One of the greatest challenges humanity faces is to let go of what we THINK creation is and allow ourselves enough curiosity and openness to SEE existence as it is. However, this is not just a challenge –it is critical if we are to regain a conscious response and avert impending planetary and social disaster.
Letting go of what we THINK is key to our ability to respond with greater insight. It is only when we abandon our opinions that things begin to make themselves truly understood.
When we find the space of quiet -when human mental noise is not so busy drowning it out – that which is always subtly here makes itself vividly evident.
I remember,as a child,feeling perplexed by the boundaries and definitions of God and creation in church. Once when a school friend decided my actions were not up to Christian standards she chidingly reminded me…
“God sees and knows everything you do,you know.”
And in a passionate response I declared…
“Of course… everything IS God and I don’t have a problem with any of it!”
This encompassing statement rendered the good Christian girl silent. In fact she never really spoke to me again after that day.
I decided from a very young age that I ‘believed’ in nature, not ‘God’, ‘isms’ or any other equivalents. It wasn’t until I was an older teenager that I was able to better articulate what I meant by that statement: God is not an individual personality. God is all energy: the creation, creating and that which is created. In my experience I could see and feel that whatever we perceive to be – whether the most basic account of our life on earth, the basic events in nature or particle interactions – everything is a consequence of this vast essence within all things. It is more like a holographic field than something fixed or inherently definable.
I could see that all things emerge from this coalescent field of vibrating light, and that everything is this and is therefor inevitably connected. This field goes endlessly in and endlessly out in the very same instant. It IS endless and has no point or definition at all (such as time or place) – yet simultaneously reveals infinite points of being (perceived of as time and space). This field is implicit – without distinction – yet contains all potential. So the arising of any distinct event or form is merely a consequence of the nature of this implicit essence made evident as an explicit expression. When pressed to explain this further I found myself floundering… trailing off into the non-distinct words – It is what it is.
And yet this ambiguous statement is perhaps the closest we can get to describe the truth of existence. We are this ISNESS. Each and everything we encounter is suspended in perfection, all swimming in this great ocean that is one life. When we remain wide-eyed –free of confining conditions – we see and know life this way. Everything is a gift, a joy, a wonder, when we allow it to be exactly what it is. We find that our encounter with life is no longer something that needs any explanation. We marvel at the profound Truth that existence explains itself perfectly in every moment simply through its’ BEING– exactly as it is in each moment.
Even as a child, with wide open eyes and boundless awareness, the power and perfection of nature made it very evident that all things were perfectly orchestrated, interconnected and emerging from the very same field of being. I could take the journey into a blade of grass, deep into its roots, and into the earths’dark dance of billions of years of minerals spiraling out of atoms and stardust, all reverberating in space. I could walk with the feet of ants and beetles, and marvel at the microscopic perfection of mosquitos’ organs, their blood rivering red and warm like my own giant version, dwarfed by the rivers of earth. I could watch the leaves burst green then fade red and fall and rot into the soil where worms eventually took flight as birds. I could not tell where my feet ended and earth began or where my breath began and the winds ceased.
The consciousness that can conceive a universe and a whole planet lives in each of us as deep as where our soul lies, which is in no time at all, yet all time at once. It lies in the heart of our childhood wonders. To bring this back to light we only need to remember how a child sees and feels: abandoned in the moment.
Fortunately there are ways to stir and recover a receptive awareness – a wide-open mind. Paying sustained attention to what is happening, without wanting anything to be other than it is, lends us more deeply to a meditative state. In this way we do not need to be confined to a cushion. And in fact, when liberated from the formalities we discover that nature IS meditation. All we need to do is to open our eyes to see that we have always been this perfection of being.
It is only when we rediscover the marvel of existence itself that we let go of our mind-made definitions, boundaries, conditions and substitutes for a wonderful life on earth. And only then shall we feel and know our perfect place in existence – so much so that we can finally engage with life again. Earth is calling us to this. She is waiting for us to put aside our beliefs and distractions, to open our heart again to her endless giving and give her what she deserves: respect.
Perhaps when we truly engage with our living planet we can glimpse the real possibility of our own peace and wellness reclaimed. Perhaps then we will care less for opinions and distractions and care more for harmonious living, and finally realise we always are…perfectly connected and perfectly here.
Blessed Be,
