Thanks, cwi555. I'd never heard the term "owl eyes" before; and, I was not aware the Samari had a similar technique.
I sure didn't mean to imply that Tom originated the concept. In fact, he never claimed that at all. Instead, he said he was taught the technique by an elderly Native American man he called Grandfather. I only meant to say he was the one who brought it to the general attention of the American public.
Now, that's VERY cool. I would think a thread about YOUR Grandather's teachings would be very well received and appreciated!!!
The Iroquois story/mythology of Owl Eyes translated to English:
“Raweno, the everything maker, was busy creating various animals. He was working on Rabbit, and Rabbit was saying: “I want nice long legs and long ears like a deer, and sharp fangs and claws like bobcat”.
“I do them up the way they want to be; I give them what they ask for,” said Raweno. He was working rabbits hind legs making them long, the way Rabbit ordered.
Owl, still unformed was sitting in a tree nearby and waiting his turn. He was saying what he wanted.
Raweno said be quiet. turn around, no one is allowed to watch me work.
Owl refused. “Nobody can forbid me to watch, nobody can order me to close my eyes.
This angered Raweno. Who grabbed the owl, stuffed his head deep into his body, shook him until his eyes grew big with fright, pulling his ears until they were sticking up at both sides of his head.
“There that will teach you” Raweno said. “Now you won’t be able to crane your neck to watch things you shouldn’t be watching, and big ears so you can hear when I tell you what to do, big eyes, but not so big that you can watch me, you will only be awake in the night, I work by the day. your feathers will be grey like this”, as Raweno rubbed owl with mud as punishment for its disobedience.
Owl flew off in fright, and Rabbit ran away half formed afraid of Raweno’s wrath”.
The story is considerably longer. The translations many, along with some variances that are tribal based. The lessons are universal.
There are many religions, mythologies etc around the world that address much of the same thoughts in context of the specific society that gave them their birth. The wisdom of them all also tends to be multilayered as one conclusion, opens another question, with an answer that builds upon the whole.
In context of this thread and your post, the majority of people see without seeing, and hear without hearing, and think without thought. They also do not use all the sensory input available to them.
The average human can track 4 real time sensory tracks at any one time. With training, many can up that to 6-7, with some of the more aware and trained minds getting upwards of 10+. For instance, a hot pot of soup over a fire. They can detect the heat, the smell, the visual and the background environment. They could hear a stereo above that, but could not tell you what it was playing during the time their primary attention was focused on the soup.
What Mr Brown describes as point vision is a small part of that. The mind is constantly assailed with information in everyday life. People concatenate and attenuate that information into a base picture their mind can accept at any given point in time. In the process of doing this, the vast majority of that data gets overlooked. Vision like all the other senses learns to focus only on what the mind as a whole says it needs to know. The same for the rest of the senses.
It is in that focus that the problem lies. As mentioned above, a trained mind can get upwards of 10 + layers of awareness. To do this requires a lack of point focus, or empty mind. That doesn’t mean a stupid mind, it means getting into the ‘zone’, with actions that are based not on thought, but through perception. Competition shooters for instance practice this regularly, though many do not realize they do. Especially the speed related competitions.
That is the difference, losing focus to gain it if that makes any sense to you.
To go with the multilayered approach, a person also has to train for the perception based reactions. To use the competition shooter example again, the shooter is aware of the next target/threat even while being aware of the target they are currently pulling the trigger on, while releasing the move to that new target to muscle memory, at the same time reaching for the next magazine and being aware of the people that surround them, and the expected function of the firearm on top of that.
Race car drivers, football players, police, etc, many professions do this without being aware they do it. Yet if they put their conscience mind to it, they would fall apart at the task.
This is where training comes in. No one got good at any given competitive sport without training which is the first key to situational awareness. That training usually breaks down the overall sport/profession into its constituent parts, then rebuilds them into a whole with a purpose. A similar concept to Marine Corps/military training if you will.
You can train for situational aware training in the same manner. When you relax into the zone, you start recognizing the information your mind normally drops off. You’re not actually seeing out of each individual eye, or hearing out of each individual ear, but rather allowing the entirety of the information provided by all to be assimilated by a mind that is like water.
The problem then becomes what to take in as there is a finite amount of information a given person can accept by any method at any given time. Therein is the primary lesson of Owl Eyes. Many of us take in information we don’t need for situational awareness, but filter out information we do need. It was not necessary for Owl to know how the rabbit, or any other creature was formed, nor was it necessary to observe that particular act as the end result would become reality.
Impatience, a cluttered mind, lack of focus/self discipline, etc lead Owl astray and eventually to being doomed to a nocturnal life, so goes the story.
Learning what it is you do need to take in is the second key to situational awareness. However, that leads us back to square one. We must first unlearn what we have spent our lives learning in order to clear our minds to accept those things which we do need to know for that purpose. Effectively clearing one’s mind of distractions, and through that creating the condition of what the Samurai called MuShin or mind like water. A state of mind that reflects a clear and undistorted image of your surroundings like the reflection from perfectly clear water without ripples.
The whole story of Owl Eyes incorporates the second Zen/Samurai concept of “mind like the moon” as well. Both Mushin and tsuki no kokoro have to be taken together. The later one “mind like the moon” describes the state of mind reached when the first (Mushin) is accomplished. This is a state of acute global awareness where the mind observes every detail as the moon shines on everything without prejudice or preference. That last part is the key element to mind like the moon or not observing Raweno at work. The mind observes, but is unaffected by what it observes. No state of panic, or worry, just simply observation until such time as both must be tied together to counter a threat. A threat while in this state of mind will show as clearly as the sun or moon.
Consider this, most auto accidents happen within five miles of your home. It is when we get comfortable with a given environment that we begin to lose focus and practice prejudicial and preferential assumptions and habits. We assume because an area was always safe (such as our front yard, or our neighborhood) that it always will be, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Our surroundings rarely change dramatically, it is usually the subtle changes missed that cause us the most problems.
It would take years to convey all that was shown and taught to me in this regards, but that should be enough to get the idea.