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Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for June, 2011
So live your life
Jun 17th
”So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your
heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their
view, and demand that they respect yours. love your life,
perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make
your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If
you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in
yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones
to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your
time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the
fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different
way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. .”
The Search for the Absolute
Jun 17th
The search for the absolute is vain and barren. There is only the unfolding. I don’t speak of my purpose in life. Probing more deeply into the implications of purpose reveals that having a purpose implies that we are moving along, going somewhere. That leads to the thought that we are moving toward something, some end point, some pinnacle of achievement or fulfillment. It is not necessary to limit oneself with a belief in an overall purpose. What is the purpose of an oak tree? None of us are really going anywhere. Where would we go anyway? We are Earthlings, we are home.
However, if one chooses to adopt a purpose then perhaps it might be to simply expand our awareness.
Humanity’s Second Spiritual Age
Jun 12th
Humanity’s Second Spiritual Age
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/duane-elgin/coming-together_b_870538.html
In this new post, Duane Elgin speaks eloquently and forcefully for the ideals of the living universe. For those who wish to read further, they might find his 2009 book, “The Living Universe” helpful.
Although I am aware and appreciate the high ideals and emphasis on love of neighbour within the major religions, I can’t ignore that the two largest major religions have manifested almost continuous warfare and contention. In a little over 300 years after the death of the Christ, King Constantine made the Christian God a God of war; even placing the sign of the cross on his war banners.
Only 10 years after the founding of Islam and the Hijera in 622, Muhammad’s successors began their campaign against neighbouring empires. By 732, they had threatened Europe as far north as Poitiers and were stopped by Charles Martel just south of Tours, France. Islam’s last thrust into Europe occurred at the second Siege of Vienna in 1683 which lasted over two months.
Love of others has always been and still is trumped by politics and economics. There are even state churches like the Anglican church and the church of Sweden. One of the goals of the English settlements in the New World was the separation of church and state and resulting religious freedom.
Although I honour the effort of all major religions, what I am saying is that the “the need to put compassion at the forefront” as Duane has stated has not brought peace on Earth.
Will knowledge that we are not separate from the living universe be enough to bring us to peaceful intents and the end of our raging ecocide? Will this knowledge really bring us to “communion with the living universe,” and an “experience of unity and intimacy within the universe”?
I find Duane’s writing inspiring, especially the paragraph quoted below and find myself wanting desperately to believe that it can happen, but I have grave and serious doubts. “When our aliveness consciously connects with the aliveness of the universe, a current of aliveness flows through us. At that moment — when life meets life — a direct connection between the living universe and ourselves is realized and we have an awakening experience. We no longer see ourselves in the universe, we experience that we are the universe.”
Our aliveness is and has always been connected and has always flowed through us. A current of aliveness is and always has flowed through us. My question is: Will just reading about this or being told this “cause” an awakening experience? Perhaps the trouble with me is that when I look out onto the Milky Way or think about star systems and galaxies, I don’t receive a “direct experience” of the aliveness of that part of me. I cannot develop a closeness with a group of stars or even Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion and the sixth brightest star in the sky. It is too big, too distant, too remote for me to form a loving relationship with.
What I can and do feel and enjoy is that part of me that is the Earth, Gaia. So, for me, the love of the Earth is the direct experience that has been the awakening experience of my life.
Is Consciousness a Bodily Function?
Jun 12th
I first became acquainted with the deep thinking of Peter Russell during my first visit to Australia in the mid 1980s. I still have a copy of an amazing article in which he placed the following question. If you detached and placed your 5 senses in one room and the rest of your body in another room, where are YOU? Makes you think huh?
The other day, Peter posted an article in the Huffington Post. Let me paraphrase it so I can make a couple of observations.
Does Our Brain Really Create Consciousness?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com:80/peter-russell/brain-consciousness_b_873595.html
[Sky] Consciousness gives western science the shivers. The accepted measurement tools give little certainty and feelings and intuition are considered invalid. No-one will deny that we observe, we know, and we know that we know. Within the present materialistic paradigm, some “thing,” some “function,” must “make” this happen. The brain is the most obvious “maker.”
Peter states: [my parenthesis] “When the anomaly can no longer be ignored, the common reaction is to attempt to explain it within the current paradigm.
(1) Some believe that a deeper understanding of brain chemistry will provide the answers; perhaps consciousness resides in the action of neuropeptides.
(2) Others look to quantum physics; the minute microtubules found inside nerve cells could create quantum effects that might somehow contribute to consciousness.
(3) Some explore computing theory and believe that consciousness emerges from the complexity of the brain’s processing.
(4) Others find sources of hope in chaos theory.
Yet whatever ideas are put forward, one thorny question remains: How can something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as matter?”
Peter continues to suggest that perhaps the brain does not “create” consciousness but that consciousness: “Instead, the capacity for consciousness is an inherent quality of life itself.”
So, let us think about this. So consciousness is not a “function.” Consciousness is a quality and as with other qualities of life, it is interconnected and interrelated. In other words, qualities are in relationship and can only be understood by observing and realizing that we ourselves are part of that relationship.
So we need a shift in our basic beliefs about certainty and validity. To define a thing or get to know a thing by chopping it up and subjecting it to various measurement is an extremely limited venture.
For example, if extraterrestrial beings used our present methods to figure out how a television set worked, they would dismantle it and analyze its contents. However, nothing that they could examine would explain what fed the tuner or how and where the TV signals come about. I suggest the same thing would happen if they diced a computer. Placing main memory, an I/O unit, the CD player and other parts under the microscope will never reveal “how it works.”
Peter quite appropriately stops here and skips the “what ifs” and the “isn’t it possible.” I like his closing paragraph: “This proposal is so contrary to the current paradigm, that die-hard materialists easily ridicule and dismiss it. But we should not forget the bishops of Galileo’s time who refused to look through his telescope because they knew his discovery was impossible.”
As a non-scientist, I do not feel embarrassed at speculating. If, as Peter suggests, consciousness is a quality that we are rather than the result of a bodily function, then perhaps it doesn’t exist within the body in one of our organs. Our scientific instruments certainly have not found the seat of consciousness. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe the scientific establishment can even agree on what consciousness even “is” or whether or not it even “exists.” If we were correct in understanding consciousness as a quality of life itself, then it certainly is not preposterous that we should suspect that consciousness is not a “thing” that we have but a quality that we “are.” How about the next small step? Following, maybe what we label consciousness is simply a word for an aspect of being an Earthling and what we think “belongs” to us actually “belongs” to Gaia. Surely it cannot be surprising that a living being, such as Gaia, has such a quality and that it permeates all life. Now there is a thing?