Sunday, December 13, 2009

Musings on cleaning the cat litter

Ok so my stupid lupus is flaring and all I wanted to do today was to lie face down and drool and take painkillers, but that seemed like a defeatist attitude so I got up and cleaned the cats’ bathroom. They have the en suite bathroom in a spare bedroom and it tends to get hazy from litter. Clay dust gets kicked in the corners and clings to the fabric shower curtain. In his excitement at being alive, the young one sometimes misses and hits the puppy pads under the trays. In other words, it’s a barn if I don’t tend it every once and a while.

So I creaked and groaned as I leaned down to muck out litter boxes and scrub the floor in spite of my inflamed extremities. I also got to thinking about the scientific method. Why cat litter brought this about is a mystery, but there you have it. And I wondered when did we, as a society of humans, decide that the scientific method was the be-all end-all of analysis? When did it become the mock-able thing to do to listen to your intuition, your gut, that little voice in your head that warns in a very visceral way?

Everybody always says to listen to your gut, but then when you do, you often get chided. Try not taking a plane because you have a gut feeling. Everyone thinks you’re a nutter, especially when the plane later arrives without a hitch. Well, true, the rest of the passengers got there, but maybe you would have tripped in the jetway and broken your leg or something. It’s not always an air disaster that you get warned about.

I think intuitive knowledge got shoved aside when so-called modern medicine came into being, and medieval physicians did away with their main competition, the local wise woman, by burning them as witches. Away with herbalism and energy healing. In with medicine and the industry it became. Away with anyone who had intuitive abilities. In with those who embraced legalism and evidentiary proof.

It became unsafe and dangerous to profess any intuitive ability or inherent knowledge of healing or counsel. It could literally get you killed.

It still can in certain cultures.

There needs to be a balance. Sure, we can make good use of the scientific method of empirical evidence and logic when we seek certain information. But as a culture we’ve almost totally lost sight of intuitive knowledge. We’ve lost sight of ‘just knowing’. I think when we access both methods, and blend them all up, we really get information.

And I think that as we near 2012, the tipping point in our civilization’s evolution, we are starting to open up to using intuitive information once more. Thank God.

No comments:

Post a Comment