Inuit "Sila," and the still point of the turning world

If we feel underlying unease, anxiety sometimes, about being our individual selves in a world out there that seems not-us, separate from us, then maybe we are looking for a way of being that is more unified with the rest of our world. (Not everyone feels that sense of unease, I'm sure - or they sense it but don't know what it is?)

It's one thing to understand intellectually that we are the same stuff as the rest of the universe, just assembled differently for a life-time. It may be another thing to live and feel that oneness with It All and Now.

 
According to Emma Thompson's daughter Gaia,  above right, who's been campaigning with her mum to try to protect the Arctic sea ice, the Inuit word "sila" means "weather;" but it also means "oneness" and "consciousness."

Ms Thompson remarks "says it all, really." Er...says what?

Well, it suggests to me the Inuit culture has built into its language the understanding that being at one with the weather, the turning seasons, is the same as being truly conscious, aware of what we are. At one with the world.

Understanding and being with the range of meanings in "sila" is how we feel ourselves to be part of and the same as the rest of the universe - if we will allow ourselves to feel it, to live in that state. 

So much can prevent us from being at one, leaving us uneasy, insecure in our separateness, scared by our own mortality. So much boils down to our being "distracted from distraction by distraction."

I don't want to idealise the Inuit people - I don't know much about them for starters, and they may be just as over-busy and preoccupied with inessential but appealing stuff as we are, though I doubt it. 

We live where we do and as we do. Nevertheless, even in amongst our stuff-filled headlong lives, we can make little corners of consciousness in which feel an underlying sense of unity with the universe. We are at one anyway, all the time, but we hide our awareness of it. 

Autumn is a good time to feel part of the endless change, part of the weather, the seasons, the turning world. May that feeling help us to find the still point that is changeless change.