A Pearl of Attunement

The deeper I go into the mysteries, the harder it is to talk about them. They are sacred, like pearls, the careful shells around them opening up only under warm, slow, gentle hands. They cannot be used for any purpose that is not pure, cannot be shared except from a place of heart unfolding. They move at their own pace.

~

I want to talk to you about attunement. A year and a half ago, I learned what attunement really is. “Sometimes, in some cultures, someone might receive attunement for 8 hours at a time, just to fill up how much need they have,” my teacher told me. “That,” I thought, stars in my eyes. “I want that”.

The layers of attunement go so deep. There is active listening – really paying attention to what someone is saying. But energetic attunement, spiritual attunement, goes far beyond that.

My healers don’t need me to speak. As I move through waves of emotion, of energy moving through my body, they just know. “Mmhmm, right there” my healer will say to me as I hit the subtlest of snags. “It feels like you are in another realm, observing,” she will say to me as I explore what feels like an underworld. Yes, how did you know?

I feel saturated with energy. I feel their presence, attuned, attentive, modulating with the subtlest of movements to where I am. “I am floating above the earth” I say to them, and they rise to meet me. “Let’s help you come back down,” they say, modulating their energy field to be heavier as an anchor for me. They feel the slightest tremor in my field, and they lighten to match me.

~

I am struck by how little we ask for now, compared to what we used to receive with each other. It is hard enough to ask someone to just listen at all, let alone listen without an agenda, let alone listen with their entire being and awareness. When you listen on the awareness plane, things just unfold.

I think a lot about the essay, Preconquest Consciousness. I think about the way we used to be, the attunement and group intelligence that used to run through our bones. Attunement so immediate that emotions would rise and fall like a child’s breath, met over and over.

In the isolated hamlets in the southern forests, infants were kept in continuous bodily contact with mothers or the mothers' friends--on laps when they were seated, on hips, under arms, against backs, or on shoulders when they were standing.

… Babies responded to this blanket of ever-ready empathetic tactile stimulation by tactile responses of their own. Very quickly they began assembling a sophisticated tactile-speech to transmit desires, needs, and states of mind. They didn't whine or cry to get attention; they touched.

… With nourishment, comfort, and stimulation constantly on hand, infants did not have to wait helplessly to have their needs met. They had no emotional need to anchor their libidos to abstract concepts of time, place, or kinship; and abstract foundations of awareness such as these were not imprinted on their nascent consciousness.

What would it be like to be part of a group with this much deep attunement to each other?

One day, deep within the forest, Agaso, then about 13 years of age, found himself with a rare good shot at a cuscus in a nearby tree. But he only had inferior arrows. Without the slightest comment or solicitation, the straightest, sharpest arrow of the group moved so swiftly and so stealthily straight into his hand, I could not see from whence it came.

At that same moment, Karako, seeing that the shot would be improved by pulling on a twig to gently move an obstructing branch, was without a word already doing so, in perfect synchrony with Agaso's drawing of the bow, i.e., just fast enough to fully clear Agaso's aim by millimeters at the moment his bow was fully drawn, just slow enough not to spook the cuscus. Agaso, knowing this would be the case made no effort to lean to side for an unobstructed shot, or to even slightly shift his stance. Usumu similarly synchronized into the action stream, without even watching Agaso draw his bow, began moving up the tree a fraction of a second before the bowstring twanged.

We have learned to expect that no one will really attune to us, so much so that we have forgotten what true attunement even feels like. As my healers attune to me, I feel my system soaking in the nourishment. Someone is tracking me. Someone cares. Someone understands the butterfly flutters of emotions that don’t even make sense to me yet. Sometimes, they find something before I do. “It feels like … there’s a hook here?” they’ll say, and “yes, yes, exactly, that’s what it feels like.” “This one feels like she has been fed lies,” and nausea overcomes me as an early wound is touched with awareness.

Someone understands. I am not alone.

~

I have started reading Hands of Light. On the first page, Barbara Brennan tells us how she feels truths in people’s energy fields just by tuning into them.

The truth is, there is a rich space of meaning and information conveyed in every breath that someone takes. Their entire being is radiating their story, their expression, their experience. And when you tune in, it is like following along in braille, wonder and awe at every new ridge your fingertips traverse. This is the attunement our Souls ache for, that our energy bodies cry out for. This is nourishment at a deep level, drinking in the gift of someone’s energy following ours with love. And this is what every single person deserves.