“ The only true voyage…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes… to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.”

(Marcel Proust as quoted by Ed Yong in The Immense World, p.26).

Welcome to the word Umwelt.

This is a new word for me. It’s of German origin, coined by a zoologist  Uexkull in 1909, to describe the unique sensory bubble that all creatures inhabit—it is the distinctive surround of one’s perceptual world. You have an umwelt. I have an umwelt. Your dog has one and so does the snake hiding in the grass or the moth that lands on a bright light at night (read more in the Immense World by Ed Yong or listen to this podcast). Each umwelt is vastly different and uniquely suited by the tasks that are required for surviving and thriving. Our perception is shaped by our unique perceptual surround and we can expand our perception by allowing wonder to surprise us, to open us.

For the next three weeks, I invite you to join me on a journey into the world of wonder through the natural, microscopic, and cosmic world. Together we will expand our umwelt through wonder to explore the novel and the seemingly impossible. As we meet what seems unimaginable and unknown, we can expand our own capacities and begin to dream beyond our boundaries. Our umwelt can expand to help us live more fully from our true, alive home. Each week the audio meditation that follows will invite you to enter into a facet of our world (natural, microscopic, and cosmic) and to use your own reflection to enrich and open you.

So for this week let’s explore the natural world.

Did you know that spiders can sense the earth’s electric fields and ride them when ballooning? It was once thought that it was the wind that carried the spider for miles on their silk strands, but they use electric fields. They take off from a point and ride the earth’s electric field. Now that’s amazing! You’ve likely heard about butterflies migrating each year. Did you know that many animals have magnetic maps that imprint within them to return them home to their birthplace, a ‘natal homing’ instinct—birds, turtles, moths— as well as the using of the celestial sights as their guide? That butterflies taste through their feet, that blue whales and Asian elephants can communicate over long distances with low-pitched infrasonic calls, and that some hummingbirds sing an ultrasonic song that we can’t even hear?

Ed Yong states, “When we pay attention to other animals, our own world expands and deepens. Listen to treehoppers, and you realize that plants are thrumming with silent vibrational songs. Watch a dog on a walk, and you see that cities are crisscrossed with skeins of scent that carry the biographies and histories of their residents. Watch a swimming seal, and you understand that the water is full of tracks and trails” (p.15). The world is so much more immensely amazing and it is around us all of the time. Might we find greater aliveness in our own life if we take some time to expand beyond our own umwelt to try to feel, sense, see, experience the world from another perspective— to literally sense beyond into the unseen spaces around us through the natural world of wonder?

Take a few minutes today to stop, notice, and reflect on an aspect of the natural world— open your sense perception beyond into the thrumming, vibrational, magnetically resonant, scent filled diffuse and diverse world. Touch a tree. Is there a hum you hadn’t noticed? Let your eyes see behind you or above and below. Can you see without seeing through your actual eyes? Maybe, just maybe, your bare feet will sense the magnetic resonance of the earth or the subtle transfer of electrons that bring us back into balance.  What wonder-full reflection can encourage you to experience the world with just a bit more openness and curiosity to shift your perception, to shift your perspective.

I invite you to use wonder from the natural world to enliven you this week. Choose one practice and follow it into our wonder-full world.  

In expectation,

Annmarie