Attentiveness: Environmental Nourishment of the Self. The Ninth Window of Experience

The ninth window is attentiveness, the ability to easily and constantly use our environment to nourish ourselves.  It is clear when we think of our breathing and air, our energy and food, our survival and mutual protection, that we do not live alone in the world...albeit how we deal wth our ecology and nutrition suggest that our awareness of this fact is not very clear.  We tend to forget that we rely on others in general to help nourish our self-being.  Other persons, other beauty, other truth, other life...the rest of nature nurtures us.  "Everything that lives," wrote William Blake in The Book of Thel, "lives not alone, nor for itself."  Our being has to attend as well as be attended to, just as do other's being; otherwise, all beings shrivel and die.  Our early years must concretize that attentiveness, an important precursor of subsequent self-being.  Without it we are at risk.

Taken from The Windows of Experience by Malone and Malone