NATURE & THE WORLD OF PARANORMAL RESEARCH
By
Alison Oborn
"Alison, what on earth could nature have in common with Paranormal Investigations?" I see you scratching your heads.
Well nature can be a VERY useful training tool and let me explain why. I came to realise a long time ago, that nature can be one of our greatest teachers if we allow it to be... and for many things.. yes, including the work of a paranormal investigator... and please bare with me on this one.
As many will know already, the work of an investigator in real life, is far from glamorous and exciting. It should be remembered that if a TV show portrayed how it really was and how it really should be done, then the audience would switch off in droves and instead of a hit series on your hands, you would have a dismal failure, although still a great idea. Hence, what you see is generally the edited highlights for your entertainment... after all you could never truly fit all those hours of monitoring into a 30 min show. Not only this but they would also have a wonderful team in the background to go through the hours of footage that they acquired in any one investigation... and wouldn't we all love to have that at our disposal *looks at my own mountain of tapes yet to be viewed*!!!. Please do not take this as I am knocking these shows, as I am not... and I am sure that these people would be the first to agree with me. I am merely trying to point out the true amount of work involved in this field and make a suggestion on just one way we can possibly improve our focus.
So what does it truly entail to investigate thoroughly. Well at the end of the day hours and hours of patience!!! True paranormal experiences do not happen every 5 mins. If they did there would be no need for investigation teams at all as we would all be experiencing it on a regular basis. Not only does it take hours of patience DURING an investigation... but it takes even more hours of patience AFTER an investigation. For every investigation there is at least twice as much footage or audio tape to be gone through. This must be gone through thoroughly, as that one moment you have been waiting for, could fleetingly show at any time and can be so easily missed if ones attention wandered. A static camera set up to monitor and record a walkway can be exhilarating viewing for several hours afterwards.. trust me!!! (Is that the sound of snoring I hear??) Then there are the reports...... sighs!! You are starting to get the picture, right???
Those that have been in the field a while, will already be relating to this and those that are new then hopefully by now you are starting to understand that a certain discipline is required for this job. The ability to quieten down and be still. To resist the human urge that we all have to be... pro-active. Yes we are all conditioned for this. If there is silence with others present, we feel we must speak. If we have been sitting for a short while doing nothing we feel we should get up and move around. To sit and do nothing at all but be still is NOT in the nature of most people but it is certainly something that can be learned!! Being a horse and dog trainer myself, this was the hardest thing to teach people to do. Listen to their animals. Be still, especially with horses and to reward with silence and stillness and just 'being' with their animals. Horses understand just hanging out.. it is what they do most of the day with each other... watch them under the shade of a tree sometime. Horses do not understand our constant babble.. good boy, whoa there, that's it do that flying change that I want!! Oh that was beautiful, well done boy... at the end of the day it is just noise to them and incredibly distracting to our own minds and our ability to focus. So it was that I trained with a great horseman... Dan Sumerel... who taught me to work a horse WITHOUT talking but at the same time keeping its attention on me. Suddenly I got it. Whilst I wasn't chatting and talking to the animal, I was truly focusing and listening and a whole new awareness began.
Whilst we chatter, the rest of our senses don't pay so much attention to what is going on around us. Our mind is too busy thinking on what is issuing forth from our mouths both as we speak and as to what to say next rather then relying on other senses such as sight, sound, taste and touch.... hopefully you see where I am trying to link this with investigations by now.
I realise that seasoned investigators are more then aware on how important silence and patience is but how can we improve on this and what about new team members, after all not everybody is able to have such willpower at the outset. Not everybody has a horse to train either. And a lot of this is conditioning, and repetitive training of the mind. My conditioning and awakening started with my horses, but it was soon to continue with nature itself being my tutor. Below you will find two videos that I made. No... they aren't paranormal.... BUT they DO show that whilst achieving one thing, you are learning something far more important from it that can be utilised in many other fields of life... in this case... paranormal investigation... and the lesson is in PATIENCE and FOCUS.
2 years ago I took up walking in a very special area. To start with it was just exercise. Like most people, I couldn't sit for more then a minute or two to catch my breathe as there was always those thoughts tumbling through my head... too much to do, not enough time to do it in... must get home and get it done. After a while things would catch my attention and soon I found myself carrying a camera out on my walks. Those 2 mins breathers slowly became longer, as I started to truly see what was out there and then finally there was a natural urge to want to seek it out. I found that the more time I was spending out there the more curiosity I was developing about my new environment. What was that bird?... in fact how many different bird species were there???... a question that had never crossed my mind before. So it was that I now had to photograph these birds to be able to identify them.... not an easy task, let me assure you. The only way I was going to do this was to sit quietly and wait, as my clumsy crashing through undergrowth normally would send them screaming for safety. So a rock was found in the shade of an old olive tree half way up the gully. There I would sit and wait... waiting for nature to come to me. Patience paid off and soon a new world of photographic opportunities revealed themselves. Soon a magical thing happened. Time had no meaning anymore. Silence was natural. Listening, breathing, feeling became the norm. My mind was being trained into the 'just being' without me even knowing it was happening. Now think about how important this is to the work of investigations also.
"Where have you been?" my kids will ask
"Sorry, I saw a new bird" I say enthusiastically
"What... for 2 hrs????"
"Has it been that long????" I say, peering curiously at the clock.
And so goes a common conversation in my household now!!!
I have probably rambled here and I apologise for this. I hope though it made some sense to some people though. I strongly encourage you to go out and learn your own stillness. Maybe suggest to new trainees that they walk more often and practice with bird watching and photography whether they want to or not... it is good training. Practice sitting somewhere pretty and wait for things to come to you. In the meantime shut your eyes and start using your other senses. Listen for the small rustle in the grass... listen and try to identify as many birdsongs as you can.... feel the breeze and air currents flowing across your skin, and so the list goes on. Soon time will be lost to you too. Your life will become richer for these experiences and those hours of monitoring in the paranormal world will become much easier. I realise this isn't for everybody, but it is worth a try and a powerful tool, and at the end of the day it may just give you a new appreciation of your world in the long run also and enrich your life as much as it did mine.
Anyway the videos below are short but are 2 years of work. 2 years of patience just to be able to capture those small moments. But what a learning and enriching experience they were for me personally. Hopefully they will encourage some individuals out there to allow nature to become their teacher also.
FOR THE LOVE OF NATURE......
FOR THE LOVE OF NATURE 2 ~ Living With Australian Wildlife
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