We live our lives surrounded by invisible limitations; what is socially acceptable is dictated by an ancient, ambiguous, unquestionable source. These uncanny barriers can sometimes be obvious and bolstered by practicality or logic, and other times their roots are unclear. The result is that they tend to slip beneath the radar.
The simple absurdity of eating dirt was a huge novelty for me. Despite all its connotations as an act committed by children who don’t know any better, or as an unhappy accident, I experienced it as a surprisingly wholesome act of mindfulness. It’s impossible to remain on autopilot when raising a piece of clay to your lips, and it inspired a kind of wakefulness in me – as well as the kind of rebellious joy that comes with doing something that you’re not supposed to. As the tasting workshop went on, I found myself better able to discern between the different flavours and textures. As my descriptive vocabulary grew, so did my capacity for noticing nuances in my experience of eating the earth.
I believe it’s worth trying to eliminate the “binary preset” from my experience of things. Instead of having an experience and immediately designating it as either good or bad, I’ve been trying to nurture in my life the concept of a more ambiguous spectrum – to me this means escaping the X-Y axis of reductionist judgement and trying to allow for a more open, 3-dimensional perception of the world.
masharu’s workshop enabled me to practice a kind of mindful inconvenience, purposefully acting in a way that I have been programmed not to, by any number of influences. For me, this was a hugely liberating act that inspires me to look at closer, more domestic sources for these “programs” that I am unknowingly subscribing to. What shouldn’t I eat, what should I wear, how should I act in a classroom, these could all be important questions to address. However, I want to be the one addressing them, rather than taking the answers I was taught for granted. I want to nurture a state of constant revision, learning, and questioning the world around me.
If the availability of the option to eat, and even benefit from, soil has slipped under my radar, what else has?
