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Active Sensing, Tawny the Magpie, and Ryan First Diver
I often speak of what I refer to as tactical opportunism. This phrase describes both a practice and a mode of attentional awareness with which we may discover and acquire uncommon intelligence, protections, skills, abilities and other benefits… by remaining intimately aware at all times of both unexpected threats and new or previously unimagined opportunities in every moment and situation.
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As a practice (or perhaps a mode of being), it consistently yields unexpected rewards when it is oriented toward intimate relation with living places and nonhuman beings. It was absolutely crucial to our distant ancestors who existed in a state of identity (distributed selfhood) with endlessly diverse natural signals and relationships. It is a mode of heuristic optimism which is, at best, poorly understood by most humans who prefer to worry or mourn when relationships or situations depart from habitually familiar forms or expectations.
In nature, nearly all creatures must remain in such a state at all times in order to survive. This means that they avoid merely rule-based or habitual behaviors in favor of what we might call ‘active sensing’. In human culture, lulled by habit and…
