Essay: Wrap It Up

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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