DONKEY MIND

 

It's seeming like over the last few years the subconscious mind is coming through, even pushing conscious mind out of the way. Conscious mind cares less and less about having its say. By this time in a lifetime of experiences the conscious mind has seen itself misunderstand, forget, rewrite history, miss important points, not get it, enough to see mind it is fallible. Conscious mind is based in learned information from experience and study. Subconscious mind is, for one thing, in touch with the higher self. Also the lower self. I'm starting to think of the subconscious mind as the mind we had before we grew the frontal lobe that gave us knowledge of good and evil, duality. In process of getting to know a donkey, I'm hearing myself call it Donkey Mind. I don't mean that insulting. I'm learning about donkey mind already knowing Jack does not have the frontal lobe, but he has all the rest of it. This is where I connect with Jack. I've learned after living with dogs and cats that they don't need spoken language. They know very well how to use body language, eye contact, telepathy. I go to Jack with as close to a clear mind as I can, without forcing anything. I want to allow him access to my subconscious mind by keeping forebrain out of it as much as possible. I've lost confidence in my own forebrain. I understand it plays a very important part, and allow it that. I just never learned how to use it efficiently.

In my experience with the subconscious mind, I become more and more trusting. And these words, conscious and subconscious, I actually think the reverse is the case, but am using the language that is universally understood. Following my feelings more than ever. Paying attention to and allowing that I don't want to or I want to are good enough reasons for my decision making for myself. Something comes up that is expected of me and I don't want to, I'm sorry for you, I don't perform other people's expectations. The kind I really dash are the ones expected without being told, silently understood. As a kid and quite a ways into adult life I hopped to other people's expectations. Then one day I asked, Why? Nothing worth a damn ever came of it. Other people told me I needed to do something and I felt like I was obliged to do it. I can't think of anything I did or bought because somebody told me I needta, gotta, oughta, better, should, that felt right. There came a time I realized that decisions I make for myself work out better than decisions made out of supposed to, oughta, gotta, needta. Finally seeing how it worked out, I stopped doing what other people tell me to do. For one thing, I do it, I'm the one pays the consequences, not the one who told me to do it. In a way, it sounds like stubbornness, which I have a strong Taurus the Bull dose of, but in practice it feels freeing, feels like flow.

Every day I remind myself in one way or another not to allow myself to be drawn into emotional attachment to wanting to improve the world, make it a better place. By now, I've seen so much that was done to help ended up doing the opposite of original intent. I see myself pulling back from impulses to help out here and there. I can do so much, but no more, and I don't worry about it. Allowing others to push me into doing something I don't want to do, like join the Lions Club or such, it doesn't work. My heart is not there when it is somebody else's idea of what is best for me. My heart is only there when I make decisions by feeling as well as mind. I'm not talking about money decisions. I mean day to day decisions having to do with knowing other people and getting projects done. I've found that much of the thinking I was taught along the way doesn't work for me. Like coming out of high school, somebody my dad knew told me I don't need a college degree, just take two years of business administration and get a job as a manager of a TG&Y. Wow. What a boring way to live my life. I tried to take a business administration course because of being told that's what you need to do to make money. What if I didn't want money? What if I want to live in a little schoolhouse on Waterfall Road with a cat and a donkey, never have company and seldom go anyplace?

I'm so tired of the world of the false the news has even lost interest for me in the last several days. I turn it on and in a few minutes turn it off. It's not like I want to get away from everything, not that at all. I want to get deeper into what I already have around me, the people I know, to know them better, enjoy them more, that which is alive, including a donkey. I've already found that what I've been told about donkeys and how to deal with them does not apply. I've only been able to talk with people who regard them as stock. I learn how to handle them, but I don't want to handle Jack. I want to know Jack. His only job is coyote slayer. His role in life is not a beast of burden with a halter on his face and somebody whipping him every step of the way to make him take the next step. This is my chance to get to know somebody new without developed forebrain, like a baby. I've been knowing a baby for two years and became fascinated with learning to communicate without words as taught to me by dogs and cats. Now I have a chance to become acquainted with a consciousness in a donkey body with a donkey mind. It's donkey mind I want to get acquainted with. And it feels like we're getting there. I'm reading his language of gestures and eye contact, and it feels like I have a friend. Each day I see something new in our communication. He understands what I'm saying when I talk to him. I talk to him simply because human experience is foreign to his mind as people in space ships are foreign to my mind.

Today, after feeding Jack two carrots, I talked with him, rubbed his back and neck while he grazed around my feet. He put his forehead on my upper leg, almost like he was going to push me, but didn't push. He rubbed his forehead and the length of his face up and down my leg from waist to ankle three times. He performed the same process three different times. He seemed to mean something more to him than rubbing his face. I remembered how he likes it when I stand beside him and bump him with my hip. It was like he was bumping his forehead on my leg. It was not an aggressive movement. It felt like his way of rubbing me in return. He likes me rubbing his neck and back. He wanted to rub me too. He doesn't have hands. His forehead he could use to pet me, to let me know he likes me too. It was that kind of feeling. He was telling me he likes me by way of donkey mind. This is how he teaches me donkey mind. In turn, I teach  him human mind. This is going where I'd hoped it would go, unable to imagine it in advance. He held his forehead on my upper leg rubbing it with purpose, and I reached behind his ears and rubbed his neck with two hands, one on each side. I felt like it was another moment of connection where the god within me met the god within Jack. That's where I wanted to connect with Jack, really not even imagining it possible.

I'm remembering J Allen Boone's book, Kinship With All Life, where he discovered communication with the other forms of consciousness. I read it years ago. I wasn't able then to communicate as he did, but never forgot it. I learned from the dogs, each one teaching me a new level of dogness. Cats too. Now I have a donkey to learn from. A couple times Jack became so happy he got a little bouncy. I don't mind when he puts a foot on my foot, but I don't want him jumping on my foot. I backed away a little bit to give him some room to perform his shivers. I read it that his donkey mind activating the first time with a human mind stretched his mind farther than it's ever been stretched, and he's liking it. He's liking knowing a human. He's seen humans all his life, has known a few a little bit. He's still young, though appears full grown. That we've connected is the important part. From here on, it's a matter of getting to know each other. It's more fun every day knowing Jack. It's like knowing baby Vada, different every time I see her, now running and talking in sentences. I had a feeling that Jack rubbing his forehead on my leg is something donkeys do to each other. I've seen cows rub their foreheads on the side of another cow. I forget how multi-purpose their heads are to them. Forget? Never knew. It appears to be a gesture of affection. As I clear my own mind, Jack has a better chance of reading me. He's not afraid of me anymore. And I'm not afraid of Jack anymore. We're getting there.  

 

 

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GETTING TO KNOW A NEW FRIEND

sandy mason and willard gayheart

I skipped the Skeeter & the Skidmarks show. It just happened at the wrong time. I hadn't slept well for a couple nights entertaining visions and thoughts about an art project. Wrote yesterday's entry between 10:30pm and 4:30am, slept til 8:30, up and going. Then a nap. On waking from the nap I was more tired than going into it. An hour and a half til time to leave. In my mind I see: change clothes and drive for an hour. My inner tire went flat. Strolled to the refrigerator and picked up three carrots, two for Donkey Jack, one for me. He has a cow trail between the back fence and the row of rhododendron that shade him and hide him. I can't see him in there unless he is moving. I stepped out into the field and called him, he took his time, walking in slow donkey time, moved along the trail until he came into the open nearest where I stood. He slowly turned, stepped into the meadow in the way cats walk, watching where he put his feet, looked up, saw me waiting for him, ran a short distance and walked the rest of the way to me and extended his nose. Today, he took a little time, because he came from a ways up the meadow to the east. He stepped out from the rhododendron maybe fifty feet away, looked at me, ran maybe ten feet and turned back into the rhododendron to the trail, walking the rest of the way on the trail walking donkey slow. I've been studying that ever since. He knows me as the one who brings him treats once a day.

sandy mason and willard gayheart

I wondered if he checked himself from appearing overzealous for a bite of carrot. That didn't make a lot of sense, but I'm looking into a donkey's mind suspicious about attributing reason to a person without the frontal lobe in the brain, projecting. But how else start looking for understanding? It's a place to start. I do know the four-leggeds are vain about their appearance, leading me to believe they are more aware than I am of speaking with movement, body language. My feeling is that Jack recognized me, felt an urge to hurry, to run, expressing his initial excitement that his daily visitor is here. Then maybe he caught himself  being too obvious. Slow down, Jack tells himself, attempt to be cool, Jacques. Maybe Jack had been snoozing too, and my voice calling his name woke him from a siesta. Possibly his burst of speed was checked by reminding himself this is no emergency, it's not a dog in the meadow to chase away, it's the two-legged with carrots. Walking is how a donkey gets from one place to another. I noticed in its slow journey along the trail that it walks naturally at the same pace a human walks naturally. This may have something to do with why donkeys have been human companions for carrying things, like the bed of a pickup, in the time when humans walked, and in parts of the world where people still walk.

scott freeman and edwin lacy

I noticed when he extended his nose to me, it wasn't to take a carrot, but to touch my hand with his nose. It seemed like the gesture was more to touch my hand than to sniff it. After his nose had touched my hand, then he was ready for the carrot. I'm seeing humility, natural humility. It's automatic in Jack, as automatic as being wary, quick to react. The humility I see in Jack is like the humility I saw in Jr Maxwell. Jack doesn't know it is humility and Jr didn't either. A donkey naturally defers to a human, like, "Go ahead, brother. You first." Possibly it is in their make-up as a herd animal. And as a creature of the herd, maybe, like us, the donkeys are aware of their physical appearance as well as the appearance of their gestures, as we are too. Anthropomorphizing, projecting self onto others, is the word I've been looking for. I read the four-leggeds by my understanding of our human behavior and thinking, not that they are lesser versions of us, but by evolution, that we came through them and we are next for them. At the same time I project by anthropomorphizing, I am aware they are not lesser versions of me. They understand each other through all species of animals by body language. I can scare the shit out of a dog that knows me for its friend just by the way I walk toward it. They are not lesser versions of me, but we have a great deal in common where our minds, learning and understanding, are concerned. They lack reason, but so do we.

 

scott freeman and edwin lacy

I'm seeing that Jack is wanting to know me like I'm wanting to know him. We are becoming acquainted eye-to-eye, the way the four-leggeds get to know each other. I want not to project onto a donkey dog behavior, but can use much I've learned from communicating with dogs. If Jack had been a dog earlier today, he'd have run from the time he saw me. The difference is that seeing me set Jack in motion, just not into full gallop. A dog is a pack animal, a donkey a herd animal. Very different. Pack animals are about hunting and stalking, while herd animals are about grazing and running faster than pack animals when they have to. Perhaps it is natural for a pack animal to run toward its subject of interest and for a herd animal to run from it. I'm wondering if Jack caught himself doing something uncharacteristically African wild ass, something maybe he thought the human expected, then remembered this is not a human that goes to him with expectation. Possibly, in donkey mind he is with me all the time he is walking. Running is response to fear, I imagine, in donkey DNA. In terms of our communication, I feel like walking was his expression of feeling no fear. He was approaching me of his own will, no fear involved. I'm reading it that his hesitation with me is easing, the fear that inspired his hesitation. Perhaps, too, running to me, before, might have had fear in it, anxious, afraid of the human, but he seems friendly so far.

scott freeman, edwin lacy, sandy mason

I'm even wondering if today's consciously slow pace approaching his new human friend in the meadow might be what follows after yesterday's game to see if he could make me jump, running at me full-gallop and stopping less than a foot in front of me, from running to stop in front of my nose. That I did not even flinch or blink an eye told him I trust him not to run over me. He used his fear response, running, to see if he could scare me. He did not intend to hurt me, and now he knows that I know he is not going to hurt me. A few days ago while I was sitting on the ground and he was grazing around me, he turned his backside to me, up close, three different times, keeping an eye on me all the time he's grazing. I was thinking that by now we're friends and he is not going to kick me. But I have a fairly good idea that now that we're friends, it's time to get to know each other. In a way, we're beginning to learn each other's language. Like if the African wild ass speaks Swahili, then Jack will teach me Swahili while I teach him English. If yesterday's comic lunge was also an expression of his fear, I felt like it was the end of his fear, not the total end, but a big part of it settled. He doesn't seem to like me putting my hands on his face, so today I didn't touch his face or make any gesture toward his face with my hands. He seemed a little surprised, and seemed to prefer my hands on his back or neck. He likes for me to stand beside him and bump him, reach my hand over his back and pull him to me like a hug. Today I leaned over his back during the hug. Donkey Jack likes a hug.

I've put up pictures of last year's Skeeter show to illustrate what was going on in my mind, feeling guilty for not going, telling myself I have a right not to go, wanting to be there so badly, looking at driving for an hour, then again for an hour; the thought of it defeated me. I didn't have what it took to hold my head up for the next five hours and pay attention.  

remembering Minnie

 

 

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