Barefoot Soul
Arriving at the entry gates to Arches National Park in the Utah mid-east one gets a sense of grandeur even before its true nature reveals itself. The entrance is kind of akin to entering the Batcave, as the park sports a grand but concealing entry. But even still, I had arrived a little already overawed, having spent time over the past month in some extraordinary national parks: Sequoia, Yosemite, Olympic and only days prior, the other worldly and wondrous wilderness of Yellowstone National Park. And so a part of me was expecting to be slightly numb to, or perhaps fatigued by, the specialness of Arches. Nevertheless, I was still enthusiastic, as I often am when embarking on my own personal undiscovered frontiers. Where this enthusiasm derives its energy is somewhat elusive to me, but I am delightedly grateful for it.
Arches is home to thousands of natural red-hued sandstone arches and many other formations that hover about governing this desert landscape. As I meandered my way through the park, both driving and walking, I got a sense of not being alone. Of course, I wasn’t actually alone—there are countless other tourists visiting on any given day. But there was a sense of being with or in relation to the rock formations as opposed to being separate and simply viewing them.
And so my mind wondered…and wandered…as I spent time exploring the wonders all around me and then those that formed within me. I was captured by the characteristics and the character of these awesome red rock structures, for they seemed to me to be animated in some way. Almost like sentient beings, only much slower in their movements and development than is ordinarily expected of sentient life. I surmised that this strange phenomenon was a result of their radiant red colour variations under the shimmering desert sun, their intricate structures and their layering of sediment all against a sometimes bright and deep blue but mostly grey sky backdrop on this particular day. It was as though they were designed and constructed by an architect with intentionality and purpose, not the result of incidental natural forces over hundreds of millions of years. They evoked in my imagination stories of ancestors under a spell to remain seemingly frozen in stone for purposes unknowable to the contemporary mind.
***
Quietly the spirit and beauty of the mountains
fill my heart
I open to the awe and
sense of discovery
I feel free and alive and at peace
And nearby, I hear God Saying
hello
Do you want to play!
Stark King 1945-1996
The above poem was inscribed in stone on the ridge top walk I hiked on a mountain in Aspen, Colorado. The words' sentiment captured me in the moment, reminding me of something important.
***
And so I played.
In Arches I transported myself back to an imaginary pre-scientific time, when Native American tribes (which are the Ute and Paiute in this region) were custodian to these lands. A time when peoples were more directly connected to and unified with their environment. When there was greater opportunity to listen inwardly to one’s own voice of truth—that of the spirit connection within. I could understand how this land’s ancestors might have seen sentience of some kind in the sandstone figures, deities too as well as portals to other dimensions. I found myself doing that now, even with my overly rational and scientific mind competing with that of my mystical.
Perhaps they were in fact once alive like humans, transfigured spirits sent to communicate and guide. Why not? There are so many mysteries and wonders as yet unknown to us. And many known and unappreciated too, of course. For example, life itself. That the world exists in such perfect harmony for life to exist and for consciousness to then develop. It’s potentially mind blowing...for the blowable mind. And then the extraordinariness of the common cow: it creates beef simply from eating grass and drinking water! (after the rearing on mother's milk of course, another incredibly extraordinary wonder). This is truly awe inspiring to me, and would be unfathomable had I not had the opportunity to directly experience it and to consciously contemplate it. And there is still much direct experience yet to discover. I imagine Natives in altered states of consciousness may have brought their environment alive in yet other ways too.
***
I thought I was doing something pretty unremarkable, not difficult nor too far afield from the conventional. It was at first curious and then fascinating and then a little disturbing, once I contemplated it…to experience the majority of people’s reactions and responses to my walking barefoot on a trail in Arches National Park, the Delicate Arch trail.
I think this would have been relatively unnoticed in Australia. But here in the U.S. there was a marked cultural divergence.
Looks of surprise. Stares as though I was some kind of freak. And many comments of various degrees of wonder and admonishment:
“God bless you.”
“Wow, you're brave.”
“Look, he’s going barefoot!”
“How does it feel?”
“Is it easier going barefoot?
One child asked her mother as they passed: “Are you allowed to wear no shoes in the park?”
Some people spoke to me like I was an idiot, like they knew something that I wasn’t privy to: the miraculous benefits of shoes!
A man, on approaching me, perhaps not thinking I could hear him, said with a tone of subtle disdain in his voice, “Look at this guy here”, without any contact with me or acknowledgment of me. Not even any eye contact, just a comment to the people he was with.
And from an especially admonishing woman after staring with a look of disgust on her face, “Well, you do you.”
When her young son asked her if he could take his shoes off too—which momentarily brought a big smile of vindication to my heart—he was met with a terse and quick reply, “No!”
It was as though I was walking naked.
I wondered what it must evoke in people’s minds. Is it a simple judgement? Or disgust even? Envy, inferiority or insecurity perhaps? Is it a syndrome of hyper-consumerism and its massive multi-mass-mediated brainwashing arm? Or could it inspire unexpected curiosity?
Is it that thing that happens when other people challenge the status quo, no matter how absurd that ‘status’ may be? Is it mistrust or disdain for the outsider, ‘the other’?
I started to begin to wonder if it was all in my mind, a product of me being self-conscious? For it very slightly started to grate on me. I had the thought for a few brief moments to wear shoes on my next walk because the feeling of uninvited attention was challenging a part of me. But, no, the continuum of stares and comments were not to be misunderstood. They were real. My considered response was to invoke my authenticity mantra to follow my deep self’s yearning despite the potential disapproval of others or myself even.
***
I have for a long time preferred to be barefoot, especially on natural ground. I primarily just love the physicality and viscerality of the ground under my feet. It must have started as a child, before it was conditioned out of me, to have direct contact with things. I often find myself touching and grasping things in my hand as I pass them by, mostly subconsciously. Being barefoot more and more in my life was reinvigorated when an influential therapist in my life encouraged conscious earthing as a means for grounding oneself. It made intuitive sense to me and moreover it had the suggested effect. This was later reinforced by a Youtube documentary called The Earthing Movie that resonated with me. It postulates the health benefits of direct contact with the earth. While it may have been largely supported by anecdotal and pseudoscientific postulations, it nevertheless mainlined a direct path to some deeper part of me that knows the truth without the need for scientific or evidence based research.
***
Walking along this trail with these ancient giants together with my fellow humans got me thinking about the conditioning and fear we can experience. Some of us more so than others, however, and with deeper levels of entrenchment and commitment to fear based and ill-fitting conditioning. It was so strange to the majority of people to see someone barefoot in what I considered a very mild terrain. Sure, there were some gravelly parts of the track, but for the most part it was sandy dirt and smooth stone. Still, even the occasional sharp shocks to my feet by inhospitable stones were enlivening albeit amidst the short shots of small pain.
Admittedly, I had a chuckle at and to myself after witnessing and judging many of those fellow humans doing something that I deemed insane: nearing the edge of a rock cliff face for a selfie under Delicate Arch. Without any seeming dismay or fear they lined up, while I was feeling personally heroic to just have made it up there. I am terrified of heights, with big cliff drop experiences eliciting a strong psychological and physiological response in me. We are all conditioned in some way.
There were, nevertheless, two shining exceptions amongst the throngs who connected with my bare feet. One was an early twenties female, also barefoot, who said to me as she saw me approaching “He gets it”. She also agreed about the seductive feeling of the rock and sand under foot. And the other was a tour guide who fist bumped me in a kind of comradery with acknowledgment of my barefoot philosophy.
As I continued to walk and explore and contemplate I was reminded of this passage I read a month or so prior in Gareth Higgins’ How Not To Be Afraid that has stayed with me:
“A life wasted on protecting ourselves from things that can't harm the soul is a misdirected life, perhaps even a squandered one. A life wasted on protecting parts of us that don't matter from things that aren't real is an unlived life.”
These words stayed with me because the more I get to clear the clutter from my real, deep self…my core or soul or higher self or whatever it is…the more I know that this is how I want to live. More than this, the only way I can live if I am to have any peace or sustained joy in life. It is the kind of energy I want guiding me. Of course, it is not always easy to walk this path, with so many conditioned and dominant voices in my head competing for airtime. Which is hyper-informed and hyper-amplified by the pervasive and insidious media all around. And so I seek to practice living freely from my soul, to internalise this way, until it becomes the new story, the new mythology.
I wonder if my barefoot attraction is connected to my philosophical penchant to live more from a child’s perspective and way of being than the more socially acceptable and dominant culture of becoming an ‘adult’?
The feeling of the world under my feet is distinctly different from wearing shoes. The direct contact with the textures and shapes and temperatures and contours, even if occasionally unpleasant, beckons me. I feel more in my body and more connected to the world. And that’s what my soul wants. My soul is curious as fuck. It just wants more and more direct experience. As unmediated an experience as is possible.
I suspect that my soul doesn’t differentiate or discern necessarily between experiences but in the feelings they evoke. I think the soul’s communication platform is feeling. And not just feelings as in, sad or happy, grief or anger, etcetera. But that felt sense: the often deep and not easily describable whole-of-body internal experience of the world. Feeling is the language of the soul. But it’s not always a clear channel. It takes regular conscious tuning.
And the more direct experience I have with the world and with myself, the more in contact I am with my soul and the closer I am to the mystical divine. Which isn't necessarily mystical, but just authentic living.
A mystic is someone who seeks direct, personal experience of the divine or ultimate reality, often through contemplation, meditation or other spiritual practices. They aim to go beyond intellectual understanding and connect with something deeper, often referred to as God, the transcendent or spiritual truth. But this is applicable to the everyday too, not just of divine revelation.
I want as little rubber between me and the ultimate reality or spiritual truth as is possible.
I think the unconscious use of the camera also shields from direct experience. I often catch myself going straight for the camera before even allowing time for contemplation of a thing I am experiencing. I was sitting in the back of my car on the cliff of Big Sur, Highway 1, California looking out into the great and wild Pacific ocean. A car pulled up with four travellers. They got out of their car and before even stopping to look, held cameras between themselves and the scenery, snapped and left, all within the space of two minutes. And so I judged, albeit briefly, before feeling my own shame arise for the countless times I have done the same thing. It isn’t the actual camera that separates me from the experience, but my lack of conscious contact in the moment, which the camera is of course the purveyor of.
I read somewhere that those who are more inclined to obsessively photo document their experiences on Instagram or other social media have greater difficulty in being in contact with themselves. They use the protective sheath of the camera lens to shield them from direct experience with reality and emotions and ultimately themselves. The suggestion is that direct experience fosters too great an intimacy than someone is willing or able to bear.
The false stories and beliefs we harbour and the inauthentic ways of living we opt for also shield us from intimacy and direct experience. I and most certainly all of you do this to varying degrees. We have been trained, indoctrinated to do so. Since birth. Before birth even. It's passed on in our biology from our parents and then culturally and socially in our development. Our livelihood then seems dependent on it. The economy is absolutely reliant on it. But this is a constructed and controlling mythology.
And so I write this reflection as a kind of manifesting agent, a prayer of sorts, an imploring of my deeper self to more often than not seek direct experience. It's an intention to be more consistently conscious. To live and engage the world, as much as is feasible, from my child’s mind, and as Zen philosophy puts it, from Beginners Mind. I seek to continually uncondition myself from the false prophets and manipulative mythologies that dominate. I’m not sure what the reasons are exactly for me to seek out this way of being, but I suspect they reside somewhere in the realms of soul and emancipation.
