Back to the land, back to silence. Morning sun slowly warming up the earth cooled down through the night. Wind, chirping of a small dog in the distance. My eyes are tired, my heart a bit restless. I write on a desk on which all sorts of inscriptions have long ago been made with liquid paper ink. One says, “X=Xncos(2πf0xt + φ0)”. Another one, underneath, says “FUCK OFF”.
I am now since yesterday back up in the mountains; still in the Aude, nearby the Sougraigne village, on a sheep farm. I finished yesterday a permaculture course, which I attended for the past two weeks in Limoux. The course was for me and apparently for most if not all of us 43 students there, a truly life changing experience. Robyn Francis was the teacher. We students, were a bunch of very diverse ages and doings, but united through our passion for life and our deep desire to live this life better in tune with our hearts, and to dedicate our reason to this. The feelings and warmth which thereby developed amongst us is simply very hard to describe. Some people say that we have become a “family”. I guess there is few better ways of expressing this feeling that something deep and moving which you couldn't really put your finger upon, connects you to someone else.
As of Permaculture itself; I wonder why it's not more well-known than it seems to be and than it greatly deserves to be. Why did I develop an interest for it only now, two months ago, at 31 years of age?
The first time I heard the term “permaculture” was back in March when I was in the Creuse, and when someone said, “ah, permaculture, I don't really know what it is, but every time I hear about it, it seems to only be about basic common sense, such as how to organize your garden in order to have shorter paths to take when you walk through it. There really doesn't seem to be so much about it, and I don't understand why people make such a fuss about it.” I am struck now by how much this statement is both true, and false.
It is absolutely right that permaculture is not about much of anything very specific, and that it is, in the end, basically about basic common sense. But the fact is, that common sense is precisely what we generally lack; and that this lack is precisely what leads us ashtray. We get hooked up on theories in our thinkings, and we let our emotions or faiths or beliefs guide us, instead of, at each and every moment, coming back to What Really Is.
And why do we do this? Well, I don't have the least trouble understanding it. Coming back each and every moment to What Really Is, rather than what you expect or imagine or fancy, is coming back, each and every moment, to something new. And accepting that nothing is fixed, that all is change, that our minds no more than the world, should get fixed on some views, is an incredible challenge.
I believe that in order to overcome this challenge, one must find stability somewhere else, in a realm beyond What Is, in the realm of feelings. For if What Is never is the same, the feeling of Being is always there, and this is the true constant in our lives. But this feeling we do not find in our minds, and we do not find in the words, no, we find it in the silence within. Perhaps that's the problem. I guess that seeking a solution within emptiness doesn't naturally sound like so much fun to the mind. Isn't it striking, that we consider locking people up in an empty room, what could be considered as a blessing by others, as a form of punishment?
