Free An Ecology of MInd by Stephen Johnston Page B

seeing images in his mind of the dead bodies of his parents, of Sinjee, of the whole tribe. He tried to remember what they looked like in life, and
    he could easily bring up happy images, but his mind kept shifting them into the dead, lifeless faces they had after being slaughtered by the No Chins.
    In an effort to redirect his thoughts away from the grisly images he tried to think about the changes in him.
    After thinking for a while, he took a flint knife and held up his arm, so he could see it near the fire. He took the knife and cut his forearm. It hurt,
    and he could see the skin separate and his arm started to bleed. He thought "Heal" and again had a sense of his mind reaching out and contacting something,
    and he watched his arm heal rapidly. He thought to himself as hard as he could "Don't cut." He then took the knife and tried to cut his arm again. He could
    see the knife press the skin and tissue of his arm as if he were pressing a blunt stick against it, but it did not cut the tissue of his arm.
    He stopped concentrating on not being cut and tried the knife again. It still did not cut his arm. He tried cutting his left arm. It did not cut either. He
    sat and thought some more. He still did not know what had happened to him or how he was doing what he was doing, but it seemed he could do more than just
    heal. He wished he had paid more attention to the stories of the Shaman. Maybe they would have shed some light on things. As it was, he was trying to
    figure things out by trial and error, and he kept having a nagging feeling that he was not asking the correct questions or trying the right things, like it
    was all just beyond his grasp. It was a clear cool fall night and when he looked up at the stars, it seemed like they were silently mocking him.
    So far, he managed to stop his bleeding and heal himself. His last test or trial had made it so his knife did not cut him at all. He looked at the rock
    next to him and thought of something else to try. Carefully, he tried hitting the rock with his fist, but not too hard. It hurt. He tried his knife on his
    arm again, and it did not cut. The command he had thought had been "Don't cut" and that still seemed to be working.
    He thought the command "don't damage" while he concentrated on his whole body. Next, he tried hitting the rock again, but not very hard. It did not hurt
    this time, so he tried hitting it harder. He still felt no pain. He tried a swiping blow that would normally have scraped the skin off his knuckles and
    hurt a lot, but there was no pain and his hand was undamaged.
    The fire had burned down a bit so he added another couple of pieces of wood to it and leaned back to think more about these new developments. He was no
    farther ahead on understanding how. There was still the sensation of reaching out to something when he did these things, but he had no idea of what or how.
    He still had no idea of why either, and since he did not understand how or why, he did not have any idea of how long it would last.
    He suddenly had another thought. He picked up a spear and stood up. He concentrated on the spear and thought as hard as he could, "Don't break." Next, he
    swung the spear against the rock wall. The flint point shattered, and the end of the wooden handle broke off.
    Well, he thought; it seemed he did have limits. Whatever he was doing only seemed to work on his body and not other objects. Too bad he ruined one of his
    two spears finding that out. He sat back down and stared into the fire.
    The last command he had concentrated on was "Don't damage." It worked for hitting the rock with his hand. He looked down for a bit then slowly started
    moving one callused foot closer to the fire. He could feel the heat, but even when he got closer he did not feel pain from it. Steeling himself, he put his
    whole foot into the flames. He felt no pain, and his foot did not blacken or turn red like he had feared it would. In fact, the heat of the fire had a nice
    feeling. The