The most active groups are those exploring ways to do research among individuals from different interest domains. We look for our commonalities, themes that bring us together, but also explore our differences. From the differences we learn the most.

In other circumstances I also share this process as a way to pray, an extension of my 2006 book Being Prayer. The most recent activity was promoting the concept of Contemplative Collaboration at the 35th Spiritual Direction Conference 2025, in Niagara Falls. At a previous SDI conference, 2004, I presented concepts that became the book Being Prayer. This year I added my 2019 dissertation, The Moment of Creation and work I’ve been doing with Enactive Research.

The biggest changes between the two publications are the further and increased emphasis on body intelligence and exploring the wisdom of body/mind awareness across scientific domains.

Since the 2019 publication the importance of relational practices has come strongly to the forefront as has my understanding of the most basic form of learning which I have called the Enactive Learning cycle. This cycle assumes the autopoietic and enactive capacity of living systems and recognizes the organic learning that comes from confronting difference.

We have to realize that sometimes human beings, deliberately create noise. People with frustrated wills come together to make noise that causes others to suffer while they themselves do not suffer. … We have to resist this. There is a note of supreme injustice in noisemaking: the noise made by one person can compel another person to listen. … Thomas Merton, The Springs of Contemplation

Of course we want to be good listeners, but compelling others to listen is a form of abuse. Listening well includes hearing what may not be spoken. It also means listening to one’s own body and being. Does demanding noise keep us from awareness of the stillness or from recognizing inner resonation or dissonance?

Cultures that maintain early values and skills can teach us something about how to live in harmony. We don’t have to go back to being hunter-gathers to recapture connection with the earth. Even my grandparents could show the way. As dairy farmers, they raised their own food. We, their children and grandchildren, left the farm to pursue careers in new fields, domains of personal interest. Unfortunately, it is too late for us to return to the family farm. We no longer have the land or the skills to do so. However, our food and purchase choices could make a difference, supporting those who do choose such a lifestyle. Perhaps we’d have to pay more for food, but the system would be enriched through the human attention to animal husbandry and quality food production.

But there are also simpler ways to be in touch with the earth and our environment. These are practices of being present in any moment, being fully in touch with one’s own body and with the environment in which it lives. This awareness can keep one in touch with the living dynamics of the evolving biosphere as well the knowing one’s own body has in its interaction with its home environment. A biological basis of knowing has been evolving much longer than linguistic knowing. We need only give our usual way of thinking a rest, to make space for more subtle knowing, a knowing which is simply the organic functioning of the organism within its milieu. Bringing this kind of knowing or awareness to our human relationships, as well as the environment and other beings, we can listen and hear on deeper levels.

Re-Wilding Ourselves
recognizing our embeddedness in the universe
Mary Rees, 2022 09 22, newsletter Vol 22.2

We humans share common characteristics with all living systems from single cells to complex living systems. These include a very basic capacity for responsive self-organizing, for awareness enough to organically reach for what we need and to recede from what is a threat. When in touch with these innate capacities we can discern them from grasping, make wise choices for ourselves, and move in harmony with all beings and within the world. We come to new ways of listening and hearing. We abandon the tendency to dominate through human advantage. We can become indigenous again, ‘rewilding’ our selves, reconnecting as a part of all that is – without loosing our human potential, but rather enriching it.

Join me in developing greater awareness and responsiveness to these capacities, learning or remembering practice tools for responsible citizenship with the ‘more-than-human’ world.

Online small group inquiries into rewilding, how we “become indigenous again”
Express interest in online practice and dialogue with Mary link opens in new tab

Recommended reading:
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Mary Rees, Being Prayer — Transforming Consciousness
Current blog entries