Last week, I wrote about how David Abram’s book, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, made me see shadows in a whole new way. This week, I’d like to share how he literally blew my mind with this thoughts on mind. This took me down a rabbit home from which I may never recover. I’m currently reading Dan Siegel’s book, Mind and discussing it with a friend. More on that at a later date. Here’s a summary from Abram’s book.

Descartes originated the idea that has lasted for hundreds of years that mind and matter are separate. He described mind as pure thought, having no spatial presence, and emanating from brain activity. Humans had minds and other species did not. Over the last century, findings in quantum physics have turned these ideas inside out. Yet, most people still think in Descarte’s terms.

Perhaps mind is not thought but conscious awareness.

So then, where does awareness come from? Maybe it comes from the brain, but we’ve all experienced awareness from the body, as well as through our interactions with the external world. The truth is that we really don’t know for sure … yet.

“The human body is not a closed or static object, but an open, unfinished entity utterly entwined with the soils, waters, and winds that move through it — a wild creature whose life is contingent upon the multiple other lives that surround it, and the shifting flows that surge through it. What if mind is not a special property of humankind, but is rather a property of the Earth itself — a power in which we are carnally immersed? Awareness remains an enigma, a wonder, not by virtue of any miraculous quality, but by the plain and obvious fact that we are in it, and of it. We each engage the wider intelligence from our own angle and place within it, each of us entwined with the breathing Earth through our particular skin.”

Abram uses the analogy of mind as wind – a whooshing force – that binds all beings. Each of us experiences this force from our own particular place and angle. We in turn affect the larger mind by our thoughts and actions.

Mind is both internal and external, or as Siegel says “embodied and relational.”

“Each of us by our actions is composing our part of the story in concert with the other bodies or beings around us. Yet since we are situated within the story, dreaming our way through its voluminous depths according to the unique ways of our flesh, no one of us can discern precisely how the story can best be articulated by another.”

Our minds are constantly changing as a result of the dynamic interactions, the constant conversations we’re having with the world around us. I don’t know about you but that blows my mind.

How does this definition of mind sit with you?

The book, Becoming Animal, is about re-connecting with the world around us and especially the other species and creatures with which we share this planet. There is much more there on many topics. And, it’s not all abstract. Abram weaves in beautiful, personal and descriptive writing that show just the kind of connection with other species that he’s recommending. I really enjoy his writing and provocative thinking.

** Books mentioned have Amazon affiliate links, meaning I make a few cents if you purchase through my link. I only recommend books that I’ve read.