Predator and Prey
… more thoughts about energy fields and time.
In the fall of our second year together, Mary and I adopted a kitten from the Michigan Humane Society. This was my birthday gift to Mary that year and she named the cat Autumn. Autumn was a tiger tabby. Back then we lived in the city and mostly kept Autumn in the house. Indoors, Autumn would catch bugs and the occasional mouse, but like most domestic cats she liked to play to further exercise her hunting abilities.
So, in addition to the typical cat toys we kept for her amusement, I invented a game. With Autumn present, I’d very obviously crawl past a doorway and, still on her level, peek around the corner. Autumn would get excited. Next time I peeked I would often see her stealthily advancing on me. She’d stop, advance, stop. Pretty soon she’d be right around the corner from me, poised for an ambush, and sensing, sensing, sensing.
I’d be on my side, doing much the same thing. But then a stray thought would come, maybe something like: “I wonder what to make for dinner?” Invariably, that was the moment when Autumn would rush around the corner looking utterly wild: eyes dilated, claws and fangs at the ready, rearing for an attack. Our sweet, affectionate tabby cat, this lovely little kitty who came for petting when called, well, she was terrifying in those moments.
And I’d scream. This sometimes annoyed and startled Mary, but I couldn’t help it.
Then Autumn would scamper off, having landed a soft blow or two on my head with her paws. If this were serious, those claws would have stayed out. That’s how I know this was only a game, even to her. And then we’d do it again.
We did this for years. Eventually I invented a name for it. I called the game “Predator and Prey.” Usually, I ended up as prey.
Around this time I was also reading up on cats and closely observing the one in our house. I bought a very readable and insightful book by Desmond Morris called Catwatching. Cats teach their young how to hunt. Being a spayed female with no kittens around, it seemed to me that Autumn’s teaching instincts were as intact as her hunting instincts. She was definitely my teacher.
You can go ahead and question whether cats have the ability to sense and exploit a momentary shift in focus from around the corner as I have described. The way I’m telling the story, it probably sounds like I’m saying cats have what people in this culture call “extrasensory perception,” or something like that. Or perhaps simply: “Cats are psychic!”
Leaving aside the long history of folklore suggesting that this is precisely the case, I guess the main way to check out my story would be to find a personable cat and try it for yourself. Nobody else but you will be able to correlate your inner shifts of focus with the attack of a (in this case, hopefully friendly) predator whose instinct is to exploit such mouse-minded distractibility. But once you start tracking how your inner focus and outer experience correlate, it’s a pretty compelling phenomenon to observe. One might even start to wonder if a predator — or even a whole class of predators — might be looking to both promote and exploit such distractibility in any general population that they intend to prey upon. The technology certainly exists.
I actually wrote a whole 2500-word essay about this, but it started to feel a little dark. For now, suffice it to say that the attention span, memory, and intelligence of a cat exceeds that of the creatures it preys upon. This is obvious and observable even without any hypothesizing about how cats might be able to tune in to and navigate subtle energy fields. So the point is, if hypothetically there are people in the world who want to reduce a general population to the status of prey animals, it is only logical that reducing the attention span, sensing ability, memory, and intelligence of that population — while also increasing the distractibility of that population — would be a strategic priority. At the same time, any such hypothetical human predators would seek to monopolize such sensing ability, memory, capacity to focus and intelligence to suit their own purposes. And once again, the technology and methods to do so certainly exist.
Let me ask a question: If the military defeat of the United States in Vietnam or Nixon’s Watergate affair happened today, would these even lead to scandal and political ignominy? Would they generate seismic shifts that rock the political establishment?
Or… would we promptly forget the whole thing, mouselike in our collective attention span, as apparently happened with the disastrous and quite recent conclusion of the 20-year war in Afghanistan? Trillions of dollars uselessly spent under the cover of a consistent, documented pattern of public deception spanning multiple organizations and multiple incoming administrations of both parties, with the net result being mountains of Afghans and a large number of US service personnel dead, maimed and otherwise traumatized, and all to no purpose at all. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Such a sequence of events should have shifted the landscape of American politics for a generation. By rights it could possibly have led to the dissolution of the two major parties, which we must not forget colluded extensively in this needless and immoral conflict. But apparently, not only did the people of the United States derive zero benefit in terms of national security or anything else, looks to me like we didn’t even learn anything. Without focused intent, memory and a decent attention span, it’s impossible to spot the patterns that identify the predators. We’re still pointing fingers at one another, and we’re still electing the people who could have put a stop to it, occasionally replacing them with others who are similarly disposed. And that suits the predators just fine.
Oh, things got a little dark there again. In time, my goal is to more reliably span my awareness of such horrors as these and my awareness of personal remedies. I see profound hope as well, so stick with me here, if you will.
Going back to game version of Predatory and Prey, what I experienced in those highly charged moments with the tabby cat poised on one side and me around the corner on the other, was that Autumn and I were in deep interaction, feeling for one another, intensely focused, each feeling for shifts in the other on the level of intent, wondering who’s gonna make the first move or lose focus. And yes, this does relate to the story shared in my last post about how my baby daughter adjusted her distance to the expanding boundary of a field surrounding my body as I recovered from a day of substitute teaching. We simply do not stop at our skin. We extend well beyond, and on multiple levels. And in this “beyond”— which is also connected to a “within” — is a unified energy field where a great deal of sensing and activity happens. Good things happen there, and yes also some things that in the moment, at least, may appear not-so-good. We simply have to keep our fields open and allow ourselves to expand to be more aware of what’s going on there.
Does it sound implausible to you if I say that the fields that we live in both extend outward from us and infuse inwardness into our physical bodies, and that they reach not only into space but into time? In the final analysis, perhaps the principal advantage of a cat over a mouse is that the cat occupies time in a different way and on a different scale. Humans seem to take in yet a broader slice of the multidimensional time pie than do cats. If all this is so, it might clarify why it would be important to those who wish to prey upon their fellow humans to keep their prey occupying a narrow slice of time and a narrow slice of the totality of themselves. Which amount to the same thing, by the way.
And yes, memory as we commonly think of it is a piece of our relationship with time, hence dystopian novels like George Orwell’s 1984, where history is continually being rewritten, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, where all the memory function is vested in a single individual, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are socialized not to care too much about it. As every narcissist and dictator knows, destroy memory — individual or collective — and you’re one step ahead of those you wish to control and prey upon.
Thing is, while it’s definitely important, there’s more to the human relationship with time than memory. There’s imagination, for example. A thing imagined can be a thing that comes to pass. This implies an outward flow of time from the inner depths of our imagination. There’s also the depth of the present-moment experience, and our capacity to open up to that. All of these things enhance our participation in life. None of them please the would-be predators of humanity if they are not in control of them, however.
Thus, most of the writings here on this Substack channel are intended to invite readers to expand and extend awareness into that field. There’s simply no downside that I can see to expanding our awareness through our own agency. The way I think of it is, in any so-called “writing” I’m constructing a multidimensional space that in turn intersects with the multidimensional space of any readers who choose to engage with it. Writing is just as magical now as it was when it was the exclusive prerogative of priests in ancient temples. Writing carries holographic imprints in the field it generates. I’m talking vibes here, my friends!
In practical terms, just having this conversation helps provide conceptual scaffolding for further development along these lines. Good news is, as we expand our fields we can become generally more healthy, joyful, creative and confident. We have access to larger pools of sensing and information, better recollection, and our memory function will be better integrated with mind and body. Yes, it’s true, any expansion will also lead us to our unresolved traumas and outmoded beliefs on an expedited basis, but what’s the alternative? Forever shrinking? Staying frozen at status quo? Neither of these is really possible in the long run, but I would guess that if we keep shrinking long enough we’ll find there’s an infinite within that is equal in extent to the infinite beyond. It’s all here, and it all connects, so. . . endless sky above, deep waters below, expansive horizons circling around us. . . whatever floats your boat.
So let’s make this easy. Picture two people. Perhaps imagine them sitting across the table from one another on a first date. Really, on the level of energy, a lot of the things described earlier as happening with the cat and I happen there, too: there’s the poised attention, the sensing, the sense of being sensed, even the scanning for predatory intent. If things work out with our imaginary couple, the fields of each will start to expand through this engagement. If it’s us, next thing we know, we find ourselves picking up the phone just as the text comes in. We notice a book somewhere that’ll be just the perfect thing for the person we just met. And so on. Friendships can work the same way. Everything can, really. It’s all just a big field, ours to open up to as we see fit.
For example, a recent acquaintance of mine sent me a card in the mail this week with a painting of an elecampane flower on it. Did she know I have a history with this plant? That I once grew it from seed or that my daughter and I had candied the medicinal roots in anticipation of a widespread respiratory contagion? No, she did not. But it was in the field. And I think it helps to feel ourselves as expansive, living fields to better participate in life that way.
More about this some other time.
