounds of cats mating but without the specific sound that leopards make at the end of copulation. Lions mating.

In line with my family tradition I walked in the moonlight down the road to the camp. The moon was so bright I cast a shadow. I knew if the lions were mating I only need wait a bit and I would hear them again. I stood in silence listening to the Scops owls call all around. Then the sound again. I moved fast towards the lions as I knew they would not hear me. Then I saw them. The air was very cool and the cats stood and began to walk away from me on a hippo path towards the river. Watching them in the night and to be alone was something astonishingly private. No one would every understand how close I felt to them that night. I went back to the fire and just sat there for sometime.

As I do this I become aware of how distracted I was before. This kind of empty fire sitting is a way of being with your own being. Afterwards I went up to the tree and the branches were shadowed on the tree.

I have been reading Bourdain’s books. Little did Bourdain and I know what lay ahead of us that night. At 2am I was awakened by something landing on the deck. A flat thump then a spray starting hitting my face and I got out of bed shouting.

You never know when you will get pissed on by a monkey.

The things you worry about never happen, it’s the things you never thought about that actually happen.

Finally when dawn broke I made a cup of tea and got on the trail of following the mating lions which went on for ages. I lost the tracks but kept persisting until I found their tracks crossing the border eventually.

Technically Im entering a phase now of this ceremony which you might think of as dismount. I need to integrate the ceremony and make sense of it to share with the world.

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Day 25 - Sidetracked

Boyd Varty — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0200

I am missing all my friends. In my mind I find myself composing long legends of the fall type letters on a typewriter. Dear friends….the nights grow colder, I think of you often.

There is something deep about missing people and staying in the feeling of missing people rather than turning to WhatsApp.

The daily presence of elephants has become something I look forward to. I went up into the tree and had a kettle shower and in between the late afternoon light and endorphins from the run I had a moment of elation.
I still usually eat one meal a day and then around that eat fruit, avocados and raisins.

Barring a few noticeable days when I have been tired I have a steady stream of energy. I only mention that because its noteworthy.
The feeling you have when you open your eyes in the morning is the marker of your balance.

My clothes have to have reached a truly feral point until I wash them. I go to sleep early and wake up early. I watch the movements of the stars across the skies.

I keep thinking about how St Frances was a renunciate yet he is still the primary driver of the economy. Who knows life has its very unexpected plan to us.

The news of the day is that a mating pair of leopards was sighted. The female was very agitated at the males interest. She would saunter over to the male and lash his face with her tail. Once she even clawed him on the head.
On two occasions the male actually made it onto his feet but ran out of energy and flopped down again. Once mating commences they will mate every few minutes for a number of days.

There is a distinctive growl that is made when mating actually commences.

If the mating is successful, in about 110 days the mother will find a secluded space and give birth to her cubs.

My quest to track a big bull elephant has still not happened. It keeps getting interrupted by lion tracks and pegasus rhino. Still this is a mission that remains high on my priority list. An animal like that has presence who has walked the ancient paths of his ancestors. There are myths of elephants who used to frequent the eastern seaboards of Southern Africa and commune with whales. These animals exist in a conscious that is beyond the verbal mind. There is no future and no past.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
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Day 24 - Pegasus

Boyd Varty — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0200

My decision to suspend all river bathing has been vindicated. Last night I shone my torch into the river and saw not one but two crocodiles in the water.

I will tell you now about the curious incident of the rhino in the day. I went out for elephants but cut across the track of a rhino bull. A beautiful dinosaur three leaf clover tracker. The bull had left an impressive size of dung. I am a very good rhino tracker, if anything happens in life I always have rhino tracking total back on.
But in this case I lost the rhino track and could not find it. Now I began to unleash my considerable skill set. Yet still nothing.

Rhinos are routine creatures, you can almost see the moment one of their daily routines appear in their mind before them./ I was certain this bull was making his round so I though to just walk ahead and easily cut his track on the road ahead. I checked every patch of open ground but nothing. I walked zig zag lines on game paths but still nothing.

Eventually I went back to the dung and made sure I set off on the right course. I saw the same tracks and then the vanishing. Its pretty frustrating to lose a 2 ton animals in open sandy terrain.

I started to lose my cool a bit. Just recently I was a lion tracking, river crossing savant now this crap.
Eventually I went back to the pile of dung and put my small pack down. I would now go very slowly and redo everything I had just done.

Moving in slow motion I crouched down to study the earth.
I remember running a workshop on retreat about how looking for a rhino could be like looking for your mission and purpose in life.

Losing tracks is part of tracking. Losing yourself is part of life. I consoled myself with knowing that some of Londolozi’s elite trackers lose the tracks from time to time. St Frances said wherever you go preach the gospel but only where absolutely necessary use words.

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Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit

Boyd Varty — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0200

Fresh tracks of a pride of lions in the predawn light behind the camp. Its been strangely cool, almost like a cold winter has been knocking on the door. Tracks cut down into the river and onto a beautiful sandbank. The sand allows you to see very clearly how the pride plays with each other. The tracks then cut up onto a hippo path. I’m nervous to follow but do so anyway.

The path opens into a small beach near the rivers edge. The cats pace from side to side not wanting to go in. With the water so brown and many crocodiles I try to find a better crossing point. Eventually I find my way across and move up river. Its think and grass and suddenly all the trees look similar. I find my tree and go down to the waters edge to beautiful pug marks of the tracks in the sand.

Why are these tracks beautiful? Its the perfect outline of this formidable predators large foot. Its the feeling that you are walking where the lions walk. Like you can almost feel the animals up ahead. It’s the spirit of the moment.

A short while later I find them, a lioness sitting in the golden morning light. My day is set, its 8:45am and I have find lions already.

I think of the Chief Seattle quote, when all the animals are gone humans will find a loneliness of spirit.

This is of a loneliness or bankruptcy of the spirit of life seems important. Have you ever walked into a soulless building - like a new mall. Well that at more subtle levels seem to be what we are losing and do not know that we are losing it. The very essence of family, community, work and play is losing its spirit.

I remember walking in a wilderness that had lost its animals in a war. It was strangely eerie.

How do we get back to the spirit of life?

Ubuntu - I am because of you, you are because of me.
Your presence helps me be a person.
It seems to run deeper than that. Deeper than people, the animals, plants, rivers.

Get quiet enough to really hear the voice inside you. Follow that and I suspect it will take you back instantly to the spirit of life.

Day 19 - Track Awareness

Boyd Varty — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0200

One day before the halfway mark and I’m in a rage. In a clear blue sky a benign cloud floated over my camp and dumped everything it had on me. Everything was wet. Wet blankets, cloths, shoes which set in a whole process of drying and cleaning.

The rage culminated on my run when a swarm of biting flies bit me and I exploded. I broke a branch off the tree and started to whip myself in a clearing. That is a powerful image metaphorically and in reality.

After wandering for a while I found tracks of the incredibly rare ant bear. They are incredibly rare and I have never seen one in the area.

There is an idea in tracking called track awareness. Without track awareness you could walk past that ant bear and have no idea that he is around. It’s a wonderful idea that there is information but you must tune yourself to see it.

In my early twenties I started turning my track awareness to the tracks of my career. I started looking for other models. I was physically moved by David Rattray talking at an event. I was also moved by my mentor Martha make $20 000 sitting in her pajamas in her cupboard do a live event to hundreds of online participants.

I was developing my track awareness for my career. I got a CD of the poet David Whyte. You could not study this in university but they came if you developed your track awareness and followed the callings inside of you.

There are worlds are information in our worlds that we don’t even know about. As I was walking past the ant bear hole a miraculous thing happened. A honeyguide came and invited me on an adventure. The bird hovered near me chattering with intense excitement. I was deeply moved by the collaboration between man and nature. I stood alone really feeling it, my own ties to the hunter gatherers. Unfortunately it was late and I could not go with the bird.

A few years into my career quest I met a different type of guide. Rodrigo was the strangest Venn diagram you could imagine. A storyteller, chemist, healer and shaman. His system involved creating ceremonial spaces where people could feel the past coming up and release their trauma. I apprenticed with him for 7 years following him around the USA. I couldn’t have planned that this was going to be my path but by paying attention this is where the tracks led me. I must attune, there is a path for me I cannot see yet.

One of the easiest ways for you to develop track awareness is to come out of the mind and into the body. Notice people, images events, daydreams, clothes and anything that makes you feel expansive in your body. Let is show you what energies it. Notice what makes you feel constricted and low energy. See what track awareness if helps you develop. Your body is a wild animal it will show you your most essential self.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
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Day 18 - Golden

Boyd Varty — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0200

Day 18 - Golden

People have a saying in South Africa, we are looking golden. Well if this experience has its own ebbs of fortune, emotionality and joy then we are looking golden.

The lions have returned to Londolozi and I could see the tracks of the pride heading further west into the bush. They cut off the road and I scratched around a bit on their line o movement. The light was beautiful and the smell of a fresh morning was invigorating. I was feeling totally in tune with their movement.

Tracking in these moments is a beautiful combination of skill, concentrations and even somatic intelligence as your body feels the terrain.

I though of that tracking saying “I don’t know where I’m going but I know how to get there.:

Here on this beautiful morning I am trying to keep this dying art form alive inside of myself. What a strange thing, an art that does not live on a wall, an art that lives inside a person. If you keep tracking alive you keep a thread to a way we used to be, to another time.

The track cut further north and I’m flying along now in total flow. No trying, no mind just flow state.
I come across the land manager who is following a male leopard in his vehicle. I see his vehicle through the bushes and crouch down in the long grass and watch them go by me no more than 20 meters away. They do not notice me and when they are gone I continue on the tracks of the lions.

The lions cut through a dry water course. Two other guides arrive by chance and are also looking for lions. They want to join the tracking. The 3 of us set off and only 60 meters later we hear a squirrel alarm. James behind me starts to click. My eyes come up off the ground and there is a big male lion and a lioness looking at us. Gold cats in golden lights….Golden. The male snarls without any real intention and we move back. The rest of the pride is in the long grass all around them. There is something so satisfying about finding something in a huge wilderness using just your skills.

I had been waiting for this morning of tracking. What else do I feel? What do you want from life? What is life asking of you? What would you hear if you listened? It Is 7:30 am and I have lived the aliveness of 10 years. More presence is more life. Not doing more. Something so tangible.

I would like to write a book called the dynamics of satisfaction. Scene of man in the wild making himself water to bathe with.

I’m also aware of how I have objectified myself. We think of ourselves as an object on a scale. We should be much further ahead or I’m not where I should be. I’m talking about a continuous comparative dynamic that is structured into a culture where everything is automated and commodities until your own psyche makes you a thing and judges that thing comparatively. Just think about how you drive yourself when you are exhausted. Just watch what you do to yourself when you start duding yourself.

Inside that mind all the dimension of person gives way to something terribly binary. Good bad, failing winning or losing.

All I want you to know from me out here is that it is not you. It is structured into the psyche in the modern life.

Buffalo Story

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Day 12 - Learning To See

Boyd Varty — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0200

Modem life is built on a truth and a lie.
Excerpt from Braiding Sweet Grass, a beautiful book about indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plant. The land is the real teacher all we need is mindfulness.

It is surprising to me how much time giraffes spend down by the river. Like an artist I’m trying to see things differently. I look beyond them walking to a geometry.

The trick to transformational processes is how to interrupt and shape patterns, in order to do this you must look at the spaces between things. How everything is touching everything else in relation.

Down in the river the leopards continue their passions. I have not felt compelled to go and find them.
To go and seek them out now seems kind of impolite.

I’m developing a theory on why mystics went to nature. Imagine you are two people: a fanatic city dweller and a wild person. When the mystic goes to nature they find that wild person who knows a different rhythm. The one that gets attention becomes abiding.

Today my body was tired and I ebbed into a lower level of frequency.

In my masculine excitement I’m drawn to activity, but right now its the meditation that is calling me.

A side note on tracking. Right now it seems that all four of the prides of lions that frequent the Londolozi are on neighboring properties. There is an air of excitement about this at it means that they will be sure to return in a couple of days.

Learning to See: A many called Ken Tinley once tuaght my father how to see a tree. There is a difference between how something works and what it means.

“When you look at a tree, see the soil that holds it. Understand that soil feeds it and the tree also enriches the soil. It’s shade invites shade grass and its stem alkalizes fruit which bring in monkeys which cause leave to fall which cause antelope to browse below.

Wouldn’t it be interesting iff we all spent some time looking at nature this way. Or at your relationships or garden.

In native culture, ceremonies are a time to remember what we remember.
How something works and what it means are different things.

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