Natural Realms and Techno Realms

My day to day life consists of care-taking for 5 cows, 300 chickens during peak ‘chicken season’, driving a small sized tractor up and down a 10-acre field to knock down weeds, fix the tractor when it breaks, fix the implements when they break, plant the seeds for fall harvest, make sure all our veggies plants are watered, clean out our garages to maintain an acceptable level of organization and cleanliness, help out when I can with the contractor who is fixing up the farmhouse, check in with co-workers and my mentor via phone and email throughout the days, keep records of my work and what I do and for how long, make sure to read ‘Man on the Threshold’ for our bi-weekly Friday book study, and so on and so forth.

There’s also egg collecting, making coffee, our Tuesday farm meetings, Thursday Self-Ed group, lawn mowing and some laughter, tears and head-aches sprinkled in throughout it all.

This is a journey no doubt. One that I was called to tread upon. A calling to my soul. Singing sweet songs of unlocking inner power, the power to be a sovereign being, the power to break through the chaos of my own inner workings and push through to a greater knowledge and wisdom of my own being.

So. Two Realms. Natural Realm and Technological Realm. My work here at the farm is dealing with the Natural Realm as I like to call it. My work here also deals with the technological, or techno realm, for short. I imagine and pray that you who are reading this already has a good idea and picture of what the natural realm is, its function and its purpose. So I will not dive into that, at the moment. The techno realm lives at my computer desk which sits in the same room as my bed, where I go to rest at night. It also exists on my cellphone, to which is a small device that folds in half and allows direct communication between people via words and voice. I have a flip phone - the old one that you once knew from a time before smartphones.

I interact through these two mediums of technology (computer and phone), on a daily basis just as I do with the Natural Realm of farming. So, we have a natural and artificial realm being interacted with here. I do the dance, the singing and the balancing of these two realms. Waking up, checking in with my own body, mind and spirit first thing upon rising for the day. I do this by stepping outside, putting myself in direct communication with nature, taking deep breathes and allowing myself to take in the fresh air, sounds of birds singing and the rising sun… my mind thanks me, and I thank myself. This gives me life, strength and courage to go about my day. The joy of nature, what a wonderful thing! Medicine, it can truly be.

I then return to the modern home and turn on my electronics to be able to receive communication from my mentor and colleagues. I then prepare myself for the seemingly always surprising information to be funneled directly to my brain system. I check emails, text messages, missed phone calls and listen to voicemails. I get an ‘update’ about the happenings and adjust my day according to the new information streaming through my consciousness.

From the Natural Realm to the Techno Realm, my mind shifts from one to the other. After ‘checking in’ and getting a ‘software update’, I make a plan, gear up and set out to take on the first task of the day - chores. And so it is, back to the Natural Realm. Shifting gears. This shift usually lasts anywhere from 2 minutes to 8 hours… some days are filled with pressing new things that come up… “out of chicken feed!”, “change in priority!”, “100 new chickens on the way!”, “we’ve got to cultivate the fields asap!”, etcetera, etcetera. Surprises, these determine how often I am at the phone. On a good day, I can be away from my phone all day and work without incoming calls. On other days, it is continuous calling and texting - shifting constantly from Techno Realm to Natural Realm and back again, over and over again.

The thing about all this and the reason I’m writing all this is that time and external realities are perceived in a different light when working primarily with either the Natural Realm or the Techno Realm. What a human being can view and ‘experience’ through a computer screen in a 10-minute window can be exponentially greater than what one can view and experience in the real world. Images, videos, sights, sounds, lights, stories, drama, etc… can all be overwhelmingly compacted into a 10-minute timeframe. Our sense of what we can accomplish in 10-minutes in the real world can become inflated through this conditioning of the mind when subjected to too much life being lived in the Techno Realm… attention span can decrease, frustration may ensue and thus our communication and relationships with others are affected. This constant shifting of experiencing reality through both the Techno and Natural Realms can become exhausting, mentally and physically as I am constantly adjusting my own outlooks on what I can actually accomplish on a given day given all of the information I am receiving from the natural world, emails, phone calls, voicemails and text messages, the plants that cry for water, the animals that let me know when they need to move to new grass and the storms that warns I may need to shift work for the day. There is much happening on a daily basis when one works in tandem with both the Natural Realm and the Techno Realm. It sometimes, simply feels to be too much to take on. Sometimes my head simply hurts from all the information coming in. So much to process. So much to do. So much to plan. So much to think about. It is, sometimes, in summary, a lot.

Our lady cow on the farm who helped lead the way yesterday for the rest of the herd to a new field with new grass.