Earth Year!
We are all animals
Celebrate wild love!
I am walking up Cement Creek with a dear friend and colleague. We are looking for mountain crocuses and early Pasque flowers.
Out of the dry, calcified earth these delicate miracles awaken in April like small messengers of a larger, green promise.
We do this each spring, hoping to catch the very first unfurling of periwinkle and violet goblets. Each of these holds, at its floral center, a gold and blue kaleidoscope of color.
As usual, we fall into an intimate discussion of our relationships with the men in our lives. She is bravely blessing and releasing a marriage of over two decades. It has been a long and painful farewell. We speak of the “Greater Energy” that seems to draw us inevitably to our deepest loves, even though we may be clawed and scarred for life by them. “We can't help ourselves,” we agree. “Sometimes the original attraction is so great, we rule out all but a few facts about our lover. We see him as perfection, no matter how savvy and emotionally sophisticated we may be. It is divine energy, or chemical intervention that causes us to cross the world to find just that person, just that Best Beloved.”
Here we are, two psychotherapists of a certain age admitting: “...and we may not be much wiser the next time around, because the pull of romance is so overwhelmingly profound.”
But this afternoon I have a great deal to share with her. I have just spent a week listening to lectures by some of the world's finest minds discussing “Why do we love?” and the “Neurophysiology of Emotions, Romance and Spirituality.”
“Put simply,” I tell her, “it was a week of learning why we lust, look for love, and long for spiritual transformation.
“No”—I say--”It was more like being at an old-time revival where staid and intellectual specialists begin weeping, revealing their lives and witnessing personal miracles.”
But, these “converts” to a New World Consciousness are not religious gurus or latter-day mediums. They are a neuroscientist, a biological anthropologist and cutting-edge holistic psychologist. And they are speaking with the gorgeous passion and unselfconscious enthusiasm of true ecstatics. They are on fire! They are filled with the spirit of innovation, discovery and potential.
“Why is this?” My friend asks. And this is the question.
I try answer her by describing my recent experience of the magnificent melding of archetypes: the magical marriage of Logos (meaning and knowledge) and Eros (erotic and creative love).
I want to detail what world-acclaimed relationship psychologist John Bradshaw, anthropologist Helen Fisher and neurophysiology expert Cardwell C. Nukols are all discovering that is making scientific history. How they have been drawing forth answers from painstaking empirical studies, MRIs and brain -scans to answer some of life's perennial questions.
I describe to her how, after collating responses from samplings of 8 million international Match.com participants, Dr. Helen Fisher posits that neurotransmission hormones guide us, through evolutionary manifest destiny, to direct innately who we will love. And, by scanning the brains of individuals who have just fallen madly in love Fisher proves that specific areas of the brain “light up.” They light up with the frequency known as ROMANCE.
Celebrate wild love!
I am walking up Cement Creek with a dear friend and colleague. We are looking for mountain crocuses and early Pasque flowers.
Out of the dry, calcified earth these delicate miracles awaken in April like small messengers of a larger, green promise.
We do this each spring, hoping to catch the very first unfurling of periwinkle and violet goblets. Each of these holds, at its floral center, a gold and blue kaleidoscope of color.
As usual, we fall into an intimate discussion of our relationships with the men in our lives. She is bravely blessing and releasing a marriage of over two decades. It has been a long and painful farewell. We speak of the “Greater Energy” that seems to draw us inevitably to our deepest loves, even though we may be clawed and scarred for life by them. “We can't help ourselves,” we agree. “Sometimes the original attraction is so great, we rule out all but a few facts about our lover. We see him as perfection, no matter how savvy and emotionally sophisticated we may be. It is divine energy, or chemical intervention that causes us to cross the world to find just that person, just that Best Beloved.”
Here we are, two psychotherapists of a certain age admitting: “...and we may not be much wiser the next time around, because the pull of romance is so overwhelmingly profound.”
But this afternoon I have a great deal to share with her. I have just spent a week listening to lectures by some of the world's finest minds discussing “Why do we love?” and the “Neurophysiology of Emotions, Romance and Spirituality.”
“Put simply,” I tell her, “it was a week of learning why we lust, look for love, and long for spiritual transformation.
“No”—I say--”It was more like being at an old-time revival where staid and intellectual specialists begin weeping, revealing their lives and witnessing personal miracles.”
But, these “converts” to a New World Consciousness are not religious gurus or latter-day mediums. They are a neuroscientist, a biological anthropologist and cutting-edge holistic psychologist. And they are speaking with the gorgeous passion and unselfconscious enthusiasm of true ecstatics. They are on fire! They are filled with the spirit of innovation, discovery and potential.
“Why is this?” My friend asks. And this is the question.
I try answer her by describing my recent experience of the magnificent melding of archetypes: the magical marriage of Logos (meaning and knowledge) and Eros (erotic and creative love).
I want to detail what world-acclaimed relationship psychologist John Bradshaw, anthropologist Helen Fisher and neurophysiology expert Cardwell C. Nukols are all discovering that is making scientific history. How they have been drawing forth answers from painstaking empirical studies, MRIs and brain -scans to answer some of life's perennial questions.
I describe to her how, after collating responses from samplings of 8 million international Match.com participants, Dr. Helen Fisher posits that neurotransmission hormones guide us, through evolutionary manifest destiny, to direct innately who we will love. And, by scanning the brains of individuals who have just fallen madly in love Fisher proves that specific areas of the brain “light up.” They light up with the frequency known as ROMANCE.
She shows us that, romantic love exists for all animals. It is not an emotion. “It is a drive as powerful as hunger.”
As if to underscore my words the light deepens dramatically and the path ahead of us turns from brown to burnished copper. We simply have to pause, breathless. We are captured by the exquisite sky, a transcendental canvas of pinks, cerulean washes and billowing mauve cloudscapes that could have been painted by Maxwell Parish. We are silent. Her husky dog looks up with us at the glorious tapestry of alpenglow. His ears are pricked, his nostrils working, fiercely reading the early-evening breeze. We hear a dog barking off somewhere, and then a strange but eerily familiar sound.
“What's that?”
“It's a baby.” She says. We listen with every instinct tuned.
“No! That's not a baby...”
“It's a mountain lion!” We chorus.
There is a high ululation and then it drops into a series of growling exclamation points. We ask each other, ”Is she in pain?” Is she hurt? Is she O.K.?”
There is a haunting series of long resonant yowls beginning with a deep throaty bass cord then rising to an intense, longing arc.
As we listen, mesmerized, a second feline voice responds.
The she-cat has been calling, pleading for her partner. And now, he has found her.
We cannot see them. Although sheltered by large boulders they are not far away. Their primal language of love is echoing off of the shale and stone outcroppings. I remember D.H. Lawrence's short story about hearing two domestic cats mating. I know that these are the same hoarse, provocative songs of sexuality, only enhanced by many degrees.
It is impossible to mistake the intimate duet we are hearing--big cats, the ultimate Rocky Mountain predators--uniting in their Pair-Bonding ritual.
The rites of spring are reverberating across the mountain valley. The crescendos of the feline lovers' ardor continue for long minutes, rising and falling together, like oboe and flute, or as a neuroscientist might put it: testosterone and estrogen in a juicy cascade of adrenaline and amphetamines. Either way, this is not simply lust. According to Dr. Fisher and colleagues this is the surge of true romance that fills all mammals, whether we are two-legged or four-legged. My friend, her dog and I stand transfixed, humble witnesses to something so primal, intimate and familiar that we are barely breathing, unable to move.
Like humans who are compelled to seek and find each other, to cross boundaries of space, social structure, age and gender these great cats have come from different parts of the Elk Mountain range to fall in love. They have chosen each other based literally on the chemistry of romance, and how it uniquely vibrates within each of them. They may not mate for life. But this courtship, consummation and future shared care of babies is similar in almost every way to the mating dance of humans.
It may not be a marriage made on Match.com, but it is Nature reminding us of an urge that is as old as fur, flesh and claw.
This is why millions of people around the world turn to the internet. It is the same urge that the lions have: to feel the chemistry of romance and fulfill the hopes of finding the perfect mate. It reminds us of some of the greatest discoveries of contemporary science and transpersonal psychology: of how and who we find to love, romance as a brain system, emotions as deepest products of DNA and spirituality as a physiological, brain-changing phenomenon we may all experience.
But above all, it reminds of the tremendous call of seasonal change and the still mysterious power of animal magnetism.
~ ~ ~
Mountain Lion (for W. B.)
by Marcie Telander
Within the circle
one eye brightly peering,
gleaming in pinpoint flame
followed by a velvet rippling,
liquid shoulders oozing through
foliage sleek with rain.
Centering in the lion’s eye
brought to our knees
neck napes bared, why not
be carried off by skull and hair
to be nursed or devoured,
captured in the silent,
disappearing circle
of the raging wild.
**Please put your Earth Day promises into action today!**
For comprehensive lists of ways you can make a difference, go to www.Care2.com. Here you will find Healthy and Green Living Tips, Causes Newsletter and Care2 Action Alerts. You may also subscribe to WildAlert of the American Wilderness Society. This is a newsletter highlighting efforts to protect America's wilderness, not as a relic of our nation's past, but as a thriving ecological community that is central to Life itself.
As if to underscore my words the light deepens dramatically and the path ahead of us turns from brown to burnished copper. We simply have to pause, breathless. We are captured by the exquisite sky, a transcendental canvas of pinks, cerulean washes and billowing mauve cloudscapes that could have been painted by Maxwell Parish. We are silent. Her husky dog looks up with us at the glorious tapestry of alpenglow. His ears are pricked, his nostrils working, fiercely reading the early-evening breeze. We hear a dog barking off somewhere, and then a strange but eerily familiar sound.
“What's that?”
“It's a baby.” She says. We listen with every instinct tuned.
“No! That's not a baby...”
“It's a mountain lion!” We chorus.
There is a high ululation and then it drops into a series of growling exclamation points. We ask each other, ”Is she in pain?” Is she hurt? Is she O.K.?”
There is a haunting series of long resonant yowls beginning with a deep throaty bass cord then rising to an intense, longing arc.
As we listen, mesmerized, a second feline voice responds.
The she-cat has been calling, pleading for her partner. And now, he has found her.
We cannot see them. Although sheltered by large boulders they are not far away. Their primal language of love is echoing off of the shale and stone outcroppings. I remember D.H. Lawrence's short story about hearing two domestic cats mating. I know that these are the same hoarse, provocative songs of sexuality, only enhanced by many degrees.
It is impossible to mistake the intimate duet we are hearing--big cats, the ultimate Rocky Mountain predators--uniting in their Pair-Bonding ritual.
The rites of spring are reverberating across the mountain valley. The crescendos of the feline lovers' ardor continue for long minutes, rising and falling together, like oboe and flute, or as a neuroscientist might put it: testosterone and estrogen in a juicy cascade of adrenaline and amphetamines. Either way, this is not simply lust. According to Dr. Fisher and colleagues this is the surge of true romance that fills all mammals, whether we are two-legged or four-legged. My friend, her dog and I stand transfixed, humble witnesses to something so primal, intimate and familiar that we are barely breathing, unable to move.
Like humans who are compelled to seek and find each other, to cross boundaries of space, social structure, age and gender these great cats have come from different parts of the Elk Mountain range to fall in love. They have chosen each other based literally on the chemistry of romance, and how it uniquely vibrates within each of them. They may not mate for life. But this courtship, consummation and future shared care of babies is similar in almost every way to the mating dance of humans.
It may not be a marriage made on Match.com, but it is Nature reminding us of an urge that is as old as fur, flesh and claw.
This is why millions of people around the world turn to the internet. It is the same urge that the lions have: to feel the chemistry of romance and fulfill the hopes of finding the perfect mate. It reminds us of some of the greatest discoveries of contemporary science and transpersonal psychology: of how and who we find to love, romance as a brain system, emotions as deepest products of DNA and spirituality as a physiological, brain-changing phenomenon we may all experience.
But above all, it reminds of the tremendous call of seasonal change and the still mysterious power of animal magnetism.
~ ~ ~
Mountain Lion (for W. B.)
by Marcie Telander
Within the circle
one eye brightly peering,
gleaming in pinpoint flame
followed by a velvet rippling,
liquid shoulders oozing through
foliage sleek with rain.
Centering in the lion’s eye
brought to our knees
neck napes bared, why not
be carried off by skull and hair
to be nursed or devoured,
captured in the silent,
disappearing circle
of the raging wild.
**Please put your Earth Day promises into action today!**
For comprehensive lists of ways you can make a difference, go to www.Care2.com. Here you will find Healthy and Green Living Tips, Causes Newsletter and Care2 Action Alerts. You may also subscribe to WildAlert of the American Wilderness Society. This is a newsletter highlighting efforts to protect America's wilderness, not as a relic of our nation's past, but as a thriving ecological community that is central to Life itself.