I woke up this morning with a sense that life is appearance and connectedness, and that the beauty and meaning are in the connectedness. Appearance is what attracts our attention, and it’s obvious that there is eye candy everywhere; it’s perfectly fine to enjoy that.
But connectedness is where the meaning is. The study of separate entities leads to an appreciation of those life forms and their beauty, but focuses on their evolved functionality and adaptation to their survival challenges.
So what?
Well, I think we’re missing the point. We’re not seeing the forest for the trees. We’re distracted by the wonderful phantasmagoria we’re part of. It’s like a kneecap waking up and noticing the body it’s attached to and deciding it’s the boss of those bones and muscles and the blood that feeds them. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?
That’s us. That’s what humans are doing in their “advanced civilizations.” We haven’t seen the connectedness of all things, much less the meaning of that connectedness. Still, that’s where you could start to talk about the Great Spirit that creates all things, the ineffable being that some call God.
The rub being, nothing is outside of that Great Being, us included, your mother-in-law included.
What a lovely mystery! We humans get to do something called “living the questions.”
It seems to me homo sapiens have to make a big leap in consciousness now, or pass into the history of the universe as a failed experiment. We have to feel and to know the connectedness in everything. We have to consciously aid and abet it instead of diligently destroying it, which is what we have been doing. We don’t have a lot of time left to finally grow up and take our rightful place in the natural order — that of a servant, not a master.
