Ours is a world very unlike that our ancestors knew. We live, sleep, and often work in enclosed buildings made of steel and sheetrock, sometimes hundreds of feet off the ground. We wake to the artificial chime of a blue light emitting device that we peer into for numerous hours a day. We control the temperature of our surroundings to rarely be cooler than 60 or warmer than 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
And in these settings, we forget a stark truth: we are animals. Primates, specifically, albeit advanced ones. And like all animals, we have finely honed instincts developed over millennia that confer to us miraculous abilities—should we choose to tap into them.
How does all this factor into the broader theme of coming to know ourselves and thus better understand our purpose and dreams for this mortal life, you may ask?
The answer is straightforward, yet elusive in our modern lifestyle.
As animals, we have sensory organs that each serve a specialized purpose in increase our chances of surviving and—if we choose—thriving. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch enable us to navigate our environment, avoiding dangers and exploiting rewards, namely in the form of high calorie, energy-dense foods.
We also have metaphysical senses, too—indescribable and often imperceptible—that come to us in the moment they are needed. Our “gut sense” that something is right or wrong for us, for example, which some of us feel deeply within our actual abdomen when great danger lurks or great opportunity arises. Or that “still small voice” within our minds that gives us ideas or warns us of traps if we are still enough to listen for it.
In The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life, Boyd Varty reminds us that—as beasts—we can consult these senses to guide our path in life. We needn’t figure everything out in advance, nor listen too much to what others obligate us to do ("We lose ourselves in ‘shoulds’… No wild animal has ever participated in a should.")
Rather, we must simply be—fully alive, fully present, fully attuned, and fully there where we are. He calls this “track awareness.”
"Track awareness is the ability to read the field of life with discernment and yet also know your inner landscape. Everything in the natural world knows how to be itself... We are a part of nature, and inside each of us is a wild self that knows deeply what it is meant to do. Inside each of us is a natural innate knowledge of why we are here... Yet most of us have so much of the social conditioning of modern life that the track of the wild self has been lost... No wild animal has ever participated in a should. What you know to do is deeper than that... We must turn our attention back to the wild self.”
To know yourself and find your path, you must reclaim your wild self. And you can do so now, in this moment, simply by shutting out the distractions, quieting the anxious, racing thoughts, and paying attention to your animal instincts. They won’t let you down.