China Cat Sunflower
Nimrod
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With apologies to Kathe who's already read this: Here are some of my thoughts on relationships both personal and cosmic.
I think that we are in relation to all things at all times. No matter what system we devise to separate ourselves into “this and that”, subject and object; we can really never draw crisp borders around what is solely “me” and not “me”. What about all the microorganisms, viruses, germs and parasites that live in me? They have their own level of intelligence, and can be isolated and identified. Are they part of me? What about my food? Once it’s in me is it part of me? What about my emotions? What about my thoughts? Are my thoughts really all mine; my sole intellectual property? Do my thoughts come from inside or outside of “me”?
When I see a tree, is the green color of the leaves something I perceive, or do I supply the green as a mental response to the stimulation of a particular speed of light wave being reflected from the leafs surface? Doesn’t that make me and the leaf co-creators of our shared reality? Don’t we love and admire animals because we posses a bit of their peculiar essence within us? What if you could reach within yourself and tap into your, say- “buffalo-ness” when you need to be firm, or your “lion-ness” when you need courage, or express your “golden retriever-ness” to a person you love and trust. I think that you can.
What about other people? Didn’t we learn who we are by watching other people? Isn’t our perception of others an extension of how we perceive ourselves? We can easily assign a part of ourselves to play another person so that we can imagine or rehearse a dialog with them in our heads. When a loved one dies we still have a part of them in us. We know what they would say or do, and the feelings we have for them continue just as if they were still physically here.
The magic of life is that there are infinite possibilities to explore, and yet all those possibilities are already within us. Every new thing that we find resonates within us its connection to us, and all other living things. Life is both illusory and real at the same time. Yes, a rock is a rock, and a bird is a bird, and we’re individual humans each with our own ego, personality and body, but while the world appears to be made up of all the individual things in it, the things themselves are merely clumps of relationships. We can divide and subsection them down past the atomic level, or extend and expand them out to the edges of the cosmos and still not isolate anything which is not in symbiotic, and/or parasitic relation to something else. There is no pure substance, no philosophers stone. Even an island has a big ass mountain underneath it!
When we become aware that we are connected with all things, in constant relation with all things we start to perceive the patterns within those connections. We name some elements of these patterns of relation motion, matter, wind, fire, electricity, magnetism etc. We further observe that there are relationships between the relationships of the relationships, and we name these one, two, three, four, five…, and mathematics is of course the study of those relationships.
Beyond this there are subtle energies, within the flow of connections which are the essence of the primal creativity that sows its designs on the endless fabric of possibility. These are little hints of an intelligence beyond, yet underlying and playing itself out within all the relationships and connections. This is what the Tao is talking about. The Way. It is within all yet beyond all. It can be felt but never grasped. It is indescribable yet all of art, music, science and architecture, poetry, religion and even agriculture is mans attempt to describe and imitate it. You can call it God, or the Universe, or the Tao or whatever suits your way of understanding.
The great thing about being in relation with everything, including God is that the more aware we become of our true connection to and with life, and God, the more actively we can participate as co-creators. There is no need to try to force our will on nature, or our fellow humans, or God for that matter. You can’t force a banana tree to grow in the snow, you can’t force a person to change, and you can’t force God into a box labeled “religion”. Cooperation, empathy and understanding are the ticket along with a conscious effort to erode the artificial barriers between what we once thought of as “us and them”.
Chris
I think that we are in relation to all things at all times. No matter what system we devise to separate ourselves into “this and that”, subject and object; we can really never draw crisp borders around what is solely “me” and not “me”. What about all the microorganisms, viruses, germs and parasites that live in me? They have their own level of intelligence, and can be isolated and identified. Are they part of me? What about my food? Once it’s in me is it part of me? What about my emotions? What about my thoughts? Are my thoughts really all mine; my sole intellectual property? Do my thoughts come from inside or outside of “me”?
When I see a tree, is the green color of the leaves something I perceive, or do I supply the green as a mental response to the stimulation of a particular speed of light wave being reflected from the leafs surface? Doesn’t that make me and the leaf co-creators of our shared reality? Don’t we love and admire animals because we posses a bit of their peculiar essence within us? What if you could reach within yourself and tap into your, say- “buffalo-ness” when you need to be firm, or your “lion-ness” when you need courage, or express your “golden retriever-ness” to a person you love and trust. I think that you can.
What about other people? Didn’t we learn who we are by watching other people? Isn’t our perception of others an extension of how we perceive ourselves? We can easily assign a part of ourselves to play another person so that we can imagine or rehearse a dialog with them in our heads. When a loved one dies we still have a part of them in us. We know what they would say or do, and the feelings we have for them continue just as if they were still physically here.
The magic of life is that there are infinite possibilities to explore, and yet all those possibilities are already within us. Every new thing that we find resonates within us its connection to us, and all other living things. Life is both illusory and real at the same time. Yes, a rock is a rock, and a bird is a bird, and we’re individual humans each with our own ego, personality and body, but while the world appears to be made up of all the individual things in it, the things themselves are merely clumps of relationships. We can divide and subsection them down past the atomic level, or extend and expand them out to the edges of the cosmos and still not isolate anything which is not in symbiotic, and/or parasitic relation to something else. There is no pure substance, no philosophers stone. Even an island has a big ass mountain underneath it!
When we become aware that we are connected with all things, in constant relation with all things we start to perceive the patterns within those connections. We name some elements of these patterns of relation motion, matter, wind, fire, electricity, magnetism etc. We further observe that there are relationships between the relationships of the relationships, and we name these one, two, three, four, five…, and mathematics is of course the study of those relationships.
Beyond this there are subtle energies, within the flow of connections which are the essence of the primal creativity that sows its designs on the endless fabric of possibility. These are little hints of an intelligence beyond, yet underlying and playing itself out within all the relationships and connections. This is what the Tao is talking about. The Way. It is within all yet beyond all. It can be felt but never grasped. It is indescribable yet all of art, music, science and architecture, poetry, religion and even agriculture is mans attempt to describe and imitate it. You can call it God, or the Universe, or the Tao or whatever suits your way of understanding.
The great thing about being in relation with everything, including God is that the more aware we become of our true connection to and with life, and God, the more actively we can participate as co-creators. There is no need to try to force our will on nature, or our fellow humans, or God for that matter. You can’t force a banana tree to grow in the snow, you can’t force a person to change, and you can’t force God into a box labeled “religion”. Cooperation, empathy and understanding are the ticket along with a conscious effort to erode the artificial barriers between what we once thought of as “us and them”.
Chris
