Lessons from a Feline Gaze

On presence and the art of attention

Here is Stella, instructing us on how to look at something we’ve never seen before. As our resident cat-comedian with a gift for irony, she is wondering whether this item — a conductor’s baton — can be worked in as “A” material for her next vaudeville show. The baton is also about to become a tooth sharpener, but we’ll explore that in a moment. Here, Stella is elevating attention itself into an art form, and teaching us to do the same. If that idea doesn’t resonate with you, please find your inner still-point and a moment to drink in her lucent, emerald gaze. Rather than focus on this as a cat picture, consider whether you can observe her with the same total presence she is bringing instinctively to her moment. If so, you might be the newest of her disciples.

Openness is an unusual response to the experience of not knowing something. Simply inhabiting curiosity can feel uncontained and uncontrolled, and uncertainty can generate fear that is difficult to tolerate. When the response to not knowing, however, is to overlay it with what we have experienced of it before, the possibilities for discovery and a fresh outcome become congested.

Stella is not only wondering here about a range of possibilities, or whether and how to shift her field of vision to experience an alternate or multi-dimensional perspective. She is completely immersed in the moment as well, fully present in her lack of knowing without even trying. It’s from this place that the experience of her new tooth sharpener is about to become ecstatic.

Whatever ecstasy is for you, it is a birthright to experience it and to exist secure in the trust that you deserve it. Ecstasy is also extraordinarily out of reach for swaths of humanity crushed under oppression of all sorts, including a consensus reality convinced that nothing can be done about it. Observing this chaotic world of abject suffering from inside the feeling of its overwhelming unfairness brings, into sharp focus, the reality that we have been widely taught to victimize ourselves with that exact feeling of powerlessness to stop it.

My adventures suggest that inhabiting curiosity with all aspects of existence — from the incredibly beautiful, to the incredibly painful, and everything in between — is a critical element in tilling the soil of our collective experience towards a state of healing, of flow, and of renewal for all people without exception. What if we were to allow ourselves, like Stella, to be drawn into a state of wondering about the range of possibilities, and whether and how to shift our field of vision to experience multi-dimensional perspectives and inspire us towards action, any action? No matter how incremental, action emerging from this conscious inner-space will be imbued with the same power that animates Stella’s luminescent eyes. Look deeply into and through these eyes, and you will see a vision of emerald gemstones releasing themselves from the earth, releasing us from the illusory powerlessness that is our calcified tyranny.