Idleness
There is no satisfying definition of this basic human need which may be more aptly contextualized as necessary and valuable ‘activity’ within a ‘contemplative life’. For idleness as willful suspension of ‘busyness’ is active, is uncomfortable, is a discipline.
Modern life describes idleness as without purpose or effect, avoidant, lazy. Time spent idle is time unproductive. Productivity is master, demanding constant attention and tooling in time management, maximizing measurable outcomes in support of particulars within the consumer/producer spectrum. We get good at producing or perish. There is no direct economic benefit in idle participation. If we delegate our idle time to vacation or after work, we busy the time with screen and entertainment distraction and call this idle.
Elevated, what are the qualities of idle as a basic human need? What are we missing by being so adverse?
Namely, contrast. Looking to nature, the sun doesn’t shine 24/7. Cycles govern every living system. We sleep and wake, rejuvenating our spent vital energies, regathering through equal cycles of work and rest. When we spend beyond our store of resources by not allowing for rejuvenation on the side of idle as a cultivated, inward retirement, we begin to equate productivity with heightened business. Quantity replaces quality and waste results as quantity (as production) increases with reductionist efficiency, requiring policies, rules, laws, enforcements.
Think of a river, naturally meandering through filtering wetlands being straightened and harnessed by a damn to yes, increase productivity and quantity in terms of harnessable, extracted power, yet quality lost in terms of diversity, resilience, ….life. Waste through heat, turbulence, collateral damage to ecosystems. Disruption of natural cycles automatically brings loss of diversity, require administrative management, become ‘product’, dead, disposable. Last years trends to be replaced with new and improved.
Quantity, as a preferred outcome of productivity, makes sense in a consumer based economy. Quantity mimics quality as subterfuge for its generic emptiness, requiring manipulative marketing to keep us titillated. Quality is expensive in a race for more, cheaper, faster.
Quality in terms of natural systems expresses itself over time, nuanced by complexity and craft. It arrives through hand work, as an expression of the individual, the place and time of its inception. Quality expresses and signals time and place, is unique and complex by the processes that birthed it. Is signature.
If quantity results from busyness, quality results from a kind of synthesis or culmination of complex systems over time. A distillation. A gist, the heart and soul by inwardness; the kernel, substance, sum, (greater than) by relationship with process.
Quitting the Paint Factory by Mark Slouka
- Harper’s Magazine — November 2004 issue
Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe, then. -Ovid, Remedia Amoris
Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had “too much time on our hands.” They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, “Quick, look busy.”
So what is idleness? What of a contemplative approach in teasing out quality as a result of our productivity, or more respective of process, our craft? Idleness, to be contemplative, requires an inward retirement, a discrimination born of active detachment, allowing for the emergent, free of expected outcome, beyond bated anticipation, is emergence of pattern over time.
Humans are uniquely equipped and talented in pattern recognition and it’s a skill that can be honed.
There’s a principle in natural farming that suggests on first try, in achieving outcome via some input or action, there will be failure. On second try, failure. Surely a third time brings success. Third attempt, failure. What emerges however is a pattern and thus, a pathway. It is the pathway according to perceived pattern in direct relationship with action that brings desired outcome, always surprising, always informed by place, time, in relationship. This is the natural way.
It’s suggested within certain matriarchal cultures that women (biological) were the original alchemists, the gardeners. By virtue of our biological function as mothers, “Life-givers”, we carry water, have a unique relationship with water and thus, with Earth. We (all living things) and Earth are water beings. When we are in observational reverence with nature through gardening, birth and nurturance of each other, we receive direct signaling, a true knowledge is downloaded into our very beingness.
We (as biological women) then transmit this knowledge into the things we tend, nurture and grow. Man (biological as “life protectors”) is there to observe women in the garden, in the life laboratory, and to protect, translate, interpreting in relational patterns and language those things that are brought to the surface, in resilient relationship with our natural environments. It is a partnership born of contemplation and deep listening.
1:35:03 (abridged transcript)
Hi, it’s Christina Trout and I’m just so delighted with this conversation… I’m practicing natural farming which is (in part) from Vietnam and Japan and it’s alchemical in nature, it’s ancient, and it’s been a vehicle for me to rediscover my own science self in the garden through this act of observation. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about about the act of observation that how it opens our eyes and hearts to the mother and helps us in our actions.
Wow, wow. Real science right there. Okay, the art of observation now hear me out…. Women don’t observe. Men observe women, feel women. Women are the vibration that extends out of our mother earth. Women the ‘life givers’, are the living life force of how she wants to be at that time, so what women are doing, when you’re in the garden, you may think you’re observing, because yeah you’re learning. You’re learning science, real science. You’re learning alchemy, the thing that women got killed for, so don’t be afraid of it. What’s the worst thing that they can do to you today, kill you? Big deal. How much time you got left according to their science? Not long. Might as well get killed in the process of trying to save our mother. At least we’ll have a fighting chance. Maybe we won’t get killed. Maybe we will make it.
We’ve got to understand the balance between the ‘life givers’ and the ‘life protectors’. She’s in the garden, being. Just being, (and) I have to observe her, because my role in coming from her first off …. So I have to observe her, no matter where I am as a male, I have to observe the ‘life giver’ in that territory, who has grown from that land, because she is the living vibration of our mother in that area. …
If I go to wherever you are, I’m going to ask you, what cycle are you in? When are you going to plant? When is your seed medicine ceremony, because we have to prepare our seeds? I would ask you, when do you do your thunder dance? When do the women put the medicine on the men, who in turn rain on the garden? These are the things that I would ask you. These things you would tell me. When you’re doing the seed medicine you would tell me. In what day of the ceremony …and how are the waters transferred from the mother to the male who then distributes it back by his observation of his mother.
You’ve got to understand this first, that in this world we are not equal. You are taught that. It is a lie you are taught, that by men, you’re taught that by men who believe in God, and these are male dominant men, they want you to believe as a ‘life giver’ that you’re equal with me. If you were to be equal with me, you would have to climb down the evolutionary ladder to be where I am at, so we are not equal. I could never be equal with my mother. What male would have the audacity the stupidity in his head to say that we’re all equal because then he’s saying he’s equal with his mother. …
Our mother is the primary. I am the secondary. When I understand this, as the secondary, I understand (what) creation shows us, that in this world, we give thanks to all the mothers in all strains of life because it is the mothers that show us how to be. They give us purpose and direction. It’s not the males. You’re only going to get garbage out of the males. You’re only going to get war. It’s the ‘life giver’ who tells me I have to observe her, all her actions, and I don’t care about being politically correct, but the reality is, is that I gotta observe her because sometimes she’ll tell me i’m cold when she actually isn’t. Sometimes she’ll tell me that she’s hot when she actually isn’t, so I have to observe her every second of the day. It’s my interaction, not hers, I must be interacting with you as the ‘life giver’ in order for me to function proper(ly).
This quality of ‘being’ in connection with the natural world, more than observation, is of course not exclusive to women, though arguably does reflect a reciprocal relationship with the feminine aspects within creation and ourselves. It is a quality that is born of stillness and attention, a deep listening without expectation and yet, ripe with anticipatory yearning. A willingness and surrender, to be and be shown. It is a science without hypothesis. It is a science of burgeoning clarity, of stacked revelations. A pattern born science of temporal, relational meaning and purpose. This beingness in nature, of nature, is the birth of a kind of knowledge, the dawning path of wisdom, as walked, practiced, witnessed and transmitted.
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Information. Knowledge. Wisdom. A continuum from material to etheric. From manipulated to revelatory, directionally transcendent. At first a matter of reflection, who we are in relationship. Becomes self revealing truths, principle based, within a life lived with intention of ‘knowing’ one’s self.
Principle being a kernel, self-sufficient potentiality, expressed through commonly held recognizable growth patterns, no matter time or place, language or utterance. The same principles show again and again through different cultures, languages and time periods, are most potent with indigenous roots intact, within relationship with nature and natural systems of evolution.
“To thine oneself be true.” ~Shakespeare’s Hamlet
True to oneself first, reflective of what is shared. Truth being ultimately, ‘what the opposites hold in common’. Truth as recognizable, applicable, practical, yet elusive and unpinned, resisting commodification by its necessity to be caught from an angle, never direct, yet uncompromisingly exact.
This the path from knowledge to wisdom, described here as practice of gifted knowledge, as proof through direct experience what elicits reciprocity and the self propelling engine of regeneration. Reciprocity, resulting from participatory observation, entered into relationally, within the environments we find ourselves, always new, and yet persistently same. Why we can explore common needs and how to meet them, at all.
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Knowledge as Para Vidya and Apara Vidya
from Mundaka Upanishad
Saunaka, asked — “ Revered Sir, what is that by the knowing of which all this becomes known?” — was told by Angiras that –
There are two different kinds of knowledge to be acquired — the Para Vidya and the Apara Vidya. The Apara Vidya (Lower Knowledge) consists of all textual knowledge — the four Vedas, the science of pronunciation etc., the code of rituals, grammar, etymology, metre and astrology. The Para Vidya (higher knowledge) is by which the immutable and the imperishable Atman is realized; the knowledge which brings about the direct realization of the Supreme Reality, the source of All.
The knowledge of the Atman is very subtle; it cannot be obtained out of one’s own effort; the Atman cannot be intuitively apprehended by mere intellectual equipments. Thus, Angiras draw the distinction between the way of knowledge and the way of realization, as between opinion and truth. To understand and realize the Reality, the aspirant must seek a spiritual teacher (Guru). Only a spiritual teacher who has already realized his identity with the Atman can impart this much sought-after wisdom based on his own experiences.
A human being is blessed with the faculty of self-knowledge or logical reasoning (Apara Vidya) as well as the faculty of self-awareness or intuitive vision) (Para Vidya) Para Vidya is the transcendental knowledge which is beyond all limits of knowledge, experience and reason, and which is, beyond intellect, mind and sense.
To understand knowledge as a bridge to be accessed rather than acquired as we navigate our existence from the material to the etheric (as spiritual beings within a material world), in a time when information is used to manipulate, divide and commodify, when ‘knowledge’ is specialized, restricted and silo’d, is nothing less that returning us to ourselves as a part of all creation, as agents in our own unfolding, our own self-knowing. Attending to this access we all have, undeveloped and latent perhaps, is a way to recover qualities of curiosity, receptiveness, imagination, a sense of humor and wonder, tranquility, and playfulness. All the qualities suggested by satifying the need for Idleness, according to Manfred Max Neef.
Manfred Max Neef’s Matrix of Needs and Satisfiers:
Idleness, finally, is active. Is not leisure. Suspension of expectation while attending to idleness (especially when observing and contemplating the natural world), creates space, extends time. Within this expansion, a stillness emerges, a being present with oneself and within the environment one occupies. It is being still within potentiality, open to the emergent.
Observation Exercise:
You’ve chosen your small patch of ground. It should measure about a foot square. 7 times in the next month, revisit this space and spend at least 15 minutes simply observing it. Write, draw or paint what you see and how you feel. Are there changes over time (with the choosen spot or in you)? After each session, thank the place and yourself for being together, for the interaction.
Often, an inner soundscape floods, a magnetic pull gravitates the senses. If one is active and watchful, often a new understanding emerges, a vision occurs, a eureka. A moment of viveka. Knowingness dawns and we are brought into ‘right relationship’ with all of creation.
After all, it is through relationship that newness is born, that imagination and insight is gifted. Looking again to the definition that ‘truth is what the opposites have in common’, brings this overlapping, this ‘oneness with’ into focus as access to a state of Natural Beingness, a state of being in relation to all creation.
