The Divine Matrix: Everything Is Connected

Awareness is such an easy word to say. It hitches a ride on the exhalation of a breath. Awareness. What are we to be aware of? Author Gregg Braden has a potential answer in his interesting book, The Divine Matrix, and it’s an easy phrase: everything is connected.

Back in September I got a call from Jane, a fellow nose work coach and friend asking if I could check up on a student of ours, Shirley, who lived just a few minutes away from my house. I wasn’t in the area at the time so I asked my wife, Rachel, to go check up on Shirley. When Rachel arrived at Shirley’s she had me on speaker phone and I immediately knew I wasn’t listening to Shirley as I knew her. We quickly decided it would be best to get Shirley to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. A little over two weeks later, Shirley would pass away quietly in a hospice facility. She was 73.

I met Shirley for the first time at one of our Great Minnesota Sniffover events at Camp Warren in Eveleth, MN, maybe the 2017 or 2018 year. I was coaching group sessions and guiding people through the “gauntlet”, a series of increasingly challenging search setups meant to be an opportunity to quit while you’re ahead. Well, Shirley stepped to the first challenge with her hound mix, Sunny, and sailed right through to the next challenge, and the next, and the next. When she reached a challenge no other team had made it to, I gently offered her the chance to stop on a high note. She declined, saying Sunny really loved nose work and she’d just like to see what happens. Well, Sunny bested that challenge, too! After the coaching session, she shared with me that Sunny had never done elevated hides, let alone elevated hides close together like they faced in the final challenge. I smiled and sung praises of Sunny and sent Shirley on to the next coaching session. I thought, where did these two come from?!

That first meeting with Shirley and Sunny grew into many hours of private sessions and group classes and special events over the years – always with the goal of spending quality time with her dog and her community. I remember talking with Shirley on a cold, sunny day in February at a mock NW2 trial remarking on Sunny’s whimsical appearance and personality – he had a muppet-like appearance, and this way of popping up off the ground just a couple of inches with his front paws as he bayed, eager to lead any interested parties to adventures unknown. Shirley told me she’d been considering drawing Sunny as a children’s book character and writing stories about his adventures. The day Rachel took Shirley to the hospital, I was searching for Shirley’s phone in her home to find her important contacts and I came across a sketch she’d done of Sunny. He really was a children’s story character come to life.

A little over a month before Shirley was hospitalized I had a private nose work session with her and her current dog, Daphne, the coonhound. It was a beautiful early August morning and Shirley and I chose to meet at a baseball complex near our houses. Sometimes, searching with Daphne could be challenging for Shirley. Sunny was such a pleaser and so captivated by the game of scent work. Daphne knew how to please herself and didn’t have much need for human offerings of food or odor at times. Daphne emerged from her crate in the back of Shirley’s Ford Explorer and launched down the ramp. Instead of racing to a critter trail or scanning for signs of animals on the horizon, Daphne waited at the ready to search with Shirley. In all our time together, I’d never seen Shirley run. I’d not really seen Daphne do more than a trot. This morning, all six of their legs were off the ground as they ran together alongside a concession building, to a set of bleachers, and to a hide on the frame of the bleachers. Shirley, Daphne and I repeated this sequence four more times with different hide placements and number of hides and every time was the same: Daphne runs, Shirley runs, Daphne and Shirley find the hides! Shirley commented on how Daphne might be feeling good on a cool morning with no smoke in the air – we’d had a smoky and warm summer. We were all feeling good that morning.

Twice during our private sessions in the months before her death Shirley told me she was experiencing “brain fog”. Once she couldn’t seem to find her checkbook in her car – but not in the normal sense, she actually seemed unsure of what to do about it. I thought little of these “brain fog” episodes at the time. Turns out I now know she was experiencing minor strokes. What should I have been aware of? What was Shirley aware of? What was Daphne aware of?

Shirley spent a lot of time trying to understand Daphne’s needs from the time she adopted her to the time she went into the hospital. When Rachel and I began taking care of Daphne we found numerous types of dog food from kibble to raw, vegan to carnivore and everything in between. Daphne would sometimes not eat her food without a special topper of cheese or gravy or meatballs. Shirley worried that Daphne had respiratory issues. She had Daphne on an inhaler and a stimulant pill. The concerns about Daphne’s breathing and lungs intensified in the last year of Shirley’s life. A CAT scan did reveal cancer on Shirley’s lung. How many ways can awareness manifest without us BEING aware?

I spent many hours just talking with Shirley before or after lessons. She loved to tell stories and to raise challenging questions. She loved to connect. She told me stories of her time spent as a volunteer with a search & rescue team in Illinois. She told me of her adventures flying a small airplane, scuba diving, and navigating the male dominated world of corporate law as a very intelligent, very excellent lawyer. When Shirley was in the hospital, Rachel visited her nearly every day. I joined on a few occasions and watched as Shirley drew so much joy and comfort from Rachel’s connection with her, and Rachel had such a strong need to be there for Shirley. These two had met a few times before, but outside of me as their common connection, they didn’t know each other. During Shirley’s hospitalization, Rachel found out that her own grandpa in Florida was nearing the end of his life. Rachel’s grandpa passed away within 24 hours of Shirley’s passing. Everything is connected.

If you get the Gregg Braden book, The Divine Matrix, I suggest you read it with an open mind. His attempts to validate his stories and his ideas using science and science experiments don’t entirely work for me – but, they don’t seem necessary. He’s raising awareness to the unexplainable. He’s suggesting that as a human (I’d argue other living beings, too) you are in connection with your environment both in a traditional direct sensation way (touch, sight, sound, etc.) and in a non-traditional (not western tradition), hidden sensation way he calls the divine matrix. When Rachel developed such a deep caring connection to Shirley, culminating in the deaths of Shirley and Rachel’s grandpa, why couldn’t there be a hidden connection spanning time & space that links Rachel, Shirley, and Rachel’s grandpa? A skeptic is likely to use the word “coincidence” and leave it at that. What if, as Gregg Braden suggests, we just don’t have a well-developed enough awareness to see the connection? Just because we lack understanding doesn’t mean that something lacks plausibility.

Shirley and I met at Bunker Hills Stables a couple of times for nose work lessons, because Shirley wanted to see if Daphne had an adverse reaction to the horses in the pasture. We would spend part of the lesson walking to the pasture and back from the parking area, and part of it doing scent work. Awareness is about non-action and learning-through-not-doing. Shirley made a law career out of interacting, understanding, and making decisions, so it was always a joy to join her in pure awareness moments.

The two weeks I spent taking care of Daphne allowed me time to just be aware. During that time I learned the paths that all the chipmunks took throughout Shirley’s backyard by watching Daphne track them (often chasing them up the hydrangeas). I learned the different ways that Daphne preferred to sleep on her favorite loveseat (her preferred way: squished behind me as if my back and the chair back formed a cave or a den). I learned that Daphne loved to run with me through the deep green grass at the park near Shirley’s house, stopping to investigate a small city of gopher mounds like a gambler playing Vegas slots. One of the times we brought Daphne to visit Shirley at the hospice I was so aware of Daphne’s experience. She did not announce herself in the building, instead heading straight down the hallway to Shirley’s room. In the room, Daphne took up a perch in a chair opposite Shirley and just watched her. Late in the evening, just before we left, Daphne seemed to see something leaving Shirley and exiting out the room. Shirley passed away a little over a day later.

It’s now been about a month and a half since Shirley passed away. I don’t feel like she’s gone, and maybe that’s because she’s only gone in one sense. In Braden’s book he tells a story of a hike he was on in northwestern New Mexico when he encountered a Navajo wisdom keeper. After exchanging hellos, Braden asks the wisdom keeper what he’s been doing in the canyon. The wisdom keeper replies, “I come here to listen to the voices of my ancestors in those caves.” Braden would say that Quantum Theory allows for all possible outcomes to exist in a multiverse independent of time and space as we traditionally experience it. Maybe. The wisdom keeper might say that he’s just very aware of the presence of his people in their sacred land. If it’s at all possible, I’d like to be very aware of the presence of all the dogs and the people who are no longer with us in our community of scent work.

A couple of days ago I took hold of a leash connected to a Llewellin Setter who was not appearing to focus on a hide during a search in a grassy field and I just settled into awareness. I felt the dog and his message: don’t force me to find something. I felt Shirley and Daphne, I felt the group of people observing. We were able to worry less about time and performance and just be in a non-acting, non-doing state of awareness. After sniffing the ground for some time, the dog just sat down. He took in everything around him, then he began moving with his head above ground. I followed him, then I breathed out as I felt him inviting me into conversation with a softening of his body language and a pause in his movement. I used the leash to let him know I was connected to him, then I felt him arc towards the area of the hide and very purposefully sniff his way to source. We all celebrated the find, and I found myself down at the dog’s side, hugging him and petting him and feeling his appreciation for our awareness.

I’m grateful for the community of dogs and people I get to connect with through scent work. We are truly lucky to be alive or to have been alive. If you read the pages of Braden’s book you will find much to consider about yourself and everything around you. We are all connected, yet we spend so much time trying to assert our independence, trying to draw thick black lines around us and everyone else. We create worry and stress where there could be peace and joy.

If you care to support the blog, clicking on the links and making purchases is one way to do so.

Happy Sniffing In The Divine Matrix!