An Unrepeatable Miracle
A Myth of Our Own

Titles of Essays

1.      Your Next Eye Exam Is Near
2.      What Is Your Current Theory About Life?
3.      Is The Big Bang Just Noise?
4.      Psychology and The Big Bang
5.      The Big Obstacle
6.      How Does the Universe Work?
7.      Have You Lost Your Senses?
8.      How Good Is Your Memory?
9.      Play For The Fun Of It
10.    Can Gift of Sight Make People Blind?
11.    Celebration As Vocation
12.    Why Good and Evil?
13.    Death As Surprise
14.    Wrap It Up

The Time for Your Next Eye Exam Is Near

I received the above message from my ophthalmologist a couple of weeks ago.  I’m glad that he sent it because my outer vision has been going down hill since I was sixteen.  A lot of people have vision problems.  Some have outer problems like not being able to read this essay. Others have inner problems like processing and integrating what they see on this page.  Ophthalmologists deal with the outer problems.  Unfortunately there are not a lot of doctors who examine our inner vision and offer advice and directions on how to keep our perceptions and interpretations up to date.

A few years ago, the man whose name is synonymous with genius, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), stated that the troubling problems of planet Earth cannot be solved with the frame of reference or perspective that created them. Perspective means to see through.  In other words Einstein was saying that we need new inner vision - a change or adjustment to the way we look at, interpret and explain the threatening issues that confront us and ways to deal with them.

First of all, what are these troubling problems?   Overpopulation, economic mal-distribution, global warming, pollution of air, water and soil, cultural intolerance, famine, disease, child abuse, sexism, homelessness, extinction of species and cultures, war and genocide.  Certainly you can add to this “weapons of mass destruction” list.

There is a new perspective or frame of reference now available that has the energy and factual evidence to constructively address these problems.  We cannot be blamed, however, for not perceiving and utilizing this way of seeing through things because it has only recently been discovered.  Less than ten percent of today’s population has been exposed to what science has revealed in the last few decades.  Also, we have neither the experience nor the language to fully comprehend the awe and beauty that this new perspective is offering.  Because we now live with an outdated and blurred frame of reference we live our lives unaware of our full identity, dignity and potential.

In scientific language this new perspective is termed a theory – a statement of truth that is supported by abundant evidence.  So what is this new theory?  It is impossible to sum up in a few sentences what ninety years of the most intense and comprehensive research in the history of mankind has discovered.  But here is a simple attempt. “ Everything in the universe is one, alive and old.”  Maybe a short reflection on these three words might help.  One means that everything that exists is totally related to and totally dependent upon everything else.  Alive means that everything is self-actuating, self-sustaining and self-fulfilling.  Old means that everything is 13.7 billion years old.

So what do those facts say about us?  Well, if everything is one that means that we come from and are embedded in the universe.  We are not separate from the rest of creation.  We are a very recent, sacred and evolving part of the cosmos.  It means also that we have a definite and specific role to play in the great process of being.

How does the statement that everything is alive grab you?  Since at least the seventeenth century we’ve looked upon the universe as a big machine, a well regulated giant clock, a massive collection of inert and dead matter that we thought we were in control of and could utilize as we saw fit.  We cannot consider ourselves to be conscious and intelligent and think like that any longer.  The evidence for the oneness and the ubiquity of life is overwhelming and presents a huge challenge to our current perception of reality. The way we define matter and how we deal with it has to change.

Finally, how does it feel to be 13.7 billion years old?  This is not a joke.  You really are that old.  The Universe had a beginning that we can now see and hear.  Everything that exists was created by a tremendous flaring forth or Big Bang and has evolved continuously for billions of years.  Furthermore, the universe is a closed system and everything is constantly recycled, including you.  For example, every seven years your living skeleton is completely replaced.  And when you die you will be recycled in a most surprising and beautiful way.

So why is it important for you to familiarize yourself more extensively with this new theory?  Understanding and living what this new perspective expresses is critical for the survival of our planet.  Many scholars believe that our species is on the endangered list.  If your life is now comfortable and you don’t want to make any changes, then you should learn about this profound discovery and its implications for your children and your grandchildren.  If this new theory and its implications are ignored and we go on living  with old and unsustainable myths, then soon our offspring are going to experience a severe and lasting downgrading of their freedom and lifestyle.  It’s that serious.

No one has more clearly explained the purpose and the importance of a factual explanation of reality than Olympic athlete and scholar Joseph Campbell.  Here’s a summary of what he had to say:  “Life defining perspectives point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a Presence or Eternity that is whole and entire in each. They serve four functions:

1.    they awaken and maintain in the individual a sense of wonder and participation in the mystery of this inscrutable universe.

2.    they convert every feature of the locally envisioned order of nature into an icon or revelatory figure.

3.    they validate and maintain whatever moral system and manner of life-customs that may be peculiar to the local culture.

4.    they conduct individuals through the passages of human life --- from  childhood to the ultimate passage of the dark gate.”

Why don’t you reflect on those ideas for a little while and then find someone to discuss them with for an hour or two?  You’ve got nothing to lose but a sense of wonder, an amazing revelation of nature, a more comprehensive understanding of your culture, and some surprising wisdom about your certain death.

Discussion Questions:
1. What are some of the global problems that trouble you?
2. What is the difference between an hypothesis and a theory?
3. What are the implications of the theory – everything is one, alive and old?
4. Why do many refuse to even consider this new theory?
Discuss Campbell’s thoughts on this new theory?

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How Did You Acquire Your Current Theory On Life?

The Romans had an axiom “caveat emptor” which means let the buyer beware.  Early  English speakers translated that axiom into the phrase - “don’t buy a pig in a poke”.  In order not to be tricked into selecting a new theory of life we should inquire into the process of theory creation and the authenticity of those who contribute.

Surely in your lifetime many people have asked you questions, and you too have asked yourself a lot of serious questions.  Where did I come from?  Who do I think I am?  What am I trying to prove?  How do I know I’m on the right track?  Why do I have to get sick and die?  The answers to these and other questions have contributed immensely to your personal theory about life.

There are many people who make it their business to not only ask questions but also provide answers – like family, clergy, teachers, counselors, politicians.  Generally they are well-intentioned people and try hard to help us formulate a workable theory. Over the years, however, you’ve probably discovered that some of them didn’t always ask good questions or give the right answers.  Also, you’ve no doubt wondered whether people tied into institutions are sometimes intimidated by a need to conform to cultural norms and are constrained by vested interests like power, fame and wealth.  Then it becomes  difficult to believe and trust them.

So sooner or later we have to face the fact that all people and institutions are human and fallible.  Consequently we have an obligation to sift and sort what they say – “caveat emptor”.  In the end, we alone have to put our personal theory together and live by it.

First of all, it is encouraging to know that we do have very reliable assistance in this theory making process.  Somewhere on your journey you’ve run into the word and reality of conscience. The word comes from two little Latin words, con=with and scire=to know at the highest level.  So, what or who is it that we “know with” when our conscience is activated?  Briefly, that Other is like a hard-wired inner and challenging voice.  But whose voice is this?  There are many names for the owner of this voice – The Higher Power, Creator, Deity, God, Great Mother, Yahweh, Love, The Self, etc.  Whatever we name the voice of conscience the name makes us aware that superior direction is available for helping us to understand who we are and what our life is all about?

Hopefully you have already read in the previous essay a very brief summary of the new Great Theory – “Everything is one, alive and old.”  That statement is brand new information for a whole lot of people.  So now we have a conscience decision to make.  Are we going to check out the new theory or ignore it?  To ignore means to be deliberately ignorant.  To encourage you to get your theory updated and compatible with current reality, it might be helpful to know something about the people who discovered this Great Theory and learn why you can trust them.

This new theory developed over a long period of time and many people have contributed to the content.  Up until the 1500s people believed that the earth was the center of the Universe.  From 1514-42 Nicholas Copernicus worked on a small book that demonstrated the opposite - the earth revolved around the sun.  His ideas were repressed and he was persecuted. In 1610 Galileo Galilei affirmed the research of Copernicus and spent 22 years clarifying and expanding his ideas.  In l633 he was condemned, sentenced to house arrest and denied Christian burial.  Like many other scholars they went with the truth and suffered the consequences.  Truth comes piecemeal and at a price.  So the best criterion for evaluating contributors to The Great Theory is to consider the price that they paid to generate their expression of truth.

The man who described the core of The Great Theory was one of the most brilliant scholars of the 20th century -- a Swiss psychiatrist named Carl G. Jung (1875-1961).  His major area of competence was the psychology of religion.  After 25 years of interviews, observations, experiments and study this is what he had to say about his discovery.  “I had been looking about without hope for a theory of our own.  Now I knew what it was.  Human beings are indispensable for the completion of creation, in fact, they themselves are the second creators of the world.  Human beings, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence.  Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and human beings found their indispensable place in the great process of being.”

Because the brilliant young Einstein questioned one of his professors he spent seven year after his graduation as a third class clerk in a patent office.  After he published his work on relativity he spent the next eight years in torment working out its implications.  Edwin Hubble unwillingly became a lawyer and only after his father’s death was he able to pursue his bliss – five years of study in astronomy.  Once he had secured a job in CA he spent four years of freezing nights looking through a telescope at the Mt. Wilson Observatory before he discovered that the Universe was full of galaxies and had a beginning.

During the past six hundred years many others like Copernicus, Galileo, Jung, Einstein and Hubble followed their conscience and challenged the world taken for granted.  They were courageous people who dared to examine and follow the evolving processes of art and science in order to discover and establish a new theory of creation and life that made factual sense.  Their names and contributions are too numerous to list in a short essay, but here is a brief list of some of the more important contributors that you might want to check out – Eckhart, Rumi, Hildegarde, Kepler, DaVinci, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Curie, Chardin, Aurobindo,  Berry, Campbell, Woodman, Fox, Swimme, Margulis.  Good luck on your search, and follow YOUR bliss, as Joseph Campbell advised and Edwin Hubble did.

1.  Do you have a meaningful theory of life?  Where did you get it?
2.  How do you feel about change, process, evolution?
3.  What does conscience mean to you?
4.  What are your reasons for trusting some people and not others?
5.  How much history have you read since you graduated from school?

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The Big Bang.  What’s It All About?

It’s a great time to be alive.  Within the last 90 years incredible advances have been made in technology – instruments to expand and enlarge our observational and mental faculties – telescopes, computers, techniques for measuring time and space, discoveries of our genetic make-up, artistic remnants of historic cultures and fossils of ancient creatures.  Much more research is underway and new discoveries are emerging frequently.
Up until the 20th century the overwhelming majority of scientists believed that the Universe was static, had existed from all eternity and so did not have a beginning. It was also believed that the Milky Way that embraces our planet Earth was the only galaxy.

In 1905 a very young Albert Einstein challenged the assumption of the scientific community that the universe was static and had existed from all eternity.  He proposed a theory of special relativity that suggested that space and time are flexible and form a special entity called space-time.  In 1915 he developed a general theory of gravity that explained gravity in outer space.  Then in l919 with the assistance of a team of English scientists who photographed an eclipse of the sun in Brazil and in West Africa he proved with actual photographs that light from stars does actually bend around the sun.  All of which seemed to suggest that the universe was neither static nor eternal.

Both Isaac Newton and Einstein had believed that because every object in the universe was pulled toward every other object by gravity the universe was destined to destroy itself.  Newton suggested that God would intervene and not let that happen.  Einstein cooked up a mathematical trick – the cosmological constant – a new repulsive force that would work against the gravitational attraction of the stars for each other.

In the mid l920s Alex Friedman from Russia and Georges LeMaitre from Belgium, independently of each other, proposed a model of an expanding universe.  LeMaitre’s model went beyond Friedman’s.  He was the first scientist to give a rational description of what we now refer to as the Big Bang.  He described it in poetic language – “The evolution of the universe can be likened to  fireworks that have just ended: some few wisps, ashes and smoke.  Standing on a well-cooled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origins of the world.”

Both Friedman and LeMaitre were rebuffed by Einstein and rejection by Einstein meant rejection by the scientific community.  Friedman died prematurely and the humbled LeMaitre decided to pursue other issues.  But the questions would not go away.  Other scientists began to question the cosmological constant and the belief that the Milky Way was the only galaxy.  Better telescopes were built.  Nebulae – cloud like objects – were discovered as well as cepheids – stars that flare up suddenly after a long period of being faint and gradually fade back to dimness.  Other brighter stars were discovered that faded more rapidly.  A lady volunteer at the Harvard Observatory – Henrietta Leavitt - studied these cepheids and invented a procedure to measure the variability of the light from these stars that enabled astronomers to estimate their distance.

Then came Hubble.  After four years of studying the stars at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, on Oct. 4, 1923 Edwin Hubble took a 40 minute exposure of the Andromeda nebula and noted a small speck in the exposure.  On the following night he took a 45 minute exposure of the same area and the same speck was still there, but accompanied by two new specks.  Two of the specks were new novae, i.e. very dim stars that had suddenly increased in brightness.  The third speck was a cepheid whose distance could be measured.  For six months he made comparisons with other photographic plates at the Pasadena library for the Observatory and took more photographs of the Andromeda nebula and discovered a second cepheid which strengthened his initial finding.  So in Feb. 1924 he revealed his results to the world.  The Andromeda nebula was 900,000 light years from the Earth and was clearly a galaxy in its own right and not a part of the Milky Way.

In 1929 Hubble fitted a new camera and a spectroscope to the Mt. Wilson telescope to study the wavelengths of star light.  He learned that an approaching star has shorter wavelengths (blueshift) and a receding star has longer wavelengths (redshift).  He soon discovered that the majority of the recently discovered galaxies were racing away from the Milky Way.  So he formulated a new law.  “If galaxies are receding then:

1.    Tomorrow they will be further away.

2.    But yesterday they were closer.

3.    Last year they were closer still.

4.    So at some point in the past all the galaxies must have been right on top of us.”

His measurements implied that the Universe started in a small condensed state, expanded outwards and is still expanding today.

There were several other questions that had to be answered before the Big Bang theory could be fully accepted – time discrepancies as to when the Big Bang occurred, how were heavy elements formed, how did the galaxies form, where was the cosmic microwave background (CMB) or the echo of the explosion?  It was not until l992 through the efforts of hundreds of scientists that these questions were answered.  

Some of the more prominent scientists who clarified these issues were Walter Baade, Allan Sandage, Fred Hoyle, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. The final piece of the puzzle was put in place when the Cobe satellite discovered that the variation in density in the early universe seeded the formation of the galaxies.

If anyone is interested in the complete story of the Big Bang we would recommend Simon Singh’s book The Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe from which we gleaned most of this information.  It is an incredible story and merits the attention of those who would like to be more fully informed and up to date.

1. When was the last time you looked into a microscope or a telescope?
2. How long has it been since you visited a library, aquarium, museum, planetarium?
3. How about googling Einstein, Jung, LeMaitre, Hubble to say hello?
4. What do you think of Hubble’s Law?
5. How much insurance do you have on your real home – The Planet?

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The Big Bang and Psychology

You are probably wondering why it is necessary to talk about Psychology when exploring the hard science discovery of the Big Bang?  As humans we aren’t always satisfied with just plain facts.  There is something going on within us that makes us want to know what the facts mean.  That’s the focus of Cosmology and Psychology.  The specific goal of Psychology is to examine what is going on within human beings. The answers that psychologists discover tell us about ourselves - who we are, how we operate, where we are going, how we might live more effectively and completely.

The illustrious American novelist and poet, James Agee, wrote about his life as a child on a farm in Tennessee.  Later James wrote: “how successfully disguised to myself I was as a child.”  He sadly lamented that no one ever told him who he really was.  Like James Agee and his family there are many people who don’t know much about Psychology and consequently much about themselves.

Carl Jung, the brilliant psychiatrist/psychologist that we mentioned before, did more research, experimentation, and publishing on the human psyche than any other scholar in history.  Please remember that psychologists are bona fide scientists.  They have to provide evidence and proof for what they claim.  So Jung’s conclusions are not just pious piffle.  When he talked or wrote for his colleagues he used scientific language because most of the scientists of his day believed that religious or spiritual language was piffle.  When he communicated with ordinary folks in letters and friendly conversation Jung used language they were familiar with.  It was not a problem for him to use traditional words to describe the psyche as the Divine Guest within.  To keep things on a high level here’s a scientific definition of the psyche: “The psyche refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, behavior and personality.”

In Jung’s model the psyche has two major components or forces – The Ego and the Self.  The Ego is like the executive of our conscious mind.  It does our willing, choosing, remembering and suffering.  The Ego is concerned primarily with its own defense and the fulfillment of its own ambitions.  In the first half of life the Ego is concerned with  biological and social needs. Also, in those early years the Ego does not perceive what the Self is and when it does begin to glimpse the Self it experiences the Self as an enemy.

The major component of the psyche, the Self, is a unity and a totality of all that makes us who we are – both our conscious part (what we know about ourselves) and our unconscious part (what we don’t know about ourselves or what we don’t want to know because we have denied or repressed it.)  So the Self is only a potentiality until the Ego in midlife moves toward a living link with the Self.   This is the time in life when people are moved to be concerned about their psychological and spiritual needs, and this is not an easy transitional task for the Ego.

The Ego’s concern is its own ambition.  Unfortunately, because of a lack of understanding of the make-up of the psyche and psychic energy, Ego tripping is running rampant in our culture – like public speakers demanding a $100,000 fee for an hour presentation, or athletes being paid $275 million to play a simple game, or CEOs living in 25,000 square feet homes and demanding million dollar salaries.  Traditional wisdom teaches that the Ego at this time in life must learn to defer to the Self and say with the Nazarene, “not my will but yours be done”.

The Self, in traditional language, is the Divine Guest within, the conscience that propels us through life. The Self is not going to go to sleep when we Ego trip.  It will utilize every possibility and opportunity to get the Ego’s attention and try to work out a partnership so that the Ego can become with the Self all that it can be, which is in Jung’s words, “an unique, individuated expression of the progressive incarnation of the deity.” By the way, that’s the answer that James Agee was looking for from his family.  Has anyone mentioned anything like that to you?

Another important question - what are the means or procedures that the Self utilizes to get the Ego’s attention?  Common means are dreams, active imagination, meditation, synchronicities, mandalas, and symptoms.  The basic means is the dream.  It’s a scientific fact that everyone dreams as is evidenced by REMs – rapid eye movement when we sleep.  There are analysts who say that dreaming is more important for our well being than sleeping.  Dreaming is the language of the Self and repose is the best time for the Self to get our attention.  Dream language is basic, symbolic and very old. If you can do crossword puzzles you can do dream work.

The cardinal rule for understanding dreams is to never take a symbol literally.  Symbols point to something broader and deeper that is going on in your inner life.  Every image in  the dream is about you.  Every dream is tailor-made for you alone and only you can understand what it is saying.  It might take a lot of work sometimes but you do have the built-in ability and privilege to communicate individually and directly with the Self.  A nightmare is a message that you have been diligently ignoring.  Jung states that if you don’t pay attention to your dreams you’ll get the message in the street as fate.  Another variation of this is what is called symptomatology.  If you don’t know and work at what really matters to you, then that will become the matter with you.

If you want to know more about the psyche and dreams go to the library or bookstore and check out the works of Carl G. Jung and/or Robert A Johnson.   Johnson is easier to read.  Jeremy Taylor is very good on dreams.

1.    How do you know that you have a psyche?
2.    How does Jung’s model of the psyche sit with you?
3.    Are you brave enough to tell others, your children, who they really are?
4.    What are you doing with your dreams?
5.    What are synchronicities and what can you learn from them?

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The Great Obstacle

For the past dozen years I’ve been an avid student of Carl Jung’s depth psychology.  There are a couple of his statements that I would like to share with you.  The first one is brief: “We walk in shoes that are too small.”  I think what he meant by that is that many of us think that we are flawed, born sinful, incompetent and consequently do not view ourselves as blessed and noble creatures.  Jung could have also meant that tight, uncomfortable shoes could keep us from walking or running very far or very often and thereby cause us to become boring and unhealthy people.  A literal interpretation could result in a decision not to wear shoes and do a little bare-footed walking.  That could be a good thing.  Occasionally caressing our Mother’s face with our feet could get us in touch with Nature and that is a very important issue today.

One of the scholars that Jung studied thoroughly was Thomas Aquinas.  Seven centuries ago Thomas wrote: “a mistake about creation (Nature) is a mistake about God.” One could rephrase that and say you don’t really know God, Creator, Higher Power, if you don’t know and interact with creation because the immensity and complexity of creation is the clearest expression or revelation of the Deity that we have.  By all means don’t let your footwear impede your inner and outer growth.

The second Jungian statement that I would like to share is: “The telling question for human beings is: are they related to the Infinite or not?”  Literally, infinite means without limits. It’s often used as another name for the Deity. The sensing of the infinite normally comes from an encounter that generates awe and wonder - like seeing the brilliance of the Milky Way on a clear night, watching the birth of baby, viewing or hearing the works of creative artists.  The experience makes you catch your breath or stops you in your tracks.

The most overlooked word in Jung’s second quote is related.  “Lated” is a derivative of the Latin verb ferre which means to carry.  Re in front of the word means to carry again  or back and forth.  What Jung is saying is that the most important task that we have in life is to be in communication with The Infinite.  In Jung’s conception the Infinite is alive and communicative.   So how do we get in touch with the Infinite?

Jung indicated that we need comfortable shoes and shoes are meant for walking.  Aquinas tells us where we have to walk – all over creation because creation is the Infinite.  A disciple of Aquinas named Meister Eckhart indicated that our only required task in life is to walk about Creation, Mother Nature, and respond to her in a very simple way, like YES! AWESOME! THANK YOU! PERIOD!  Makes life rather simple, doesn’t it?  Carl Jung, who studied both of those authors, clearly echoed their thoughts.  “Our indispensable place in the great process of being is to put the stamp of perfection on creation”—YES! AWESOME! THANK YOU!

The big question today is:  What has happened to the Infinite? Where has it gone?  For a great number of people the experience of the Infinite has been supplanted by the clock, the car, the house, the computer, the cell phone, the TV and all of the other stuff that flows from the glitzy new heaven called the market place.  The advertisers of the market/heaven, on a 24-7-365 basis, insinuate that we are not yet complete and fulfilled individuals and will never be happy until we acquire all the stuff that they are peddling. Tragically this naïve belief has infiltrated itself into our major social institutions. This brainwashing has been accelerating for many years, but most of the guardians of our institutions have either fallen asleep at the switch or sold out to the powerful for their own aggrandizement.

So let’s examine for a moment, the basic tenets of the new heaven philosophy and/or theology.

1.The name of the game is success and that is exhibited by one’s income and possessions.

2. To be successful, unless you inherit wealth, you have to get a good job.  Most people at an early age learn the ranking of jobs, the titles, the deference rituals and rewards that go with the job.

3. To get a good job you have to first get a good education, which is also ranked, priced and learned at an early age.  Included in this requirement is learning to study diligently and conforming to cultural norms.

4. Just getting a job is not sufficient.  One has to learn how to move up the ladder by being a conforming, deferential worker and by pursuing further education.

These basic tenets have a lot of inconsistencies. First and very importantly there is no evidence that those with the most money and possessions are the most conscious and the happiest people.  Secondly, this definition of success is diametrically opposed to the basic teachings of the dominant religions.  For examples, The Christ asked:  “What does it profit people to gain the whole world at the expense of their psyche?” and then specified what membership in his church required: “If you want to be my follower first sell what you have and give it to the poor.  Then come and follow me.”

There are many other inconsistencies such as:  Why are the gates to good jobs so narrow? Why the high price tag for a good education? Why are private and religious schools more expensive?  Why is there so much white and blue-collar crime and why so many angry and frustrated lower and middle class folks? Finally where will we obtain the natural resources to make this “success myth” sustainable?

Isn’t it time to start searching for a new and more meaningful definition of success based on: 1. traditional wisdom that relates us to the inner world of the psyche, and 2. newly discovered science that fantastically elaborates the Infinite? Something has to be done before the current myth of success destroys our planet.

1.  Are your shoes too small?
2.  What is your understanding of the Infinite?
3.  Are you in regular dialogue with the Infinite?
4.  What is your definition of success?
5.  Are advertising “actors” friends or enablers?

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How Does The Universe Work?

One of the basic tenets of the Grand Theory is that everything in the Universe is alive.  That means that everything, including oceans, mountains, trees, bacteria, etc. is self-actuating, self-sustaining and self-fulfilling.  The Universe clearly knows what She is doing.  She has had a plan and a purpose for a very long time – 13.7 billion years -- and what has evolved is way beyond our human measuring and comprehension.  So doesn’t it make sense, that self-reflecting creatures ought to examine how the Universe has operated in the past, learn what her dynamics are and then join her community of subjects by becoming those dynamics in human form?

The gift that the Universe has given to humans is an emerging sense of consciousness.  This is not to deny that other earthly creatures are conscious and that there could possibly be other creatures somewhere in the Universe that are more aware than we are. But it does seem logical to deduce that the human role in the Universe ought to flow from and be connected to their consciousness.  The great psychologist, Carl Jung, came to this conclusion at about the same time that Einstein developed his theory of relativity.  Here is what he wrote:  “Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and human beings found their indispensable place in the great process of being, (which is)… to put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence.” What Jung is saying is that the absolutely necessary task of humans on this planet is to assist the Universe to become aware of Herself.

What do you think about that?  All that is asked of you is to meander about creation seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and expressing the sentiments of Yes!  There it is! Look at it!  Awesome! Thank You! And believe it or not, you even get paid for doing it.  Like all provident parents, Mother Nature has provided for all human beings a generous irrevocable trust.  Annually the trust generates for every American approximately $25,000 in dividends from the regenerative assets of sun, water, air, soil, trees, grasses, plants, animals, fish, fowl, etc..  That’s a big paycheck for only expressing Yes! Awesome! Thank You!  By being creative and acting out that mantra is how we become the dynamics of the Universe in human form.

So what are these dynamics specifically?  Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist who teaches at the CA Institute of Integrated Studies in San Francisco wrote a fundamental book on this issue with Thomas Berry titled The Universe Story. He has carefully and creatively described a number of the m ore obvious dynamics of the Universe. He starts with gravity, a subject that scientists have studied more thoroughly than any other.   Besides gravity there are other forces in the Universe that bond things together – relativity, the strong-weak forces and electro-magnetic forces.  Collectively Swimme names them Allurement.  We know what these bonding factors do, but how they work and where they originate we don’t fully understand.  For example, we walk around on a sphere that is spinning through space at about 100,000 miles per hour but something invisibly but certainly prevents us from flying off the Earth.  What is that?  Why is that?

Physicists tell us that every object in the Universe is drawn, attracted, connected to every other object.  We see this most obviously when we study the starry sky – trillions upon trillions of immense heavenly bodies dancing at incredible speeds and inconceivable distances, attracted to one another yet respecting each other’s space.  Why is it that a star like our sun, 330,330 times larger than our Earth, 93 million miles away, consumes 4 million tons of itself every second of every day to shape and hone and feed our brains, our flesh, our bones?  It’s because we are all bound by gravity to interact in one great round.  How this can happen boggles our minds.  What would happen if there were no gravity, no allurement?  Total disaster – a word that means stars disintegrating.

Allurement/gravity is not as obvious at the micro level as it is on the macro level but it is still ever fascinating.  What moves males and females to the point where they want to make a lifelong commitment to one another and to take on the very demanding task of rearing a child?  What attracts bees to flowers, kids to ice cream, adults to cocktails?  There’s something going on that looks like allurement. Right?

At a deeper level allurement plays a vocational role.  The brilliant teacher Joseph Campbell urged his students “to follow their bliss” – a very succinct way of saying – do, be what you are allured to.  The importance of that is that when people are doing what they are allured to they themselves become alluring and the process begins to snowball.  Life then becomes a fantastic, creative celebration for everyone.  Bliss cannot be measured by dollars and possessions.  Bliss originates inside not outside the individual.

A burgeoning old poet recently wrote:

Attracting action permeates the Universe in all her states.
And when you push to basic source you’ll find this comprehensive Force
That operates like gentle shove. We should just name her plain old Love.

Love, of course is not a word, or a concept, or an action.  Love is a person – the Self that is progressively being incarnated in each one of us.  Alfred N. Whitehead remarked that in the Universe “There is an allure, a creative advance into novelty”.  Ken Wilbur stated, “There is room for a Kosmos of Eros”.  Jeremy Taylor, Ph.D., stated flat out, “Gravity is Love.”  So the final question is, how does one become the dynamic of Love in human form?  That same old poet offered this answer:

How can you learn to become Love?  It’s simple.  Give yourself a shove.
The theory won’t do the trick.  Immersion is what makes it stick.
So listening and following the urge Allurement tries to bring
Unites one with the Cosmic Love.  Allurement-Love go hand in glove.

1.  Explain our “indispensable place” in the process of being?
2.  Are you aware of your trust dividends, and how do you spend them?
3.  What does allurement mean to you?
4.  What in the natural world is alluring to you?
5.  How does allurement play a vocational role?

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Have You Lost Your Senses?

Some years ago when children did weird things their parents used to ask,  “Have you lost your senses?” Today they say, “Are you crazy”?  I suppose, that if we don’t know what our senses are and for, then we would appear to be a bit crazy.  So let’s do some reflecting on our senses and get in closer touch with them.

Traditionally folks have talked about five senses. By order of development they are smell, touch, taste, hearing and vision.  Recently, there have been discussions about two more—sexuality or creativity and heart sense. There is some evidence for these proposals.  In Latin the word sex means six. Biblical language equates sex with knowledge, “Adam knew Eve and she conceived Cain.” Some old timers still refer to conversation with a friend as intercourse. So is our generative faculty a sixth sense?  The heart has been honored for centuries as a source of knowledge. “Listen to your heart” is common advice to this day.  Recently, researchers have discovered a cluster of neurons in the heart that has an electro-magnetic field that is much stronger than the field
that surrounds the brain.  Is the heart a means of knowing – a seventh sense?

Aside from that debate, human beings are very gifted creatures but often take their sensing gifts for granted.  Sometimes it takes an accident or old age to “bring us to our senses”. When we encounter people who are in touch with their senses we call them sensitive.  We normally mean that such a person is a good listener, feels with you, understands your needs, and responds to them quickly and with care.  A sensitive person is like blood that shows up at a wound before it is called.

The concept of universal aliveness -- the interrelatedness and interdependence of all things -- is one that is difficult for us to understand and activate in our daily life. The reason for that is that somewhere along the line we have come to believe that we are separate from everything else and are spectators of what is happening.  Consequently we often miss the give and take that transpires between us and the Universe.  When we experience something awesome in the Universe and shimmer with wonderment we think that is our development.  But our feelings are not ours alone.  Those external factors activate our feelings.  Sensing those factors and responding to them is how we become the dynamic of sensitivity.

Brian Swimme indicates that the most obvious place for witnessing this sensitivity dynamic of the Universe is in water.  Three quarters of our planet is covered with water and each of us is a mini, mobile lake.  We are two-thirds water and cannot exist without it.  Our ancestors came from the ocean and all of us spent the early months of our life in water.  So how does water exhibit sensitivity?  First of all, we cannot exist without water.  Like in a wave or a mountain stream the water in our bodies gives us flexibility and fluidity. Hydrogen, oxygen and other compounds within us move and blend at three trillion times per second in our bones, muscles, tendons, organs so that we can move, think, talk, sing, dance, play, create.  That’s the sensitivity of the Universe – caring, sharing, evolving, abundant life with us.

Swimme says that we get a clearer, message when we examine the overall process of water, which is to absorb, dissolve and recycle.  For centuries streams, rivers, lakes and oceans receive or absorb whatever flows or falls into them, work on it systematically, break it down into basic elements, and then recycle those elements back into the closed system of the Universe.  Water doesn’t waste anything because she’s sensitive and responsible.  She cares about every atom of her creation because She is those atoms.

We see this dynamic of the Universe in many other places.  In the sky we can see very large and bright stars that are called supernovae. They are gigantic thermonuclear reactors that start as huge clouds of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium absorbed from the Big Bang.  They dissolve these elements in their core at incredibly intense temperatures and in the process produce all the heavier elements like carbon and nitrogen that make up 20% of our body weight.  After thousands of years of boiling supernovae eventually explode, empty themselves completely, and become a black hole.  There’s nothing left.  Like water and everything else in the Universe the dynamic of absorbing, dissolving and recycling continues without interruption.  Every 50 seconds a supernova occurs in some part of the Universe.   Sensitivity?

This dissolution/redistribution process is also evident at the micro level of our bodies.  Our intestines and stomach absorb the food we eat, dissolve it and then distribute it as energy to the various components of our bodies.  Our skin, bones and cells follow suit and are constantly dissolving and new ones rapidly evolve.  With our senses we absorb new knowledge from books, lectures, discussions.  Our brains then process, store, convert this knowledge into laws, principles, theories like the Big Bang, which in turn are disseminated for the well-being of the Universe.

So how do we become in human form this dynamic of sensitivity?  Here are some ideas:

“Materialism alone will not fulfill the possibilities of your existence.  You have to fulfill that with something else.  You have to fill it with the Golden Rule.  You have to fill it thinking about others.”       President Obama

Now please recall the cosmic start when Love designed her work of art.
She poured life out with gen’rous care that left Herself completely bare.
Our Being’s Ground turned inside out so Universe could come about.
Transcendence was not whole enough so Immanence gave her some stuff.
The Universe reflects her cause – unfolds, evolves by Lover’s laws.
If Gen’rousness is Love’s sole game, then “cosmic we” must do the same.
Like Paul we must become a fool.  Sell everything for Golden Rule.
And rule includes much more than men.  All things are one in cosmic ken.

If you are interested in knowing more about your senses read Diane Ackerman’s
A Natural History of the Senses.

1.    What does sensitivity means to you?
2.    What does it mean to be an embedded part of the Universe?
3.    What are your connections to water?
4.    What do the stars contribute to your existence?
5.    What does it mean that the Universe is a closed system?

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How Good Is Your Memory?

One of the wonderful and important faculties that we have as humans is memory.  When we activate the faculty we use the word remember which literally means to put something together again.  We need to remember in order to survive and be creative. One of the saddest diseases of our time attacks our memory.  It is called Alzheimer's (AD) and was discovered in 1906.  Approximately 30 million people now suffer from the disease.  After an abundance of studies we still know very little about causes and treatment of the illness.  One of the early symptoms is loss of short-term memory, then long-term memory and finally the breakdown of the senses.  Mental stimulation, exercise and a balanced diet are recommended both as a possible prevention and a sensible way of managing the disease.

So let’s talk about those recommendations.  They relate very closely to one of the dynamics of the Universe – memory. Strange as it might seem, our culture works against those recommendations of the AD researchers.  Hypnotic media, lack of exercise, and poor diet are creating serious health problems.  Jared Diamond indicates that some primitive societies still living on this planet are on average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than average Americans.  “They are walking encyclopedias of natural history with individual names in their own language for as many as a thousand or more plants and animal species, and with detailed knowledge of these species’ biological characteristics, distribution and potential use.” And guess what?  Many of these folks don’t read and write.  Their life-style helps them to develop an incredible memory, better observational skills that enables them to compose and tell many stories, to be keen listeners, to have an ability to speak from the heart, to communicate more and better, to develop better community rituals, to have healthier eating habits and to live in the now.  All of this happens because Nature is their main focus of attention.

Today there are many people interested in their family history.  They research their genealogy, have their DNA tested, collect heirlooms and design intricate family trees.  The scope of their endeavors, however, remains narrow.  It’s only about people.  Trees cannot exist without their roots buried in the land. Neither can we.  The land,  Nature  remembers.  It is memory in frozen form and is filled to overflowing with knowledge and wisdom that we don’t have and badly need.

Studying the Universe has been the object of science from the beginning.  From the 17th century until today the majority of people have viewed the Universe as a fixed object, a big machine that was made for their ownership and use.  Since the Big Bang discovery scientists have changed their tune and are assuring us that the Universe is one, alive, old -- THE FOREMOST PERSONAGE who should be our main focus of attention.

One simple example of this dynamic of memory at work in Nature is the familiar story of the acorn and the oak.  Every acorn contains the memory of how to make an oak tree.  Oak trees have been around for millions of years and without any help from us acorns continue their contract with Nature by remembering how to regenerate oak trees that photosynthesize sunlight into energy that we need to exist as well as lumber for our buildings and furnishings.  A carpenter can make an oak cabinet but he cannot make an oak tree.

Consider also the elements or the building blocks of the Universe like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, gold, silver, carbon, iron, tin, nickel, etc.  They have retained their original shape or form for billions of years.  They are memory in frozen form for us to see and remind us of our colossal evolutionary history. Check out the rocks of the Grand Canyon that show us what the Earth looked like millions of years ago when it was changing from a molten to a solid form.  Observe the mountains and the oceans that are living memories of the crashing of continents that shaped the face of our Mother Earth. Think of all the experimental years it took the living Earth to fashion your hands and eyes and encode that information in your DNA so that you can pass those gifts on to your offspring.

Besides “re-mind-ing” us of our real and human origins and thereby stimulating our minds to keep them active, the land also provides us answers and means to respond to those other two recommendations – exercise and a natural diet.  To exercise means to drive on, keep up, stay engaged.  The land, the forest, the wilderness is the environment that shaped and formed our bodies. By walking, running, climbing trees, etc. and by growing and searching for the natural foods that Mother Nature has provided for our bodies’ needs we activate ancestral memories.  Those activities will assist us to consider, understand and live out the new perspective  -- everything is one, alive and old.

Have you ever considered the consequences of a narrow approach to memory?  What has happened to our land because the natural wisdom of the people who first occupied this land was ignored?  And what has happened to human beings who migrated here with the belief that the Universe was a machine?  Have they forgotten who they are and become cold mechanical machines themselves?  Eckhart Tolle reminds us that the past century was the most violent of all centuries.  At least 100 million people were slaughtered by the hands of other humans in battles of escalating and heinous violence.  Reflect also on the violence that humans are now inflicting on other life forms and the planet itself – the ravaging of forests and plant life, the ill-treatment and extermination of animals, the polluting of water, air and soil. Kristin Schrader-Frechette, the author of Taking Action, Saving Lives, challenges us: “ If you think things have gotten better over the past few decades – with clean air and water laws, and successful stories and a finer national conscience—you’re wrong.  It’s not true.  Absolutely not true.” Could Alzheimer's disease be natural selection at work?

Here’s an old saying to remember:  “If you don’t remember the past you’re living mindlessly and way too fast.

1.    What do you know about Alzheimer's Disease?
2.    What does your memory do for you?
3.    What do you know about your family tree?
4.    What does it mean to say the Universe is The Foremost Personage?
5.    What happens when we forget?

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Adventurous Play

When I view the awesome sky images that NASA is providing and read the descriptions that scientists are writing about the images I experience a deep sense of smallness.  On the other hand, when I consider that I am one with and made of the same stuff as those massive and complex bodies my mood swings in the opposite direction – I know that I am surrounded with abundance, related to a Higher Power, an unrepeatable miracle.  So how do people balance their smallness and greatness?  The answer is adventurous play.

A friend recently sent me this quotation: “To never just play for the fun of playing is a disastrous loss.  It is only in play that we can see simultaneously the supreme impertinence and utter insignificance of what we are doing”.  Playing for the fun of it is living in the now.  For centuries wise people and practical Twelve Steppers have stated loudly and frequently what C.S. Lewis aptly summed up, “The present moment is the point where time-space touches eternity-infinity.”

Jungian analyst Robert Cunningham writes, “Psychoanalysis has taught us the value and the necessity of play.  Play is the work of infants, children and adults that brings a special relational space for personality and world to relate.  It allows the self to know how it fits into the world on the outside and what the outside can provide the self for growth and healing. Play is an essential ingredient in psychotherapy and healing of soul.  Play is essential for creativity to germinate and bring out new possibilities in life.  Adventurous is the perfect adjective for it connotes courage and risk.  There is no greatness of spirit without courage, no extension of the limits of the known without the willingness to risk, no transformation of need into love without wonder, no movement of fear into curiosity without lowering the illusions of control and power”.

Adventurous play is a very important dynamic of the Universe.  We can observe it in13.7 years of fantastic creativity.  The created world is the vessel into which the Great Mystery poured its sacred essence.  For what purpose?  TO BE SEEN.  If that was the case for the Sacred Other – then it’s the same for the human soul.  Dr. Cunningham points out, “psychoanalysis teaches that the infant demands to be seen if it is to thrive, to develop, to fulfill its gasping for life.  The agony of aloneness is overcome in being seen and finding the gaze of the other that responds with care, nurture and knowing.  Could it be no less true for the very Source of life and how wonderful to be seen in the manifestation of the miracle of creation?”

If we are conscious, evolving, members of this “showing” extravaganza then what is our purpose or role?  Quite simply our job is to show -- play freely, surprisingly, creatively for the fun of it all and finding the gaze of the Other.  We did that as children and there is no reason why we cannot continue to play adventurously into our mature years.  It’s in our genes.  Biologists tell us that we are neotenic – unlike our early ancestors the qualities of youth remain in us into our old age.  Our task is to create a feast for all creatures, to give fizz to life, to be champagne.

Currently, in our culture play like everything else has been co-opted into the American Success Story– commercialized and professionalized.  There are many people who play adventurously, just for the fun of it.  A large number, however, play competitively to be better or best, to become famous, to make money.  Others play vicariously and pay dearly to watch their heroes perform.  Another very large number don’t get to play very often.  They have to forego their creative instincts by working long hours at mindless jobs for meager pay.  The competitive play that children are introduced to in pre-school does teach useful lessons for survival in our success-oriented culture.  But if the goals of our culture are confused and questionable then the means for reaching those goals also have to be examined. If money, power and fame dissolve at death, why are they so anxiously pursued?  Is that all there is?

The defunct Roman Empire believed in “panem et circenses”– bread and circuses to keep the lower classes occupied, temper their boredom and help them forget their misery.  Many insightful people are beginning to see collegiate and professional athletics as a similar activity.  Sometimes it’s beneficial to observe excellence in an activity, but even the best players sometimes wonder about what they are doing.  Games are not adventurous play when the commissioners of athletes draw up complicated contracts and even dress codes.  That’s about competition, wealth and fame.

For centuries there used to be a Commandment that stated, Keep holy the Sabbath.  For Jewish people it was Saturday and for Christians Sunday.  The intent of the commandment was to help people to slow down and rest, to count their blessings, express their gratitude and focus on their inner life – get their Ego in line with the Self.  Collegiate and professional sports are the new Sabbath activities.  They attract a lot of fans, make a lot of money, but serve to disconnect many people from their psyche’s Self and open up for them a wide avenue for their Ego to trip about in illusion-land.

A very important annual event for many families is vacation time – to get away to vacate --empty out stress, exhaustion, confusion, monotony, boredom and become invigorated for new experiences. Many families carefully plan their vacations and an increasing number prefer areas near water, mountains or wilderness with clear skies, bright sun, clean air and open space.  Some people seem to have a built-in longing to be embraced by Nature and they are a sign of hope.  They understand adventurous play and if given the chance they would be on  perpetual vacation.  Vacation is their vocation.  Why shouldn’t it be so for all of us?  That’s what the Universe planned.

1.How often do you play for the fun of it?
2. What contribution does play make to your personal growth?
3.What keeps you from playing adventurously?
4. How much time do you spend on your inner life?
5. What is your vocation?

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Can Gift of Sight Make People Blind?

Surely you’ve met people who have picked up an idea that is very convincing, latched onto it as amazing truth, and then shut down their mind to any further discussion.  That happens with some frequency to converts to a new religion.  There are other people who are insecure and motivated by fear who act in a similar manner.  Refusal to be open to change that is not immediately clear and evident is the beginning of a self-imposed blindness.

There is an abundance of activity in the Universe that we don’t see.  Unfortunately there is a false axiom that pops up frequently – seeing is believing.  What happens then for those who accept that axiom is that many aspects of reality are taken for granted and their significance is ignored – like The Big Bang itself, the allurement of gravity, the miracle of photosynthesis, the wildness and life-giving activity of air, the spontaneity of fire. Marshall McLuan nicely described this type of blindness: “Only puny secrets need protection.  Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity”.

All-throughout the Universe is an organizing principle and activity that cosmologists refer to as unseen shaping.  It is an extremely important dynamic of the Universe. The most obvious metaphor or symbol of this dynamic is fire.  Fire has been here from the beginning.  Everything comes from fire which in turn generates light, heat and wind – unseen activities that we experience and utilize constantly but cannot fully explain, contain nor control.

So what is fire?  Only when the conditions are right will fire flare.  The basic ingredients are combustible material, a spark and adequate air.  There is a variety of materials that will burn, and several means of creating a spark.  Air is unseen but available. Yet none of those ingredients alone are fire.  You can alter the ingredients and get a different kind of fire – more colorful, brighter, hotter, faster burning.  But what fires the ingredients?  Brian Swimme answers, “It is the flame – an activity, a self-organizing unseen power that spontaneously erupts and shows itself whenever it is able to.”

So when you light a candle, watch the logs burning in the fireplace, see a fire raging in the forest, bathe in the sun, or study the burning stars in the firmament, what is it that you are seeing and experiencing?  Unseen Shaping yes, but what is this Shaping?  It behaves like it has a mind of its own.  Could it be possible that everything in the Universe, and not just you and me, has a mind of its own?  That is what science seems to be telling us today.  Everything is alive – self-actuating, self-sustaining and self-fulfilling and most of it in an unseen way.

The dynamics of the Universe are not just active in the outer world.  They are pervasive also in the inner world of our psyche, as all the great teachers of the past have said from Lao Tzu and Gautama Siddhartha 2600 years ago to Thomas Berry and Matthew Fox today.  When the statement is made that everything is self actuating, sustaining, and fulfilling what is being said is that the Self with a capital S is within everything as an unseen shaping activity.  What a risk the Deity is engaged in!  What does a fragile Ego do when it gets a glimpse of the awesome grandeur that it is united to?  Will it only bask in the glory or extend it to all creatures?

To become Unseen Shaping in human form is our task?  First of all, there is a need to get a clear understanding of the core of the Universe theory.  The core term that most cosmologists use is cosmogenesis.  Diarmuid O’Murchu defines it succinctly: “Cosmogenesis refers to those unfolding patterns that reveal a tendency for everything to grow and develop.  Nothing is static, nor do life processes simply repeat a once-and-for-all blueprint.  There is a tendency toward repetition within nature but something new and fresh is added each time.”

Letting go of blinding convictions is extremely difficult to do.  Albert Einstein advised us not to give up principles unless better principles are available.  Within the past one hundred years, hundreds of thousands of the best minds in the history of humankind have discovered and developed new and meaningful facts and principles regarding our origin and purpose.  Not to examine them is self-imposed blindness.

Once we are willing to let go of darkness then the task of becoming Unseen Shaping is an easy one.  We simply live the life of the sun – we radiate.  The sun is fire and through unseen organizing activity it radiates light, heat and wind with ultimate generosity.  Every second the sun converts millions of tons of its core into radiation so that our environment will be balanced and foster life.  Would that more people would adopt the attitude of the Pueblos of New Mexico.  “We are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons and daughters of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky.  We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world”.  That is what Jung called “putting the stamp of perfection on creation.”

A dream of many Americans is to retire, a word that means withdraw, retain, not let go.  Matthew Fox suggests that we should substitute the word refire and not wait until age 65 to do so.  It’s time for all of us to be the sun in human form – refiring every second, enthusiastically and generously sharing our heat, light and wind (a word that means spirit) with all of creation.

The shaping force in Fireball is present now within us all.
Within our dreams and broad desires is found this process mirrored by fires.
There visions, hopes make us aware to carry on Primeval Flare.
By welcoming this awesome scheme we help the Earth birth cosmic dream.

1.    What causes some people to be satisfied with half-truths?
2.    Make a list of activities that illustrate unseen shaping for you.
3.    What thoughts go through your mind when you watch a fire?
4.    What are your reactions to the concept of cosmogenesis?
5.    How close a relationship do you have with the Sun?

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Celebration

We have this strong propensity to live with great intensity,
And not just in our childish stage but even in our golden age.
Right now we have ability for jubilant activity.
Like chimpanzees we were born wild.  Our role for life—eternal child.

The word wild doesn’t always fit comfortably in our vocabulary because wildness often conflicts with civility or civilization.  Civis is the Latin word for citizen -- an individual who has settled down, been socialized into the ways of a city, follows civil law and sometimes wages civil war.  Some older commentators believe that an original connotation of civis referred to a straight line – the form or pattern that humans utilize most frequently in their designs of cities, maps, property divisions, roads, laws, buildings, behavior and linear time. An alien observer would probably note that outwardly as well as inwardly we seem to be a rather straight and square species.

The word wild, on the other hand, means living in a state of nature, not tamed or domesticated, not subject to restraint or regulation and preferring circles to squares and curves to straight lines. This state of nature is not a place like the states or countries that we have marked off on a map and declared to be ours.  Nature is creation that came from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.  How that happened we don’t know, but this we do know – physical scientists tell us that everything is one, alive and old; cosmologists and some social scientists are saying more – that nature is “the progressive incarnation of the Deity.”

So we’ve got a civil vs. wild discussion on the table.  In a debate the burden of proof is on the affirmative.  So let’s get at it.  Everywhere in Nature we notice totally random, genetic mutation.  Nature is wild -- turned on to difference, expansion, freedom, celebration.  Every atom, molecule, cell, snowflake, drop of water, leaf, piece of fruit or vegetable, creature, you and me is unique and one of a kind.  We know that in our psyche and we fight and struggle to maintain that uniqueness, because our uniqueness is both our blessedness and our real task in life.

Mother Nature doesn’t want us to be tamed, rubber-stamped, uniformed images of anyone or anything.  Continuous sameness and replication is anathema in the Big Bang world.  Our only responsibility is to become our uniqueness and at the same time be cheerleaders and promoters of the uniqueness of all other creatures.  We also know in our psyche that we were not designed to be owned by anyone, including parents. Mother Nature doesn’t need our categorizing and regimentation nor our squared and straight-lined framing of existence.  She has competently created and organized the vastness of creation long before we little creatures evolved a few short years ago.

There are two ways to cope with this issue 1. We can begin to loosen up with all of our controlling and containing structures and start moving toward what Carl Jung called individuation – honoring and becoming our uniqueness.  Or 2. We can do nothing and wait for Natural Selection to run its course right over the top of us.  Evolution by means of cataclysm has always been a dynamic of the Universe.  Remember the ice ages and the dinosaurs?  Brian Swimme along with many other scientists are telling us that we are on schedule for another cataclysm and that we ourselves are creating it.

So how do we loosen up – return to the wild?  There is a dynamic of the Universe called celebration.  The word means to rejoice freely, spontaneously, frequently for the fun of it.  The symbol of this dynamic is wind and wind is generated by heat that in turn is generated by fire – The Big Bang.  As heat moved out from the Big Bang wind was created and the Universe expanded and continues to expand right now.  Physicists name this expansion out from an area of high concentration the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which basically states that heat will not stay bottled up in the same place.

We can observe this dynamic in a variety of forms.  When we look into the night sky we can see the galaxies moving away from us. And the further away they are the faster they go.  Parents give birth. Artists turn us on.  Ethnologists who study animal behavior like lions note that juveniles are sent out from the territory of their parents in a planned manner.  Young Mormons, filled with their faith, are sent off on two-year mission assignments.  Some of my children love to be in the wild and take every opportunity to be there.  When they return they radiate an exuberance, a deepening sensitivity to and from the wildness of the forest.  It’s an exciting experience to engage in, witness and feel.

The Universe is obviously anxious to explode in the celebration of her abundance. As embedded offspring we also must be celebrants of that abundance.  A major part of our human abundance is our mode of existence – our level of consciousness that creates objective existence and meaning.  As Carl G. Jung stated, “our indispensable task in this great process of being is to put the stamp of perfection on the world”.  We do that by reflecting on the abundance of our being and then exploding in celebration and joy.

Biologists are now telling us that we are neotenic -- hard-wired for celebration even into old age.  Traditional wisdom has taught this for centuries.  The Christ indicated, “Unless you change your whole outlook and become like a little child (an eternal child) you will never enter the kingdom”, which in modern language is your psyche.  Helen Keller added, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”.  Alfred Adler cautioned, “The chief danger in life is that we take too many precautions.” And then there is e.e. cummings:

“Damn everything but the circus!…damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus,
the round world, the full existence.” Celebration is not a choice.  It is our vocation.

1.    What side are you on in the civil vs. wild debate and why?
2.    What do you think of Jung’s concept of individuation?
3.    What is natural selection?
4.    Why is wind a good symbol for celebration?
5.    What does the phrase “Unless you become like little children” etc. mean to you?

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Good and Evil

Some years ago Henry Adams, the descendant of two American presidents, wrote a book titled The 13th, The Greatest of Centuries.  One of the outstanding scholars of that century was a German by the name of Meister Eckhart of Hochheim.   In his time, as in ours, the God issue was frequently debated.  Eckhart’s approach was refreshing and should be reconsidered today.  He put it bluntly.  “God is not found by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.  The most beautiful thing that a person could say about God would be for that person to remain silent.  So, be silent and quit flapping your gums about God.  Love God as God is – a not-God, a not-mind, a not-person, a not-image.  Love God as God is – a clear One who is separate from all twoness.”

I think that what Eckhart is saying is that God is not like us and that “God’s ways are not our ways.”  One of God’s ways that’s we are reluctant to accept is the oneness of good and evil.  The preference of many humans is either/or -- twoness, “I’ll take the good, but deliver me from all evil.” I recently read an item in the paper from the journal of a lady who had lost her house in a flood.  “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.  I can’t fix it back.  Damn you Mother Nature.” Let’s think this through from the beginning.

Everything started with Fire, a Big Bang.  Was that fire good or bad?  If we take a both/and position, fire is both good and bad.  Fire is beautiful and warming in our fireplace or stove, but if a fire burns our house to the ground that’s generally considered bad or evil.  Wherever we look we are confronted with opposites – matter and anti-matter, night and day, light and dark, male and female, young and old, good and bad, life and death, etc.  Carl Jung reminded us that: “a being without opposites is completely unthinkable, as it would be impossible to establish its existence.” The existence and the balancing of opposites has been going on for 13.7 billion years and has produced an incredible display of creativity.  It seems clear in this respect that the Creator’s ways differ from ours. The universe seems to be telling us that there is a cyclical process going on whereby good produces evil which in turn produces good.  Balancing means that one tolerates the tension between the opposites and, trusting the process of the Universe, views all situations from a both/and perspective rather than either/or.

If that is the case then it seems logical to seriously consider how the one Universe operates, and how we might become those dynamics in human form.   Most of our plans, actions and evaluations of them, however, are frequently made from a narrow and personal point of view.  Because of our inability or unwillingness to consider a larger picture and/or other options we often make costly mistakes.  For example it is foolish to build one’s house on sand or in hazardous places where wind, flood, or fire can destroy them.   Yet thousands of people do it anyway and then blame the Creator for the disaster.

When the entire process of life is examined it is consistently noted that in every creature a new dimension or slight advance occurs and that dimension is then passed on to a future generation for further enhancement.  When the process of evolution arrived at the enhancement stage of consciousness in homo sapiens around seven thousand years ago, Earth was ravishingly beautiful and fruitful.  The Universe then decided that a risk of major size was ready to be taken – the evolution of the human psyche with an ego capable of willing and choosing.  The risk was: could conscious beings see themselves as the latest expression of growth in creation with the unique role of assisting the Universe to become aware of herself?  Or, seeing the beauty and tasting the bounty of creation, would they selfishly grasp that beauty and bounty as their own, take over and domineer like kings and queens of the castle?

What has happened in the last 7 thousand years is that a multitude of individuals have taken off on  vicious ego-trips, created their our own version of reality and ignored the horrendous   consequences of their behavior on the rest of creation.  What we are now living with is a monstrous snowballing of human ego trips that has accumulated during our brief presence on this planet.  This snowballing of self-centeredness has created an abundance of pain and despair for a vast number and a grandiose lifestyle and a denying of death and its functions for a small minority.  There is also another multitude of righteous individuals who believe that the risk taken by the Universe was an horrendous mistake and contrive programs designed to eliminate or seriously control those whom they define as ego-trippers.

We are faced with a super task with the snow-balled evil that has been handed down.  First of all we have to understand and trust the wisdom of the Universe.  By holding the tension of the opposites a resolution will come about.  We have 13.7 billion years of evidence.  By being authentic to our Self and forgiving others we can help to melt the snow.   Today there are millions of humans rapidly growing in a consciousness of compassion and social justice, environmental awareness and involvement, scaling down their lifestyle, sharing with the needy in a multitude of ways. The carpenter from Nazareth offers sane advice in this matter. In his parable about the enemy who sowed weeds among the wheat of a neighbor, he stated, “Don’t pull out the weeds, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it.  Let them both grow till the harvest and I will take care of the situation”.

If you would like to join those millions who are growing in consciousness and would like a detailed description of how to deal with ego-tripping and getting beyond it, read Eckhart Tolle’s  best seller: A New Earth –Awakening to Your Life Purpose.

1.What do you think of Eckhart’s approach on the God issue?
2. Are you a both/and or an either/or evaluator, and why?
3. Do you have problems with a Creator who takes risks, and why?
4. Where are you on your journey to urge your Ego to defer to the Self?
5. Are you willing to trust the wisdom and experience of the Universe?

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Death

Six centuries ago, the essayist Montaigne wrote:  “Anyone who teaches people to die teaches them to live.”  That is the intent of this essay.  So let’s start off with a big deep breath. We are really good at that.  We do it over 23,000 times a day.  While you were taking that breath a couple of fellow American breathed for the last time.  Modern humans existed in Africa for at least 100,000 years.  No one knows for certain, but from then until now probably 80 billion humans have lived on this planet.  They have all died.  There are now 7 billion of us on the planet and we will all be dead within 90 years.  That’s plenty of evidence to convince us that death is a sure thing and the constancy of death over millions of years clearly indicates that it is a part of an overall plan.

13.7 billion years ago a closed system called the Universe was inaugurated from nothingness.  The energy that evolved into the Universe was all generated by the Big Bang.  The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be changed from one form to another but it cannot be created or destroyed.  That energy has changed and recycled a jillion times and eventually some of it became you, and as you read this you are continuing to be recycled.   The matter, the substance that you were at your birth, what you were ten years ago, has all moved on and the three hundred trillion cells that now make up your body are going to be renewed again and again.

When your body finally disintegrates from sickness, age or an accident it all will be recycled and your unique bodily form will come to an end.  Your psyche, however, which contains the Self will live on.  Remember who the Self is—the infinite, eternal Deity that is progressively incarnating in the universe.  David Bohm, a highly respected quantum physicist tells us that everything in the Universe is mutually enfolded –“ every part contains all the information of all the other parts.  Even a single cell contains all the information of the Universe.”  What he seems to be saying is that every particle in the universe is super-brilliant – every particle knows all there is to know.  All those trillions of cells that have recycled and been a living part of your body remember you well and will always know you.  You can know them now if you want to make the effort and you will know them after your body disintegrates.  You can’t possibly be forgotten.  Also, by the first law of thermodynamics the energy that has been a part of you cannot be destroyed.  So you aren’t going anywhere.  You are in a closed system.

Two thousand years ago Jesus said:  “eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into the human heart what has been prepared for those who love.”  He was simply saying that death is going to be a big surprise.  Quantum physics has really enlarged the surprise.  It’s beyond mind-boggling.  So why was death invented?

In his book The Universe Is A Green Dragon Brian Swimme lists a whole series of reasons:  “Embrace your death.  It will serve you by enabling you to show yourself, to deepen the adventure of life and to underscore the drama of each instant.  We should cherish our awareness of death as a gift from the Universe.  It is fuel, a lamp, a secret guide who will lead us into the mysterious caverns of our selves so that we can bring forth what we truly are.  Our creativity needs the awareness of death for its energy to get us out there to live our life as alluring and remembering activity, as shimmering sensitivity and surprising adventurous play.  That’s what life reveals; that’s what life is.  Surprise the world with your life and the world will surprise you at death.”

Let’s take a look at death from another direction.  What would happen if we could eliminate natural death?  The first thing that would happen would be the elimination of reproduction.  We are already trying to do that.  There are now seven billion people on the planet and within sixty years there will be fourteen.  The Earth cannot support that many people.  If we would only die through an accident or starvation people would build walls around their homes and never leave to travel or play.  Life would become an overwhelming bore.  Think of living in such a situation.  Risking encounters with the rabble outside would be ever threatening. Death anxiety would become greater than it is today.  Suicide rates would escalate astronomically.

Anguish about death is very pervasive today – so pervasive that we don’t like to talk about it and try to disguise it with evasive language and empty rituals.  The source of our anguish comes from our failure to recognize who we are as a species and what is our habitat. We are a neotenic species which means that we are a mature form of childhood, a form of life, that upon reaching maturity, can continue to devote itself to a lifetime of ad-venturous play.  A habitat is the place where a species can flourish and expand.  Our habitat is adventurous play—exploring, probing, experimenting, laughing.  If a species cannot find its habitat it quickly fades and perishes.

Too many people today see themselves as full time consumers, and appendages or extensions of their machines.  With full-speed-ahead consumerism they are trashing the planet and experiencing apathy and boredom in the midst of foul pollution.  As Swimme states, “We will move into our destiny when we understand that we are to live in and as adventurous play”.

The Nazarene knew a lot about death and adventurous play.  “I say to you don’t worry about living.  Surely life is more important than food and the body more important than clothes.  Look at the birds in the sky.  They never sow nor reap, nor store away in barns.  And why do you worry about clothes?  Consider how the wild flowers grow.  They neither work nor weave.  So don’t worry.  Set your heart on the kingdom within
(The Self) and all things will come to you as a matter of course”.  Matt.

1.    How can you express gratitude for the miracle of breathing?
2.    What does Bohm’s mutual enfoldment say to you?
3.    Why don’t you re-read Swimme’s embracing death statement three times?
4.    What are your reasons for not wanting to die?
5.    What is a habitat and what is yours?

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Wrap-up

We started this series with a quotation from Albert Einstein and now would like to end the series with another of his quotes.  “I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.  Curiosity has its own reason for existence.  One cannot but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structures of reality.  It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.”

So what do we do every day?  First of all we have to focus on what and who we really are.  Negative language has to go. Close your ears to negativity and be positive.  We are unrepeatable miracles -- unique, capable of becoming whatever we want to be, blessed in our origin, surrounded with abundance and beauty, temples of the Self.  Every day tell yourself what Meister Eckhart said about you:  “Every creature is a book about God.”  Read your “book” every day – all those positive and wonderful things that you have said and done. It is an unique best seller. Put your uniqueness out there for the world to read.

Secondly, we all have to be scientists in our thinking.  Scientists keep their curiosity, never growing up and always playing adventurously. They never take anything for granted and challenge “what everybody knows”with their favorite word – bull. Less than ten percent of the population has a clue about what has been discovered in their lifetime.  Cosmologist Brian Swimme expressed this accurately.  “We are the first generation to live with an empirical view of the origin of the universe.  We are the first humans to look into the night sky and see the birth of stars, the birth of galaxies, the birth of the cosmos as a whole.  Our future as a species will be forged within this new theory of the world”. So be a curious scientist as you study a little bit every day about the birth of the cosmos and its meaning.

Where do you start?  In that first essay the new theory on existence was summed up in the expression that everything in the universe is one, alive and old.  The aliveness of everything is probably the most difficult concept to understand.  For example, how do we wrap our mind around the fact that every single atom of the jillions that exist, an entity that we cannot see with our naked eye, contains all the knowledge in the universe?  Clearly, as individuals we do not have the language, the technology and the experience to deal with these new facts.  But it’s time to become curious and to try to comprehend a little bit of the mystery every day.

Why not start with the sky and learn how alluring it is.  If you live in a big city make a visit to the planetarium or attend a meeting of local astronomers.  If you live in a small town or the country pick a clear night, move away from buildings and floodlights and make an evening of watching the stars.  Lie on your back and imagine that you are looking down instead of up and learn how gravity works and how vast the universe is.  Go bare-footed from time to time.  Caress your Mother’s face with your feet. Remember through your feet how many million years it took for the Earth’s crust to form (Her book) so you can plant trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables.  Vocalize your admiration and gratitude as they grow.  Do the same with water when you drink and bathe.  Watch and marvel at how water flows, bubbles and irrigates.  Reflect on what it means to you to be two-thirds water. Take your pulse every day and feel the vibrations of your life.

Be conscious when you breathe the air.  Consider that you can’t live without the energy it brings you.  Fly a kite and cry when you see pollutants clouding the sky.  Light a fire and study what happens.  Think what life would be like without light and heat.  Play just for the fun of it for at least a couple of minutes every day.  Celebrate all the time.  Look for opportunities to sing, dance, jump, run, roll, swagger, be cool.  Avoid work but be creative.  Scale down.  Follow the advice of Thoreau:  “That person is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.” Give away the needless junk in your garage, basement and attic.  Clean out half your closet and clothe the needy.  Most of that stuff you probably can’t get into anyway.  Walk or run everyday and cut your food intake in half.  Say bull a lot. Buy a nice journal and write in it every day – your conversations with the Self, your dreams and what they mean to you, insights garnered from reading and conversations with relatives and friends.  YES YOU CAN.

Back in l970 when I joined the faculty of Hanover College in IN I encountered and became friends of an incredible couple who lived across the Ohio River from the college – Harlan and Anna Hubbard.  Both of them were near 70 when we met but they didn’t look or act that age.  They came to a dinner for faculty and spouses and talked about their experiences as shanty boaters on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and their subsequent life at the fringes of society on the Ohio River near Payne Hollow, KY.  Like a lot of other people I got hooked on their presence and their story.  For twenty years I brought my family, friends and most of my students to meet them, listen to their story and observe their lifestyle.

Harlan and Anna were well-educated, excellent musicians and models of how to live in the Big Bang world.  Wendell Berry wrote of them: “They fashioned a life that is one of the finest accomplishments of our time…they lived simply for half a century without benefit of labor savers that pass with us for modern civilization.  Their life was comely, orderly, ceremonious, full of health.  Their days were strenuous but also leisurely, allowing time for music, painting, reading and writing, taking pleasures, entertaining visitors.  In short their lives were deeply civilized, for reasons and by means that our industrial ideology holds in contempt.  This is their claim on our attention and our imaginations.  It is a claim we can ignore only at our peril.” For their full story read Harlan’s two books Shantyboat and Payne Hollow.

1. What keeps you from becoming curious?  Then get rid of it.
2. Why are some people skeptical and critical of scientists?
3. What can you do to make the starry sky more accessible?
4. How did Americans become such junk collectors?
5. What other models of simple living do you know and could visit?

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